What a year has 2018 been! Below is a list of the highlights from the Rollin’ Gelato operations in 2018.
Austin, Texas
We started the year out in Austin, Texas, working on building up the kitchen, getting the kitchen permitted (approved by the Travis County health department), and testing the market at farmer’s market — leading to several very nice catering events (Gelato, Gelato, Sorbet :-).
- “Aspen” (1972 VW bus) has come out with its patina body look.
- Rollin’ Gelato was introduced at the Texas Farmers’ Market at Mueller (Old Mueller airport in Austin) during the month of February, and we ran the booth until April.
- The “Strawberry” VW bus attended the SOCO Market on South Congress Street in March and April.
- We celebrated with Ovivo Water and Microdyn-Nadir the inauguration of their Austin manufacturing plant; they work on improving the water we all drink (industrial filters for municipalities).
- We catered to the 4th of July celebration at the Austin Country Club.
We created a variety of new flavors that highlighted pure Texan ingredients . we like to name few:
- Grapefruit ginger sorbet Rio Grande Valley
- coffee-rum (greater goods coffee)
- Krishna spiced tea (Yaupon Tea from Yaupon Lost Pines)
- pineapple, basil, lime and gin (gin from Treaty Oaks)
- Vanilla with minted chocolate shavings
- Dark Chocolate from Delysia Chocolatier
- Sundried fruit soaked in Treaty Oak Rum and folded in custard
- Eggnog with a hint of rum
- Sorbelatto – Vegan with creaminess of a gelato – peanut butter / pumpkin and cashew milk
- Coffee Sorbet, with Swiss meringue folded in
Michigan, Kalamazoo
Summer 2018 was an active season for Rollin’ Gelato in Kalamazoo. Since the temperatures drop down below 60 degrees during the Fall, Winter, and Spring, we only operate in Kalamazoo during the summer. During this past summer in Kalamazoo, we attended different markets:
In addition, we were part of the Kalamazoo Parks and Recreation Friday Lunchtime Live food trucks in downtown Kalamazoo, the monthly Friday-night Kalamazoo Food Truck Rallies, and the monthly Battle Creek Farmer’s Market Food Truck Fridays.
It was fun and it was great.
We enjoy the direct contact with our customers. We love to chat and explain our flavors and they loved to taste and ask questions.
It takes two to tango. Michigan offers such a wide variety of herbs, fruits, wines and, honey to name few and we, on the other hand, are pretty creative. we ventured into some fun flavors such as:
- Watermelon organo
- Lemon basil with mixed berries
- Rose wine with strawberry
- Honey gelato with blueberry-lavender jam
- Olive oil, wildflower honey, almond milk and citrus sorbet.
- Peanut butter gelato with fresh grapes jam topping.
- Peanut butter with whey protein
“Pistachio” (1976 VW bus) catered to a variety of events, including weddings, Michigan Tech send off celebration, baby shower, employee appreciation, medical center, and for the first time this year, we participated in the Downtown Kalamazoo Friday Food Truck.
We were invited to participate in the Portage Cross Country Invitational (October 2018). Unfortunately, the gas pedal of Pistachio broke on our way to the event, in the pouring rain. We canceled on that day. With 500 cups of gelato in the bus (that went back to the garage), our friends and customers helped a lot by buying the stock that we prepared for that event. Thank you. 🙂
Calumet, Michigan
May 2019 – This is the target month to open a brick and mortar Rollin’ Gelato in Calumet, Michigan (Upper Peninsula – 15 minutes from Michigan Tech University) at: 326 5th street. With the help of other local artisans (Art and food) we want to create a destination for tourists and residents to enjoy the Upper Peninsula environment.
We are looking forward to create new flavors using the well-known thimbleberry in our gelato and/or sorbets, wild blueberry gelato, wild apples and plums gelato – to name few. we already created “Outdoor Mocha” using specifically “Keewenaw Coffee Work” coffee Beans – they figured out what combination of beans will work with our combination of spices in our Mocha 🙂
Our son, Martin, attends Michigan Tech University (Houghton, Michigan) is learning the process of making gelato and sorbet as he will be actively involved in RG Calumet.
Stay tuned as we will keep you posted on our new adventure.