It took quite a few trips, but Jan Horsfall finally got some respect from Italian masters of gelato.
“We were on Italy’s B list,” said Horsfall, founder and CEO of Gelazzi, a gelato store he opened in Larimer Square in November 2004.
Horsfall was determined to open a gelato shop here. So he visited Italy (and still does several times a year, he says) to seek advice from gelato pros.
“I was like a wide-eyed boy,” he said. But because they consider those who make gelato chefs and “are very strongly opinionated about making it,” they had little faith in “a stupid American,” Horsfall said.
But he slowly earned their acceptance, as he attended numerous events featuring gelato and coffee, then began negotiating with suppliers to help him start up the Larimer Square shop.
Now he’s got one store at 1411 Larimer St. and a second that opened three months ago at 128 S. College Ave. in Fort Collins.
Next up: an ambitious national expansion.
“We want to get 10 locations in the ground next year, 25 in the ground in ‘08 and 50 in ‘09,” Horsfall said. “We built this to scale it, and bring the right people in at the right time … We think we can have 1,900 of these in the ground by 2013.”
Horsfall first is looking at sites in California, Florida and Texas. The first new franchised store will open in Tampa, Fla., by year-end.
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