Markham’s Love Gelato’s continuous reinvention

Love Gelato could’ve just been a gelateria. That’s what Daniel Imbrogno, who founded the Markham gelato mainstay 10 years ago alongside friends Vlad Strbac, and Paolo Orsini, originally intended. It was a reset after burning out in his corporate career.

“My wife was pregnant, so I decided to quit my job and scoop gelato,” he says. He wanted to connect with his community in a simple way. “Then one thing led to another.”

Love Gelato gained momentum.

“I think it was year two or three, one of our regular clients asked us, ‘Hey could you serve this gelato at my wedding?’ ” recalls Imbrogno. “We literally closed the doors that day, unplugged the freezer and brought it to their backyard.”

It sparked something, an opportunity to radically expand the business.

“We got into the hospitality side doing weddings, corporate events birthday parties, you name it… Google, Apple, the Raptors,” he says. “We went from doing one event to about 250 events a year.”

But the pandemic was a massive setback. “We had to give 190 brides and corporations their money back,” he says. “We lost about $200,000 in deposits.”

It was time for another pivot. They started offering “Love Boxes” – a party-sized pack of individual cups of gelato. “That year of Covid, we delivered over 10,000 Love Boxes.”

Around that time, Imbrogno found out about Digitial Main Street, a program combining grants and one-to-one support from the Province of Ontario alongside partners to help main street businesses strengthen their online capabilities and plan for the digital future.“We weren't even ready for online,” he says. “We were taking orders and handwriting them in books.”

Imbrogno saw the $2,500 Digital Transformation Grant and training videos as an opportunity to invest in digital advertising.

“We said, let’s put it all into advertising and that’s what we did,” he says. “It worked tremendously… our online presence skyrocketed.”

Imbrogno says he carefully followed the training videos, tweaking the business’s marketing strategy in real time.

“I would jump on those classes, take notes, we would dissect the notes and say, okay, how can we be better? How can we do things differently?” he says. “It was unreal.”

Through Digital Main Street, Imbrogno says they were able to introduce a delivery and pickup system (the Love Boxes have since become an in-store pick-up product). Between that, digital advertising, some good press, and word of mouth, Love Gelato continues to grow its fanbase. But now that they have momentum, Imbrogno says they’re already looking to what’s next and how to use digital to make that experience better.

“It's not even about the gelato,” he says. “It's about the experience.”

Learn more about Love Gelato on their website, Facebook, X, and Instagram. 

Learn more about how Digital Main Street can support your small business here.