The Big Chill

Some people are said to have ice in their veins. For Jon Snyder, it seems more like ice cream. Snyder, 38, is the founder of Il Laboratorio del Gelato, a scoop shop on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

Snyder’s grandfather constructed many of New York’s Carvel stores; his family owned a franchise upstate. “I used to work there in the summertime from age 12 to 17,” says Snyder, peeling the first of two dozen plums for the day’s special sorbet. “But the second phase of my ice cream career began in Rome. I fell in love,” he recalls wistfully, “with gelato.”

Unlike American ice cream, Italian gelato is made with less air, creating a more intense flavor. “It also has less butterfat,” Snyder explains, “and butterfat tends to mask the taste.”

After extensive research (which included scientific study as well as taste-tests), Snyder decided to whip up his own concoctions in the U.S. He borrowed $25,000 from family and friends, and dropped out of colling.

In 1984, he launched a line of gelati and sorbets in SoHo called Ciao Bella — an homage to his Italian grandmother. Snyder struggled to make a profit in his first three years. He went door-to-door with free samples, trying to persuade restaurants and gourmet shops to take a bite.

“I fell back on that idea because I didn’t have enough money to secure an expensive lease for a nice retail shop,”  Snyder explains. “So by default, I had to change my focus from retail to wholesale.” His first client was Brooklyn’s River Cafe, and word-of-mouth spread. “One by one, we secured really great restaurants,” he recalls. The skinless plums are now in a glass bowl, heaped in a fragrant mound. 

 By his fourth year at the helm, business was booming. But Snyder was, in his words, “utterly sapped of energy.”  With some regret, Snyder said “Ciao” to Ciao Bella, selling the company for $100,000. He earned his undergraduate degree and an M.B.A. from Columbia. He then started work as an equities trader at Lehman Brothers. During that time, Snyder was dismayed to discover that Ciao Bella’s new owners moved production from his beloved home state to New Jersey. They also took the Ciao Bella name national. “It was always my intention to have Ciao Bella have a local feel,” says Snyder. “But it was my choice to sell the company, and I can’t begrudge them their decisions, or their success.”

Snyder blazed ahead on Wall Street for six years. But after the September 11 attacks, he felt driven to heed an old calling. “I think [9/11] made it clear that whatever I was going to do next, it had to be something I loved.”  He pauses to add a sugar and water solution to the plums, which have been puréed. “I had the idea of starting something downtown, and making the best ice cream I could.”  He pours a thimble-sized taste of the mixture into a paper cup and brings it to his lips. “I wanted to get back to the roots of what Ciao Bella was about…everything was artisanal, made in small batches. My non-compete clause [with Ciao Bella] had expired, so there were really no obstacles.”

Thus began phase three of Snyder’s ice cream dream. This fall, he opened Il Laboratorio del Gelato next to another destination devoted to roots: New York’s Lower East Side Tenement Museum. The “gelato lab,” as some customers prefer to call it, doles out vanilla and chocolate, but also such flavors as rice, fig and licorice.

“It’s delicious,” enthuses a visitor from Texas, who stopped by after a tour of the museum. “This is creamy and rich, and just the way it should be.”

But in the back of the small store, Snyder is frowning slightly. The plum base is too tart. He adds a few more drops of the sugar water, and tastes again. “It still isn’t perfect,” he says, and tinkers some more.

Despite the countless scoops he samples each week (from his pints as well as his competitors’), Snyder is extremely fit. His favorite flavor? “Vanilla. It’s the best way to tell whether a gelato is really well-made. If you’re talking about just pure pleasure, though, it depends on the day.”

Though loyal “cone-heads” are making a sprint for his shop, much of his business is geared toward wholesale. In fact, Snyder is trying to get his new gelato brand into restaurants where Ciao Bella already has a foothold — putting him in direct competition with the company he founded.

But Snyder remains unfazed. And he doesn’t mind staying small. “I’m really not interested  in becoming a Starbucks…or a Carvel, even.”

Even if it means he might not make as much money?

“Yeah,” he nods, and turns back to his plums. The shimmering elixir will soon be placed in a large stainless-steel vat, where it will be mixed and frozen. In thirty minutes, the sorbet will be ready to be savored by the spoonful.

He may never be Ben or Jerry, but it’s likely that Jon Snyder – and his customers – will continue to enjoy his just desserts.