Grom Gelato: Creating a Stir in New York

Partners Guido Martinetti and Frederico Grom have managed to preserve Old World flavors and traditions in their Manhattan gelato shop

by Stacy Perman

Ever since Grom opened for business, lines for the artisanal gelato shop have continued to run around the block.

Now Grom is planning to open two more Manhattan locations before branching out to Tokyo in the next few years.

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Would Americans spend $4.75 for a single scoop of premium, handmade Italian gelato? That was the question that Guido Martinetti and his partner, Frederico Grom, asked themselves a year ago when they decided to bring their popular Italian gelato chain, Grom, to New York City. As it turned out, the answer was a resounding yes.

When the first shop opened on Manhattan's Upper West Side in May, the pair tested the waters by giving out free coupons to lure customers in to try their product. "On the first day," says Martinetti, "there was a line of people 70 meters (about 229 feet) long down Broadway." The second day, paying customers without the benefit of a coupon returned in droves. And ever since Grom opened for business, lines for the artisanal gelato shop have continued to run around the block. Now Grom is planning to open two more Manhattan locations before branching out to Tokyo in the next few years.

Grom began in Turin, Italy, five years ago when the two friends—Martinetti, a former winemaker, and Grom, who had worked in Italy's financial industry—lamented the scarcity of gelato made the old-fashioned way: with premium ingredients and processed by hand. The pair decided that instead of talking about what didn't exist, they would start their own gelato company. They very quickly put together a business plan and borrowed the startup money to do so. In 2003, they opened their first shop in their native Turin. It was an immediate hit.

Ingredients from Far-Flung Places

Inspired by Slow Food, a global association and movement that seeks to preserve regional foods and small producers, Grom's founders decided at the outset to use only the finest organic ingredients and local artisanal purveyors as much as possible. For instance, the pair scoured Italy for hazelnuts that come from Langhe, peaches from Leonforte, and pistachios from Bronte.

Grom's 20 different flavors (containing about 8 to 10 grams of fat) are incredibly inventive, packed with such ingredients as washed Arabic coffee grown on the volcanic slopes of Guatemala's Antigua region, French Valrhonà chocolate, and Sfusato lemons from the Amalfi coast. Only San Bernardo mineral water from the Italian Alps is used to make Grom's sherbets. The firm's signature Crema di Grom is made with biscuits from Piedmont and pieces of dark chocolate. "Behind every ingredient is a story," says Martinetti. "I'm the guy who looks for the ingredients. Fortunately, all of our clients are curious and want to know why we make our ingredient choices."

By 2005, the pair had opened five more shops in Italy (today, there are 14 across the country). Wanting to maintain strict quality control and consistency, they purchased a small workshop in Turin and came up with a system to liquefy the gelato mixture, so that they could distribute the mix to the stores several times a week, then cream the mix into the final product in each shop. When they opened Grom in New York, they decided to maintain the same procedure. The shop receives its liquid gelato mixtures from Italy three times a week. "We ship the liquid gelato, and we make it fresh every day in the New York shop," says Martinetti. "Everything comes from Italy: the cones, the nougat, everything. Because we wanted to offer real Italian gelato."

Riding an Artisanal Wave

When Grom launched in New York this spring, the small chain had already brought with it some transatlantic buzz. During the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, the Today Show interviewed the founders and featured their gelato. They are something of a hit on the foodie circuit, having earned plaudits and awards from Slow Food as well as the province of Turin as "Master of Food" in 2005 and 2006. Their New York debut earned the pair much praise and ink, including plaudits from The New York Times. Martinetti considers Grom lucky that it has earned such outsize recognition. Of the $500,000 that he says they invested in opening Grom, none went toward publicity.