Bringing Authentic Italian Gelato to Batam: A Training-to-Market Case Study

When a café founder from Batam set out to bring authentic Italian gelato to the island, she faced two questions at once: could she make gelato to a genuine professional standard, and could she convince stakeholders — and the local market — that the quality difference was real and worth the investment? She joined Amrichi Gelato Academy's Basic Gelato Making course to find out.

THE CHALLENGE
Batam's dessert scene had yet to see true artisan gelato. Before committing capital to machines, staff and a storefront, she needed proof on two fronts: the technical ability to produce authentic gelato, and evidence that customers and stakeholders could taste — and would pay for — the difference between real gelato and the mass-market frozen desserts already on the island.

THE TRAINING
Over a full-day, hands-on session, she worked through the science and craft behind every scoop: the four Italian ice-dessert types (gelato, sorbetto, granita and semifreddo), the equipment a professional set-up needs, and the formulation logic that separates a clean, creamy gelato from an icy one. The course covered water control, the roles of milk, cream and the key sugars (sucrose, dextrose and maltodextrin), milk solids and fibre, pasteurisation, serving and storage temperatures, a disciplined production flow, and how to troubleshoot a mix that comes out too hard, too soft or icy.

In the practical, she produced two finished products on professional Carpigiani Maestro equipment — a rich Cacaopat chocolate gelato and a bright raspberry sorbet — balancing sugars and solids, pasteurising, and batch-freezing to a proper serving texture.

BENCHMARKING AGAINST THE MARKET
To put her own results in context, she visited two established gelato shops and tasted their gelato against what she had just made. The comparison convinced her: the gelato she produced with the PreGel ingredients and the recipe she was given was noticeably superior — cleaner in flavour, smoother in texture and closer to authentic Italian gelato than what was already on the market.

THE MARKET TEST
Rather than leave the results on the training bench, she packed her self-made gelato and carried it on the roughly five-hour journey back to Batam, keeping it cold in transit. Back home, stakeholders tasted the gelato firsthand, and she used it to run an informal market test with local customers — turning an abstract pitch for "authentic Italian gelato" into something people could actually taste.

THE OUTCOME
The tasting gave stakeholders a concrete reference point for the quality gap between authentic gelato and what the local market was used to, and gave her early, real-world signal on demand — all before committing to equipment and a full build-out. It is a clear example of how pairing hands-on training with a low-cost market test lets an F&B founder de-risk the decision to invest: validate the product and the appetite first, then scale with confidence.

SNAPSHOT
Client: Café founder, Batam, Indonesia (anonymised)
Engagement: Professional gelato training + business consulting
Course: Basic Gelato Making with Italian Ice Desserts
Made in training: Cacaopat chocolate gelato and raspberry sorbet
Equipment: Carpigiani Maestro
Benchmark: Tasted against two established Johor gelato shops — her own gelato judged superior
Highlight: Self-made gelato transported around five hours to Batam for a stakeholder tasting and market test