SMALL BUSINESS SATURDAY
PROFILE 5: Baboo Gelato
Because the Small Enterprise Saturday marketing campaign prepares to mark its ten-year anniversary on December 3, SME Journal is profiling a few of the 100 small companies on this 12 months’s SmallBiz100 line-up. As Michelle Ovens CBE, Director of Small Enterprise Saturday UK, says: “The improbable small companies featured on this 12 months’s SmallBiz100 sum up the extraordinary contribution that small corporations make to our economic system and native areas.”
Annie and Sam Hanbury arrange Baboo Gelato in 2016 to make ice cream utilizing elements surrounding them in rural West Dorset. Right here, they inform SME their story
Baboo Gelato is a quickly rising ice cream producer and retailer based mostly within the West Nation. We’ve gross sales nearing £2m from our personal shops, and from 200 eating places and farm retailers in Dorset, Devon, Somerset and past. Our single tenet is ‘elements, elements, elements’. We scour the West Nation for the easiest elements we are able to discover, not solely wealthy natural milk however seasonal fruit, salt, malt, vodka and gin. Once we can’t discover it within the UK we purchase instantly from farms in Italy, so our pistachios and citrus fruits come from Sicily, our hazelnuts from Piedmont and our walnuts from Veneto.
We’ve simply accomplished development of a brand new state-of-the-art kitchen, and so are not capability constrained, and may tackle new prospects for the primary time this 12 months. We’ve been a a number of award winner over time, together with being Champion Ice Cream from Style of the West in 2016 and 2020, and certainly one of three finalists in each different 12 months since 2017. We’ve 27 Nice Style stars. We had been awarded Finest British Specialty product within the Nice British Meals Awards 2020. Even our canine ice cream Doggy Doggy Yum Yum has garnered awards together with Finest Newcomer from Pedigree Wholesale in 2021.
What’s your background?
Annie skilled as a gelatiere (artisanal ice cream maker) in Bologna, and returned to the UK satisfied that there was an enormous hole out there for seasonal, contemporary ice cream utilizing native elements. We actually take the seasonality severely: through the first two weeks of June, Sam could be discovered buried within the hedgerows round us selecting buckets of elderflower. All summer time and autumn lengthy, Land Rovers and vans pull as much as our kitchen with contemporary fruit. 
We additionally function six of our personal shops. We wish to carry the magic again to ice cream, as it’s a powerfully emotional product. What number of older folks’s reminisces start ‘I bear in mind when my granny took me for an ice cream on the seaside…’? So our kiosks are vibrant and pleased, and we attempt to broaden the vary past only a scoop by providing milkshakes, alcoholic granitas, scorching chocolate with ice cream in it, sundaes, and affogatos.
We predict that the sky is the restrict for good ice cream, both offered instantly by us to the client from certainly one of our shops, or via our pretty retailers and cooks. We’re increasing additional this winter into Hampshire and Surrey, and can be seeking to London in late 2023.
What do you produce?
We’ve 55 flavours of ice cream, not together with bespoke flavours for cooks. We’re regularly innovating and including flavours as we come throughout fascinating concepts and elements. Blue Peter just lately visited us to do a present about making ice cream, and we created a raspberry ice cream with chocolate strands for them. It’s fabulous and we’ll be bringing it onto the menu shortly. We promote our ice cream in 125 and 500ml tubs to customers, and a pair of.5 and 5 litre tubs to eating places and scooping parlours.
What do you get pleasure from probably the most about being your personal boss?
Annie and I get pleasure from working collectively. Many individuals would assume that working along with your partner can be a quick monitor to divorce however we’ve got complementary expertise and respect one another, however discover it invaluable and satisfying to bounce concepts off one another, and thrash via issues collectively. We’ve huge plans for Baboo Gelato and wish to flip it into probably the most revered ice cream model within the UK. It’s extremely thrilling to have one’s personal imaginative and prescient and have the ability to construct in the direction of it. We’re like a snowball rolling ahead and gathering each extra like minded folks to assist us to attain our imaginative and prescient. 
What recommendation would you give somebody fascinated about establishing their very own enterprise?
We got a whole lot of recommendation once we began. Two issues that caught had been ‘have a hard and fast value, and don’t low cost’; and ‘should you funds that issues will take twice as lengthy and price twice as a lot as you budgeted you’ll survive the early years’. These are each wonderful items of recommendation. The thought of by no means discounting is controversial however in case you have a product you’re pleased with, and that different folks need, keep on with your weapons. The second you low cost you’re on a slippery slope, and it’s way more sophisticated to maintain monitor of what you’ve promised to who. Not discounting reveals you realize the worth of your product.
The second piece of recommendation about issues taking twice as lengthy and costing twice as a lot is effectively value heeding. Within the early days even the smallest factor can create delays, and in case you are operating with very restricted money, it’ll bury you. Higher to be cautious and pleasantly shocked when issues go proper.
What do you concentrate on Small Enterprise Saturday and the way does it assist you?
Small Enterprise Saturday is an impressed concept and we’re delighted to be chosen as certainly one of their SmallBiz100 this 12 months. As small enterprise house owners, we regularly discover restricted assist elsewhere, however the Small Enterprise Saturday marketing campaign affords a spread of sources, in addition to sensible recommendation that we discover extraordinarily helpful. We additionally like to find a way community with different entrepreneurs and be a part of the small enterprise group the marketing campaign has created.
Sum up what you are promoting in three phrases 
Genuine, wonderful, scrumptious.
