Morelli’s Ice Cream was established in 1911 by my great-uncle Peter Morelli.
All those years ago, the first shop was on Society Street in Coleraine. The shop sold fish and chips, sweets, cigarettes and even ran a taxi service – it was a one stop shop for everything, and ice cream was only sold in the summertime.
The ice cream was all made by hand; they had hand-cranked freezers and they would get ice delivered by train to the local station. There was only one flavour, basically. And I don’t think it was even vanilla — it was just flavoured with the milk and cream they used to buy off the local farmers.
Peter then married a local woman called Annie Diamond. By this time, Peter had acquired shops in Portstewart, Portrush and Castlerock which, of course, were very busy in the summer. My grandfather, Angelo (Peter’s nephew), came to help them in the summer months.
Angelo then returned to Italy to marry my grandmother. He brought her back to Portstewart and they convinced Peter to sell them ‘The Ice Palace’ shop in Portstewart. Angelo bought it for the princely sum of £600, which he paid back in instalments.
They set about running the Portstewart shop, but with the breakout of World War Two, my grandfather was taken from Portstewart and interned during the war years in the Isle of Man.
After that difficult period, the family was reunited. Peter and Annie didn’t have any children of their own, so after my dad and his two brothers got married, each took over one of the Morelli’s shops – one in Portstewart, one in Portrush and one in Coleraine. They became the next generation to run the business – and now we’re the generation running it.
Our cousins in Portstewart still run the business that uncle Nino started all those years ago. Our family runs the shop in Portrush, as well as overseeing the manufacturing side of the business from our factory in Coleraine.
We still have our own family stores in Portrush, Portstewart and Ballycastle, as well as 10 branded stores all over Northern Ireland in places like Carrickfergus, Lurgan, Holywood and West Belfast. We also do pre-filled retail packs for Tesco and Sainsbury’s, and have a co-branded range with Dunnes Stores’ Simply Better brand.
Family is the backbone of our business here in Northern Ireland. We’re involved with the NI family business forum run by Harbinson Mulholland and Ulster University, which is a great way to spend time with other families with a history like ours.
I think people can really trust a local family business, particularly those that have been around for a long time. There’s an element of trust and innovation; we really care about what we’ve built, so it’s really important for people to trust and support that.
There are many things we’re proud of here at Morelli’s – we’ve been in business a long time. A highlight for me is our centenary back in 2011, when we had a whole year’s worth of celebrations.
There was an art exhibition, a concert in Portstewart, and we also received the Guinness World Record for the longest chain of people licking ice cream at the same time. This was achieved with over 2,800 people at Dominican College’s hockey pitch. It took a lot of organising, but was totally worth it – we still hold the record today!
Another thing we’re really proud of are our awards. We won ‘Champion of Champions’ for the best Vanilla Ice Cream in the UK and Ireland in 2012, an award that’s extremely hard to win. We also have a number of Great Taste Awards and are currently the supreme champion of the Blas na Heireann Irish Food Awards.
We love getting ready for things like the Great Taste Awards or the Blas na Heireann Irish Food Awards, because it lets us get a little bit creative. We can really let our hair down and go with some mad pairings.
I love that I get to work alongside my siblings – my sister Tania, our office manager, and two older brothers, Naldo and Marino. They look after our new product development and we are always looking for new ideas.
We have tried some wacky flavours in our time – my brother, Marino, came up with one called ‘Piggy in the Middle’, which was bacon dipped in chocolate and mixed through the ice cream. Needless to say, that one didn’t take off.
My brother Naldo is very proud of his caramelised hazelnut flavour, which saw us receive three Great Taste Gold Stars and a Golden Fork – and he doesn’t let us forget about it. It’s in the cabinet all the time for people to try and is really popular.
We love the chance to collaborate with other local business, and we’ve done that successfully twice now. The first was with Irish black butter – we put that through our own vanilla ice cream and it’s a really unique flavour. We have it in stock all the time and people ask for it often.
Most recently, we collaborated with Devil’s Churn. This is another award-winning local business that makes caramel sauces. We thought their campfire version, which is made with smoked sea salt from North Coast Smokehouse, was an ideal pairing with our Double Cream Vanilla. It’s our latest flavour to launch and is already selling well! It’s one we’ll have available all summer.
You can try our award-winning flavours, and new additions Coke Float and Lemon Cookies, in store now in Portrush. We’d love to see you and serve you a scoop (or several)!
The future? Who knows, just keep doing what we’re doing...I guess!
9. Morelli’s Ice Cream
Daniella Morelli-Kerr, sales and marketing director at Morelli’s Ice Cream Photo: u