WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO …. be part of a famous ice-cream tradition

Owen Hazel, 54

I MARRIED my wife, Nicola, 25 years ago, and that was how I got into her family’s ice-cream business, Jannettas Gelato, in St Andrews. My father-in-law, David, trained me to make the ice cream and I have been working there ever since.

The history of Jannettas Gelateria is probably similar to many Italian family businesses. Nicola’s great grandfather, Bennett, moved over from a small village in Italy, near Cassino, at the end of the 19th century, primarily to try to find work. A lot of the people who came over were hoping to travel onto America to create a better life and look after their families. But many of them got to Scotland and, for various reasons, decided to stay here.

Bennett first arrived at Dysart, near Kirkcaldy, and he found work there. One of his cousins was already in St Andrews and he got the opportunity to buy premises in the town, and opened the shop under their name in, we believe, around 1908.

As with most of the Italian families in Scotland who started shops like that, they were based on the same principles: they had fish and chips, and billiards in the back, and they sold tobacco, confectionary and ice-cream. Ice-cream was a seasonal product and they were making a living out of sodas. They worked seven days a week, too. Later, they began selling newspapers; newspaper companies then didn’t have outlets for selling them on a Sunday apart from the Italian fish-and-chip shops and ice-cream shops.

The second generation, Bennett’s sons, ran the shop during the Second World War. One thing that changed the shape of the business was that, during the war, fish, when it was available, wasn’t rationed, so fish and chip shops could buy as much fish as they could get their hands on. That springboarded the fish and chip industry.

It wasn’t until the third generation - my in-laws, David and Fiona - that the shop started to take on the feel of a real ice-cream shop, cutting back on the fish and chips and focusing on the ice cream, in the seventies. David expanded the ice creams from basic flavours - chocolate, strawberry, vanilla, raspberry ripple - into a range of 52, one of the biggest ranges in this area and probably across Scotland.

That was down to demand; the product started to become more and more popular. St Andrews itself became more vibrant. The university started to grow and obviously there was a big influx of people who arrived for the golf. All the Americans started coming over, and they have a love of ice cream, too, which helped the business.

Now our business is mainly ice cream. Again, that is down to customer demand. Customer tastes change, especially in the food industry. You have to diversify. Eating tastes have changed quite radically, with healthy eating, sugar and dairy and all the rest of it. I don’t quite know what that will look like in 20, 30 years’ time, but I would pretty much guarantee it won’t be the same as it is right now.

Vanilla is still our most popular flavour though by a smaller margin than used to be the case. People are becoming more adventurous with their tastes. They’re more aware of the different tastes available, through TV and celebrity chefs. Food itself is much more publicised than it used to be. Twenty-five years ago, if I’d had orange and mascarpone sherbet on the counter, I wouldn’t imagine many people would have asked for it. Now, it’s one of our most popular ones. We’ve even had seaweed on the counter, too, which, I suppose, is a bit too far out there…

KERRI McGUIRE