Yona Levy never much liked ice cream. But freshly made, creamy gelato … well, that’s another story.

The difference?

“Typically gelato has much less butterfat and much less air, and is served at warmer temperatures,” says Lynda Utterback, executive director of the National Ice Cream Retailers Association, based in Illinois. “Gelato is traditionally made fresh daily and doesn’t have a lot of stabilizers or preservatives in it.”
This summer, Levy, an Israeli entrepreneur, has brought the popular kosher gelato chain Aldo to New York, licensed under the name Screme to avoid trademark conflicts with the shoe store.

Levy, 37, opened two Screme stores (one in Madame Tussauds in Times Square and the other on the Upper West Side) in an effort to get Americans hooked on gelato — which Levy believes is a healthier and better-tasting alternative to traditional ice cream fare. His third store, located on the Upper East Side, will open mid-September and will feature an open kitchen, allowing customers to observe how the gelato is made. A fourth location is in the works, and Levy plans to open 10 locations in all in the coming year.

Screme’s kosher gelato, which comes in 5,000-plus flavors that are rotated frequently, is made fresh daily on premises. “Ice cream is like bread,” he says. “It’s best served fresh.” Unlike traditional ice cream, which by federal standards must have at least 10 percent butterfat, Screme’s pareve (non-dairy) sorbets are fat-free and its gelato is made from 4.5 percent butterfat (flavors with cookies or candy obviously have more fat). All are certified kosher by Rabbi Aaron Mehlman.
At the Times Square location, most customers opt for the Snickers gelato, but uptown, those with more sophisticate palates prefer the Ferrero Roche. And a lemon-and-mint sorbet known as “mojito” sells the fastest. Other popular flavors include Pinot Pears, Napoleon (it tastes like the popular pastry), Whiskey Chocolate Truffle and Key Lime Vodka.

Only two years ago, Levy, the former owner of an investment house in Israel, was bewildered by his wife’s frequent trips with their children to Aldo — named for Aldo Deconsilio, an Italian who opened a gelato shop in Tel Aviv several years ago. The gelato chain has since been bought out and has expanded to more than 50 franchises in Israel.

After accompanying his family on one of their regular jaunts to the local Aldo on Emek Refaim near their home in Jerusalem, though, Levy quickly became hooked on gelato.

Soon after, the current owners of Aldo approached Levy to help them bring the gelato chain to America. “I asked them to show me the numbers,” he says. “But the numbers looked too good to be true.”

So Levy told his brother, Yossi, who at the time was working in wood flooring, to open an Aldo franchise. “I wanted to see if it worked,” he says. Levy’s brother knew nothing about gelato, but his store on Jaffa Road, at the end of Ben Yehuda in Jerusalem, soon became one of the most profitable franchises (in spite of the mess caused by the light rail construction that has been dragging on for years in the center of town).

His brother’s success prompted Levy to buy the rights to sell Aldo gelato (under the name Screme) in America and Canada. “It was sort of like that Remington [makers of electric razors] commercial, where he says, ‘I liked it so much, I had to buy the factory.’” Last year, Levy moved with his family to New Rochelle, in Westchester and began plans to open up shop in New York.

Gelato stores have been cropping up all over the country in recent years. While consumer demand for traditional ice cream dipped 1.6 percent in 2007, demand is “increasing for gelato and other non-standard frozen desserts,” according to Cary Frye, vice president of regulatory affairs at the International Dairy Foods Association.

In New York, gelato stores like Ciao Bella Café and Melt are becoming much more commonplace. Levy says he is confident that Screme will stand out for its fresh, high-quality ingredients, customer-friendly service, and wealth of flavors — as well as its kosher certification.
But in the current economic climate, will consumers pay $5 for two scoops?

“It’s an affordable luxury,” Levy says. “Chocolate and ice cream sell better in tough times. It cheers people up.” Americans consume the most ice cream worldwide, with 1.5 billion gallons of ice cream produced in the United States in 2007, according to the American Dairy Foods Association. And according to statistics provided by the International Ice Cream Association, 90 percent of Americans purchase ice cream or frozen desserts.

In the kosher food industry, the high-end gelato is “consistent with the community looking for more upscale and gourmet and to experience the best of what food has to offer, and for it to be kosher,” says Menachem Lubinsky, president of Lubicom Marketing Consulting and the founder of the kosher food tradeshow Kosherfest. “Even in this economy, gourmet products are still selling well.”

Levy is taking advantage of the depressed commercial buildings market by locking in 10-year leases at historically low prices.

In some sense, Levy imagines himself as the Howard Schultz of ice cream. “It’s the same challenge Starbucks had when they set out to sell $4 coffee,” he says of the chain founded by Schultz. With the rise of gourmet frozen yogurt shops like Pinkberry, Red Mango and YogoMonster, as well as Italian gelato chain Grom, which recently opened on the Upper West Side, Screme will have to differentiate itself from its competitors. But Levy isn’t concerned. “Other ice creams are loaded with fat and sugar to create a good consistency. Screme gelato features all real ingredients. People come in all the time and say, “Wow, this is the best gelato I’ve ever had!’”

Though he has yet to taste the gelato at Screme, Lubinsky recalls traveling to Rome a few years back, where he encountered a store selling kosher gelato. “I was used to getting ice cream scooped out the carton,” he says. “But the presentation, with mounds of gelato piled up artistically … I wouldn’t even put it in the same breath.

E-mail: tamar@jewishweek.org