Bacon ice-cream — the mere mention of this salty sweet concoction is enough to send even the bravest ice-cream lover running to the nearest Ben and Jerry’s for a pint of Cherry Garcia. People love bacon almost as much as they love ice cream, but bacon ice cream? (More specifically bacon gelato, but we’ll get to that in a minute.)

Even the man charged with creating the unusual flavor thought it sounded odd, but it’s what the customer wanted. That man is Jon Snyder, the owner of il laboratorio del gelato. The customer was Little Giant, a restaurant on the Lower East Side known for its fresh ingredients and comfort food.

Snyder infused milk with cooked bacon, giving the finished product a nice smokey flavor. He still sounds a bit surprised it worked out, but if anyone can make bacon gelato work, it’s Snyder. He’s built a career on his love of gelato mixed with equal parts gumption and luck.

“I can be pretty stubborn,” Snyder said over the phone. “I had this spark in me and I wanted to do it. I thought it would be a pretty cool adventure.”

That adventure began in 1984, when Snyder started his first gelato business, Ciao Bella, at age 19. Twenty-seven years later, the adventure shows no signs of slowing down. This past Saturday, Snyder reopened the original location of il laboratorio del gelato on Orchard Street. (Last year Snyder moved to a bigger space on Ludlow Street.)

“The only reason I decided to reopen it is, I still have a year left on the lease and I haven’t found anyone else to sublet it,” Snyder said. “It might just be a summer thing. We might decide to keep it. It’s an exercise in figuring out how it’s going to work. It will also be a branding opportunity because so many people are directed to the old location.”

Snyder’s love for ice-cream began at a young age. From age 9 to 17, Snyder spent his summers working at his grandparent’s ice-cream shop, Carvel, in upstate New York. After moving to the city for college, he discovered Angelica’s, a gelateria in Greenwich Village. Gelato has less butterfat and less air than American ice cream, giving it a creamier consistency and a stronger flavor. “It was very unique and it kind of blew me away,” Snyder said.

After a trip to Italy one summer, Snyder’s love for gelato became permanent. He returned home with the goal of bringing Italian-style ice-cream to New York. College was put on the back burner, and eventually Snyder dropped out. After borrowing $25,000 from his family, and enlisting the help of his two cousins, Ciao Bella opened its doors in May of 1984 in a small space on Broom Street.

“I think at that age if I had really known what I was doing, I wouldn’t have done it. I remember the vision: I would build up the business for a year, sell it and go back to school,” Snyder said. “That wasn’t going to happen.”

Snyder initially planned to do retail, but without the money to secure a good lease, he needed a new plan. So he opened the phone-book and started calling restaurants. Out of 100 phone calls, ten chefs might express interest and out of those ten, two might purchase the product.

But then luck, or rather Charlie Palmer struck. At the time, Palmer was the executive chef of Brooklyn’s River Café, and coincidentally had just fired his ice-cream vendor when Snyder called. Impressed by Snyder’s gelato, Palmer gave him a chance. With Charlie Palmer on his resume, others soon followed, including the 21 Club and the Russian Tea Room.

Today, the majority of il laboratorio del gelato’s business is wholesale, but thanks to Palmer, Snyder hasn’t made a sales call in the last ten years. “We’ve sold to more than 200 restaurants and hotels and catering businesses and it’s been all on word of mouth,” Snyder said.

Around the four-year mark, Ciao Bella started to become profitable, but at age 23, Snyder was already burned out. So he sold the company. “I had it when I was a bit too young,” Snyder said. “I didn’t really appreciate it. I was very proud of it, but I needed to do other things. I needed to move on and expand my horizons.”

He went back to school, got his MBA at Columbia, and then got a job on Wall Street. But he couldn’t shake his entrepreneurial buzz. He thought about doing something with food, but gelato didn’t come to mind at first. When it did though, Snyder realized how perfect it was. By this time, Ciao Bella had moved to New Jersey. Snyder figured New York chefs must be looking for something new. Once again, his intuition proved correct.

Besides traditional flavors like lemon and strawberry, Snyder also perfected Guinness, cheddar cheese and basil gelatos. Although Snyder refuses to pick a favorite flavor, “It’s kind of like choosing a favorite child,” he says; he does admit to a partiality to chocolate. He proceeds to name all ten chocolate flavors from amaretto crunch to Thai chili.

In its nine years, il laboratorio del gelato has become a New York staple, and numerous franchise offers aside, Snyder plans to keep it that way. “It just speaks to being able to purchase things that are more unique when it’s local. It’s more of a personal experience,” he said.

For now, Snyder has plenty in New York to keep him busy. He’s working with a new client, Miss Lily’s, a Jamaican restaurant on the west side. Also in the works is a new flavor for Tipsy Parson. The owners of Tipsy Parson are the same women behind Little Giant and the bacon gelato. Next on the menu: corn gelato. It will surely be a hit. And no one will be surprised.

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