Launch Gelarto's new Latte range in the UK and build a brand people want to follow, share and buy.

Gelarto had the product and the proof. A family recipe from the 1950s. A farm and dairy herd outside Turin. Piedmont water. Four Latte flavours in vivid, vintage-Italian tubs.

The job was to give UK audiences a reason to care. That meant a sharp idea, channels built for it, and content good enough to stop a thumb mid-scroll.

Nobody in premium UK gelato owned coffee. Gelarto's whole range is built on it.

Month one was research: a competitor audit, consumer and audience research and social listening. Fast desk research, AI-assisted, so the budget went on making things.

The competitive set was busy fighting over pistachio, vanilla and salted caramel. Not one of them talked about latte, coffee shop culture or the affogato. The affogato itself was having a moment on social, and the internet was busy mocking a "protein affogato" made with yoghurt. The real thing, Italian gelato with a shot of espresso poured over it, had no brand behind it. TikTok was empty of brand-owned gelato content.

So the idea wrote itself. The Latte, Frozen. Italy's coffee bar ritual, in a tub. The affogato became the hero serve: the thing we put in people's hands, film, and build every channel around.

We built it for the Coffee Ritual Generation: 16 to 34, latte-literate, living on Instagram and TikTok. Alongside them sits the provenance seeker who wants proof it really is Italian. Gelarto's farm, family and Turin kitchen give us that proof.

Four months, built from cold: channels, content, a cart, a website and a reason to talk about it.

A name that sells the idea on shelf. We pushed for CAFFÈ in every flavour name, so Pistachio Latte became Pistachio Caffè Latte. A shopper gets the coffee cue in a second.

Channels built from nothing. We relaunched Instagram as @wearegelarto, launched TikTok and set up a LinkedIn company page. One presence per platform, serving the UK and US together. A 40-post launch calendar ran across Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and LinkedIn: the brand introduction, four flavour reveals, then the competition.

One shoot, everything fed. Two days, two crews. Day one produced the brand film, founder interviews and a stills package for the website. Day two was social-first: content built for the feed, cut for the channel it lives on.

The affogato cart. A branded Gelarto cart serving affogatos in independent coffee shops and venues with character: aged wood, exposed brick, deep colours. White-walled minimalist cafés were ruled out early, because the packaging dies against them. The mechanic is simple: buy any coffee, get a free Gelarto. Partners keep every penny of their drinks revenue, and Gelarto gets a queue, real reactions and content. First stop: BAM in Victoria London.

A website that sells and gets found. wearegelarto.co.uk went live in September, built in Framer with SEO, AI search visibility, Google Business Profile and analytics in place from day one.

Turin, for two. To grow the audience fast we launched a competition: win a weekend for two in Turin, Gelarto's home city. Every entry captures an email and a marketing opt-in. A small Meta budget backs it, rebalanced each week toward whichever ad is buying growth cheapest.

@wearegelarto went from 106 followers to 1,314 in a month, at 20p a follower.

• Instagram followers: 106 to 1,314 (23 September to 23 October)

• Cost per new follower: £0.20

• Competition entries: 2,270, from 2,146 unique entrants

• Entries driven directly by paid ads: About 2%. The rest came from organic sharing and competition listing sites

• Instagram engagement rate: 28.8% (10 September to 7 October)

Figures as at 23 October 2026. The competition runs to 29 November.

The number that matters most is the 2%. The ads lit the fuse. The idea did the rest - people shared a weekend in Turin because they wanted to win it.

The cart goes national at the BBC Good Food Show Winter, NEC Birmingham, 26 to 29 November 2026.

Days one and two, the affogato cart. Days three and four, Gelarto by the scoop. Four days of sampling, content and data capture in front of one of the UK's biggest food-loving crowds, with the Turin competition closing the same weekend.

We'll update this story after the show.