New Fresno gelato spot was inspired by a trip to Italy. Here’s what it offers
Jordan Sanchez has a thing for downtown Fresno.
When she was recruited by the tech firm Bitwise to boomerang back to her hometown in 2017, she was one of a growing number of young professional types eager to work, live and play in downtown. She was even featured in a story in The Fresno Bee.
She rented a loft inside the Pacific Southwest Building overlooking Fulton Street, and later bought a house in downtown’s historic Lowell neighborhood. She’s a graduate of the Downtown Academy (class five), was the interim CEO of the Downtown Fresno Partnership until this March and remains the chair of the nonprofit Downtown Fresno Foundation.
“I’m heavily involved,” says Sanchez, whose latest venture will open inside the Warnors Center for the Performing Arts in the next few months.
Gelateria Del Centro will occupy a 450-square-foot space next to Fulton Street Coffee as one of several new businesses occupying the theater complex.
The shop will feature six flavors of the Italian-style ice cream, which differs from its American counterpart in the amount of milk fat. It’s generally denser and smoother than ice cream, and served at a slightly warmer temperature.
There will be several vegan options, using coconut milk and cashews, Sanchez says, and four flavors of a kind of dairy-free sorbet known as Granita or Italian ice.
Because of its proximity to Fulton Street Coffee, the shop will also serve affogato. That’s a scoop of gelato “drowned” in a shot of espresso.
All of the offerings will be made off-site under the direction of chef Chauncey Gardner, who operates the catering company Unir Dining. Along with the brick-and mortar shop front, Gelateria Del Centro will operate a mobile “gelato bike” that will be available for special events and the like.
The shop is currently working its way through the Health Department regulations, but did a sneak-peak preview during last week’s ArtHop.
Sanchez has Italian heritage, and fell in love with gelato while on a trip to Verona as part of Fresno’s Sister Cities program. She came back from Italy with the idea of opening a gelato spot.
She found a partner for the venture in Tami Waters, though it wasn’t until Sanchez was laid off from her job at Bitwise following its collapse this spring that she found herself with the bandwidth to put forth a new business.
Waters is an interior designer and downtown entrepreneur who converted an old Victorian home on Fulton Street into an wedding venue and photography space and called the Tipping Point.
“We saw the need for a tenant at Warnor’s and a gap in the marketplace in Fresno,” Sanchez says.
“Specially in downtown.”
The pair has been working with other popular ice cream spots in town and received business advice and some mentorship from Ampersand and Roll Me Some. They’rve also been documenting the process, so they can share their knowledge with other entrepreneurs in a few years, once the shop is established.
Waters has been working closely with the Warnor’s Center to get the aesthetic and design of Gelateria Del Centro just right.
It will hearken back to the late 1920s and the soda shop days, Sanchez says. The pair has restored several pieces that the theater had in storage, including a three-foot chandelier, wall sconces and an old movie poster box.
“We’re leading it with art and design,” Sanchez says.
“There needs to be an element of the experiential to it.”
