Customers stream through Frost, A Gelato Shoppe, which will be celebrating one year in business on May 29. It's at Ina and Oracle roads.

photos by Jeffry scott / Arizona Daily Star

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Italians like to say "First, we eat with the eyes." So it is at Frost, A Gelato Shoppe, which has taken the town by storm at the southwest corner of Ina and Oracle roads.

The small store, decked out in white and ice blue, suggests cool when you walk in. Then you see it — a curving glass display case with 39 stainless steel pans, each offering a different variety of frozen splendor. Gelatos in mocha, pistachio, tiramisu, chocolate and dozens more. Dairy-free fruit sorbets in mango, peach, raspberry, strawberry champagne and more. Zounds!

Owners Jeffrey Kaiserman and Stephen Ochoa have gone to ridiculous lengths to bring the Italian art of gelato to the venerable Casas Adobes Plaza.

All the equipment and fixtures are Italian. So is the master gelato chef, Nazario Melchionda.

Now the lines of customers are growing to ridiculous lengths, out the door and down the sidewalk on weekends.

Their "secret weapon," Kaiserman said, is Melchionda.

Kaiserman, 26, and Ochoa, 25, brought him to the shop for its opening a year ago, and he stayed a few months. The two owners became proficient in the art of making gelato, but they decided that Melchionda could contribute much more to the venture in artistic ability, creativity and teaching more staff. They brought him back permanently.

Melchionda says he doesn't mind working long hours at his craft because Kaiserman and Ochoa do also.

Ochoa says he mostly deals with production in the back of the shop, and Kaiserman keys in on sales and customer service. The two owners work at least six days a week and 12 to 16 hours a day each.

They are lifelong Tucson chums who went to the same grade school, Manzanita, and middle school, Orange Grove. Both later majored in communications at the University of Arizona, graduating in 2003.

They always knew they would go into business together. They weren't sure what the business would be, but both had taken family vacations to Italy several years ago.

It was left for his father, Michael Kaiserman, to suggest that the business should be gelato. Jeff's sister, Melissa, suggested the name.

"People think all you do is drink wine in Italy, but really you eat gelato, three or four times a day," Jeff Kaiserman says.

Robin Sue Kaiserman, who's been at or near the top in Tucson residential real estate sales for more than a decade, is Jeff's mother. Guess what she found for the startup at Casas Adobes? Location, location, location.

When she showed the vacant shop to Jeff, he wasn't sure it was right. Just then, as Jeff tells it, some diners emerged from a nearby restaurant on a balmy October evening and one of them exclaimed loudly "Let's go find some ice cream."

The gelato gods had spoken.

It took 18 months of research, travel, negotiations and training to get to opening day a year ago this month. At Gelato University in North Carolina, the two learned the basics of the business and decided to try it.

I asked the two young proprietors how much money it took to open the doors to this thriving business. Their eyes got big and their lips clamped shut. I suggested half a million dollars. "That's a pretty good guess," Kaiserman said.

They had family backing — "private investors" is how Kaiserman puts it — but the two owners project humility when standing in the shop as customers eagerly line up for the frozen fix.

"We are excited and fortunate that the community has been rooting for us" Ochoa says.

Affirmation of the strong start came two weeks ago when Kaiserman and Ochoa received the first Emergent Entrepreneur's Award from the McGuire Center for Entrepreneurship at the UA Eller College of Management.

Both sets of parents always urged them to "go first class" as they formulated their plans. "If you're going to do it, do it right" was the message. Thus, the best Italian equipment and fixtures and strictly Italian ingredients like chocolate, pistachio, and other flavors.

The result is classic Italian ice cream, much richer and dense with flavor than the American variety, but containing much less butterfat. Frost sells a 4-ounce cup of gelato or sorbet garnished with a cookie for $3.25 including tax. Most American gelato stands sell a 3-ounce cup, but that's "too small," says Kaiserman. Tucson deserves more because, well, it's hot here.

According to the original business plan, they would have to sell about two dozen small-cup servings of product each hour they were open to break even. From the beginning, they have far exceeded that level.

Business declines in the winter months, but it still makes money, Kaiserman adds.

Word of mouth has been incredible. Some customers drive great distances, frequently, to get a taste of the Italian creations.

Many of the 25 staff members are high school students. The two store managers, Bonnie Callahan and Natalie Parker, are in college

The two owners dream of building a larger, possibly national, gelato business at some point. But first they are considering possible sites on Tucson's East Side.

And right now, they are working hard to make this single shop a success. From the looks of things, they've succeeded. A better example of pure entrepreneurial enthusiasm would be hard to find.

The key to success, I think, is that they love the business. And it shows.

As gelato master Melchionda says, anybody can learn to make ice cream. But "nobody can teach you to love to make ice cream."

Opinion by

Richard Ducote