12:00a.m. 7th August 2008

Organic ice-cream maker Luigi Barosso taste tests his latest batch. Photo: David Thomas/151579

If fourth generation ice-cream maker Luigi Barosso worked for a big ice cream company, like Streets or Peters, he’d would probably get the sack.

You see, Luigi is an ice-cream maker who does not want to have the biggest ice-cream company in the land, or the brightest labels in the freezer.

And there are a few other points of difference – his frozen desserts are made from full cream milk and all of the ingredients have names, rather than numbers. They are proudly listed on the front of the tubs rather than in tiny writing hidden at the back or underneath.

Luigi and his wife, Carla, are owners of Gigi’s Ice Cream at Kunda Park, a boutique ice creamery which makes gourmet “below zero” dessert from certified organic ingredients.

In a world where business is all about growth, cutting costs and record profits, year on year, the Barossos are an anomaly.

Luigi and Carla do everything from taking orders to making, packaging and delivering the product, employing one other person on their busy days only. And that's how they want to keep it. They have also not increased their prices in six years.

“I have no reason to put them up,” Luigi said.

The quaint Gigi’s tubs are sold in outlets along the length of the Sunshine Coast, through to Brisbane and northern New South Wales, as well as in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth.

Some of the Gigi's ice-cream flavours.

Their business has grown purely through word of mouth since they started selling Gigi’s at the Eumundi Markets in 2002.

Italian-born Luigi, who trained in his uncle’s ice-creamery as a 16-year-old, had run an ice-cream business with Carla near Vienna for 15 years before the couple moved to Melbourne and then the Sunshine Coast.

They fell in love with the Sunshine Coast during a holiday and with little call for his business consulting talents here, they decided to go back into ice-cream and established Gigi’s.

Luigi, an admirer of the pioneering spirit which defined the colonisation of Australia, did much of the factory fit-out himself and even designed their first ice-cream machine, which has only recently been replaced by two new machines during a renovation of the premises.

The Barossos’ desserts are made from scratch using full-cream un-homogenised milk, which Luigi pasteurises himself, and other certified organic ingredients.

There are no artificial flavours or preservatives.

The 11 flavours in the range, include four lactose-free flavours made from oat milk.

Although the recipes and manufacturing processes are adapted from those that Luigi’s older relatives used to make ice-cream in the early 1900s, the Barossos are not permitted to label their product as ice-cream because it does not have the 10% fat content required as per labelling laws.

Most of the Gigi’s range has a 4 or 5% fat content, with the macadamia dessert the highest at 6%.

Luigi said that ice-cream, properly made from good ingredients, was not as unhealthy as many people believed.

“This is not junk food. Ice cream does not have to be junk food,” he said.

Luigi said that consumers were more aware and interested in the contents of the food they ate these days meant that there was room for Gigi’s to grow, but he and Carla do not want the business to become so big that they need to borrow money for equipment or employ sales people to deal with their customers.

“You can grow up to a certain point and you’re not free any more. The business is not yours anymore,” Luigi said.

“I worked out I could do 200,000 litres a year but I don’t want to. I wouldn’t have the time, I wouldn’t have the time to see my customers, I wouldn’t have the time I have with my family, I wouldn’t have the time to enjoy the Sunshine Coast,” Luigi said.

Where can you get them?

Gigi’s ice creams are available at: B-Fresh, Warana; The Organic Apple, Marcoola; selected Sunshine Coast IGA stores; Nude Foods Organics, Kawana; Organika, the Maleny Farmer’s Market and Maple Street Co-op, Maleny; Sister cafe, Palmwoods; Spar, Twin Waters; Natural Food Store, Forest Glen; Pulp Addiction, Eumundi Markets; and The Deli Co, Maroochydore.