When I just moved to Bend in 2019, my bf (now my husband, Jeremy) bought me some gelato and I was amazed. I've been the loyal customer of Bonta artisan gelato since then... However, their original signage was very confusing…

Bonta original signage before 2020 summer

Jeremy encouraged me to reach out to them to redesign the sign. I didn’t want to strike others as an arrogant designer bitching about their design so I didn’t do it. After a while when we decided we’ll move to Salt Lake City eventually, I finally contacted them and offered redraw the board for free gelato.

The challenge is fitting all the information in the limited space. After I hung it up, I asked if I can volunteer redo the board underneath (“Please order here”).

 

I can’t tell you how much gelato I had been eaten during that time. When my friends came visiting me, I also took them to this store. Emily got addicted to it and she actually gained weight in those two weeks climbing trip…

I actually never met the owner until this interview. Jeff is a quite laidback person with entrepreneur mind.

In 2006, they sold their house and did backpacking around the world for a year. And they fell in love with gelato. They had been wanting to start a business and at that time there was no artisan ice cream in Bend, Oregon. “Bend needed it at that time”, Jeff said. So they studied gelato with gelato master in LA, and his wife Julie went back east to study with gelato mastro learn how to make gelato. 

I asked how they know if the idea would work. Jeff replied “we didn’t. you have to take a risk.”

They started from their garage, and selling small scale in farmer’s market when they both had a full time job. Ice cream/gelato is actually a hard and costly business to start - there are lots of rules and regulations. The commercial kitchen they built in their garage was 100k. They finally opened their first shop in 2015. Even after years of operating, there are still so many challenges every day…

Now Bonta is growing a lot and expanding. For most of the people, it’s a chance to expand to other towns/cities. Jeff is very cautious about expanding too fast with the price of quality of the product and life. “If it’s mass production, it will no longer be artisan.” And for him, owning a business is having more flexibility and freedom- “Family first”. I have a lot of respect to this - knowing what you want in your life, what makes you happy and what’s enough.

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