Managing my way

/ 01 June 2009

Gino Mansi, Managing Director, Marine Ices

Gino Mansi, Managing Director, Marine Ices

The company was founded in 1931 by my grandfather, who came over from southern Italy in about 1900. Originally he had a fruit shop and found he was overbuying the fruit, so instead of throwing it away he decided to turn some of it into sorbet. One of the customers one day asked what it was, bought some and that’s how he migrated from the fruit business into the ice cream business.

We make ice creams and sorbets, and supply hotels and restaurants. That’s the major part of our business. The restaurant and ice cream parlour are a much smaller part. I jointly own Marine Ices with my two cousins, Dante and Gaetano, and we’ve all got outside experience. Dante has two sons in the business, Aldo and Benedict, who are both managers in the restaurant and ice cream parlour, so we’re in the fourth generation.

My father gave me the choice as to whether to come into the company, but if I did I’d have to bring something in with me. I’ve always had an interest in engineering, so I first worked in refrigeration – I knew I’d be filling my needs but also bring something positive with me. My cousins and I were sort of groomed for it, but there were many times when our parents would threaten that they weren’t too old to grab back the reins and throw us all out.

We’ll go into the parlour in the morning, have a coffee and discuss whatever needs to be discussed, whether that’s business or family. I might have an appointment with Carluccio’s, a client, to talk about the finance side, which is really my remit, or Dante might have a meeting with some of our restaurant suppliers about buying more competitively. It can be very varied.

Gaetano would spend all day making ice cream if he could. He really is very, very good at what he does. We work with a lot of select groups, and they’ve often got a development chef on board, and so we’ll have meetings with them to brainstorm new flavours. Or a client might suggest a certain flavour and Gaetano will submit various samples for them to try. We’ve got a different spectrum of clients and depending on what sort of customer they’re aiming at, we’ll tailor what we produce for them.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t feeling any impact of the recession. People aren’t eating out as often. But because of the wholesale side of the business, and because we supply hotels and restaurants, we’re busy all year round.