Robb and his wife Violeta are the founders of Dolcezza. Dolcezza is a gelato & coffee shop located in Washington DC, serving daily-made gelato & expertly crafted coffee drinks in 8 shops and several downtown farmers’ markets. They produce small batches of hand-made gelato every morning in their Gelato Factory & Coffee Lab in the Union Market neighborhood, using the best available ingredients: local fruits, herbs, nuts, cheese, milk and cream. They’ve grown to serve Whole Foods nationally and have been carried in a variety of leading natural retailers including Fresh Thyme and Natural Grocer.

Robb and Violeta have been running Dolcezza for twenty years and still love the work they do. When we spoke to Robb, his passion for local ingredients from local farms shone through, and we heard first-hand about what it means to build a business that is centered on people and product over profit.

We hope you enjoy our conversation with Robb from Dolcezza. If you are in the DMV swing by one of their locations to grab a shot of espresso or some gelato (or both!) and be on the lookout for when they are back in stores across the country.

Photo Credit: Goldbelly

Why and How Did You Get Started?

This is a long story, so bear with me. I had been working as a software engineer in 1999 in Portland, Oregon. I went down to Brazil for an Ayahuasca conference, where I met Violeta. We fell in love at the conference and I ended up going back to Portland, quitting my job, and flying back down to South America to be with Violeta. We traveled, took a boat 1,500 miles down the Amazon River (in 2001!) and then we settled down in Violeta’s home country of Argentina.

When the Argentine economy collapsed we decided to move to DC. Neither of us had ever lived in DC but I got a freelance job with the government installing some systems and we moved to the city.

I had fallen in love with the Argentine culture of gelato so when we got to DC we were like “this is the city to open up our place” because there was a rich farming area around it and DC was an incredibly international place. We loved food in the “Old World” sense, making things by hand and using whole ingredients. We wanted to create this space with good coffee and gelato. I was going to art school in Georgetown at night and one day on the way home I saw a building for rent. We checked it out, signed a lease within that next week, and then just went for it.

I used my money from freelancing, all of my savings and then had my Dad co-sign on a loan. We ended up with this small space in Georgetown, 300 square foot kitchen, 300 square foot retail space. We produced everything same day, making gelato at night and pastries in the morning.

We brought in the machines, bar, tables and brought everything up on boats from Argentina to the port of Baltimore. It was crazy going to Baltimore to pick up this massive marble countertop. We had these gelato machines from Argentina and at the time there weren’t even technicians who knew how to service them. We would literally have to build our own parts to fix them.  

That’s a great origin story, tell me about those early days!

It was definitely the way to not open up a business because it was completely insane. We opened July 21st, 2004. We had never made gelato before. The crazy thing is that we had lines out the door from day one and with all the shops we opened after that. We’ve never had issues with trying to get customers. We sold in 10 farmers markets from our 300 square foot kitchen in Georgetown. We were put alongside these farmers in the market and were really able to meet and get to know them. We fell in love with creating spaces, using local ingredients and making stuff by hand. I am as aware as possible of the privilege that I have to be doing this. We hustle hard and we always have but it doesn’t feel like work.

Photo Creeit: Dolcezza

What about the coffee business, how did that come together?

I was in Portland Oregon in 1999 when Stumptown Coffee opened. I had never tried coffee like theirs and was actually in their shop the first day they opened. They were really doing it; they were going down to Guatemala and buying their own beans and roasting them rather than buying it through someone. Nobody else was doing that at the time. When we opened our shop we flew to Portland and did a cupping at Stumptown. We now have local partners here in the DMV but Stumptown was amazing to us in the early days.

Talk me though how you expanded into CPG? You could buy your gelato around the country for a couple of years.

We started local, we did work with local restaurants and shops. Then about 15 years ago we found the “Forager” (buyer) at Whole Foods in DC and offered to do a tasting. The forager really liked it and then carried it in a couple of stores here in the DC areas. The lead forager in Austin Texas (headquarters) came to us and asked us to move into all 500 stores in all seven flavors. Up until then we were really a small business, brick and mortar, a local business. We had no idea how hard core the CPG business would be, we were essentially competing against 10 companies that own a huge portion of the store. We launched across all 500 stores in 2019, so just right before the pandemic. We essentially launched this massive new channel of business. Our stores (our own brick and mortar) got hit hard by the pandemic, but our grocery business really grew. We expanded into Fresh Market, Earth Fare, Natural Grocer. We did all of our production in a separate kitchen, a CoMan partner. We’re currently on pause on our CPG line and really focusing on our bricks and mortar business.

We’ve had these ups and downs, we launched a CPG and it took off during COVID but recently we’ve been refocusing.

You and Violeta have been running this business for 20 years now, what do your days look like?

Well today we were out in Fairfax, Virginia doing store walk throughs with our teams, tasting everything on the menu. Violeta and I are super on hand on everything. We are in our Ops meetings every week meeting with all of our Store Managers. We spend a ton of time in our stores and in the kitchen. We’re super busy, we have a great team, a Regional Manager, Kitchen Manager, etc. But, I’m still writing the menu, still choosing the tiles and flooring of the stores. I’m still working closely with the farmers (our last shipment of mint will come through next week). My wife, Violeta, comes from a film background, and before this she was working at National Geographic doing production. She’s the leader on holding everything together, keeping everything moving. I’m good at the coffee, the branding, the design, she really runs the day to day and the whole team and operations. We have a good team but are still very hands on and very involved. We know everyone in the 100+ team, we go out and work and train with them. We recently took 40 people out to a berry farm in Virginia to pick berries for our Berries & Mascarpone gelato since it was the last harvest this summer.  We have people that have worked with us for 18 years. It’s been a beautiful journey but also some dark nights and not knowing if you’re going to survive.

 Photo Credit: Eater DC