Chris Tan
Co-Founder, Development, CEO
When I was eight, my most eagerly awaited Christmas gift that year was a gadget called "The Incredible Ice Cream Machine." I must have tried a dozen recipes of gelato at that time. Where I grew up in Canada we had a small gelateria called Peppi's and I was always trying to figure out how the gelato there tasted so good! Then the machine broke (it was very flimsy), Peppi's moved out of town, and I went back to school to eventually pursue engineering.
The 1980 Incredible Ice Cream Machine in all its glory. It's beside a pint of my favorite gelato, pistachio, for scale.
Cut to 2001, where the high-tech startup I was a manager at in Alameda suffered after the September 11 tragedy. I decided to abandon tech to pursue a dream in the restaurant and cafe business: I couldn't find good Thai food or gelato (like Peppi's) in the Bay Area at the time and decided to pursue one of the two. Too often I would be disappointed to find Bay Area gelaterias all carrying the same American ice cream masquerading as "gelato". I learned the art and science of gelato under both an Italian master artisan and a Western professor of dairy sciences, as at the time I thought Thai food would just be too difficult! Little did I know...
This is currently on the wall near my desk. Along with a great quote from when we started Naia, I call it my "wall of warnings" to take a look at each morning.
We started out under a different name called "Mondo Gelato", named after a now-defunct brand in Vancouver, Canada. We had previously enjoyed their 'gelato', and wanted to peek at their recipes. After paying an absurd sum for the "magic beans", we awaited the eventful day!
“This is the only tool you need for great gelato...”
The Canadian walked into our kitchen, and held up a knife: "This is the only tool you need for great gelato: to cut open the aseptically sealed dehydrated powder. The cans of goo can be opened by pulling back on the tab. Just add water! Isn't this great?"
This is my brother and his wife with me in Italy. We were scrambling at the Rimini gelato tradeshow trying to find genuine gelato.
It was not great. We were expecting an old Italian grandmother using real milk, eggs and sugar, not this slick salesperson with powder and goo... I now realized Peppi's did the same thing! It took us about a year to get rid of the Mondo Gelato brand, find Trevor, and break out as Naia - making everything without the powder and goo. Naia is the name of our first investor’s daughter who was born at the same time as our first store in Berkeley in 2002.