A gelateria with vegan ice cream and more than 270 owners opens in Zurich

Summer has arrived in Switzerland this week at the latest. To compensate for the high temperatures, many people feel the need to cool down – perhaps with a dip in the lake or with an ice-cold ice cream.

There is good news for gourmet lovers: the new Gelateria Nanimale will open at Stauffacherstrasse 180 in Zurich on Wednesday. Guests can expect 42 varieties of vegan ice cream, from chocolate to black sesame to espresso.

Speaking of coffee, the co-founder of the new gelateria called Nanimale is Benedikt Hess, who was also a co-founder of coffee chain Vicafé. “The vegan ice creams have nothing to do with the coffee, though,” Hess tells Watson. The company is independent.

The idea to produce creamy but vegan ice cream came from Stephan Glattfelder and Daniel Bertozzi, who already have experience with Bertozzi gelato in the ice cream industry. But development took time.

“Our goal was to develop vegan ice cream without chemical additives that tastes just as good as ice cream,” explains Hess. The team worked on the recipe for about 6 months until the Nanimale ice cream was created. “By experimenting with vegetable fibers, we managed to achieve a consistency and taste that is not unlike milk ice cream and has no taste of its own,” says the founder of Nanimale.

The ice creams were quickly appreciated: “We already sell them in about 500 entertainment venues and shops, and Migros has also put three of our types on the national list,” Hess says proudly. The retailer currently carries gianduja, pistachio and hazelnut ice cream from Nanimale. But that was just the beginning.

In order to be able to produce slice ice cream and cornets next year, Nanimale has started crowdfunding on the «Oomnium» platform. Crowdfunding allows people to deposit money into a project like crowdfunding, but in return they get shares in the company and become co-owners. Instead of relying on one large investor, Nanimale relies on many smaller shareholders. “Our goal was to get the brand known to a large number of people who could say, ‘This is my ice cream, I’m in. Kind of like having a business with the community,’ explains Hess.

Originally, Nanimale wanted to raise CHF 200,000 through crowdfunding. “We have currently received CHF 510,000 from 276 shareholders, including the existing investors, which is almost 300 owners,” says Benedikt Hess. Crowd investing is expected to last until Thursday, but may also be extended. Hess is convinced that people will believe in Nanimale’s success. But was a gelateria really missing in Zurich?

“There can never be enough ice cream parlors. And the nice thing about an ice cream is not whether it is vegan or not, but that the pleasure of it unites people. Gelaterias are happy places for young and old, Zurich always needs that,’ says Hess.