July the 23rd, 2021 - The Zagreb company Pri Suncu is definitely a hit among all those engaged in a constant and often losing battle with a sweet tooth. This father and daughter team are all about Italian ice cream, sorbet and more.

As Ivan Tominac/Poslovni Dnevnik writes, Nina and Mario Saric are a father and daughter team whose family business, the Zagreb company Pri Suncu, has firmly won over all the palates of Croatian confectionery lovers, and the focus of their business story is the production of original Italian ice cream. It all started while Nina was still in her teens.

She learned about the traditional way of preparing and producing the globally adored Italian type of ice cream, and her urge was so strong that after finishing her food technology studies, she decided to start a business with her father, and that's how the Zagreb company Pri Suncu came to be.

“About three years ago, when we started intensively preparing to start a business, a common realisation grew in us that told us that what we want to do is be authentic and ultimately produce and offer people a product about which they'll say: That’s it! Establishing a new philosophy and raising people's awareness of ''real'' original Italian ice cream, even if they call it ''craft ice cream'' is our business mission,'' said Nina's father and one of the co-founders of the Zagreb company Pri Suncu, Mario Saric

Passion and motivation were the key ingredients, and in order to bridge the whole path between which leads to success, they invested around one million kuna. In addition to their own funds, the CES self-employment support and a micro investment loan from HAMAG BICRO helped them greatly in getting their business up on its feet.

That amount helped them enter the market with even more confidence, and with a well-researched market today, they're ready to say what their main advantage is.

"The production and sale of ice cream is growing from year to year, but the vast majority of ice cream produced is industrial, which can't be produced with the technology and ingredients that produce good craft ice cream. We opted for the manual production of ice cream, during which we make the ice cream base ourselves, and then add other ingredients to it, depending on the flavours of the ice cream. As such, our ice cream has a much stronger flavour intensity and a creamier texture which also gives a lighter feeling after consumption. All of our milk flavours (except tiramisu) are gluten-free and egg-free, while all of our fruit sorbets are intended for a vegan diet, because they're produced on the basis of water,'' added Nina.

The inscriptions ''craft'', ''artisan'' or ''gelato artigianale'' on industrially produced ice cream mean nothing but are merely an enticing PR message to insufficiently educated customers. According to the pair, real ice cream is a miniature niche and as such represents an opportunity, but also a risk that has a focus placed on looking for professional staff.

''Here on the Croatian labour market, at least when it comes to ice cream, confectioners trained to prepare ice cream in the classic industrial way predominate, which is an important problem when it comes to employment in production. In addition, the sale of ice cream in Croatia has a strong seasonal impact, so for a small company like ours it doesn't matter whether we produce it in the winter or summer.

Finally, the ongoing coronavirus pandemic has brought additional uncertainty and oscillations to the market, making it difficult to plan for production volumes. For these reasons, we've decided to employ people in production according to our current needs, mostly for a certain period of time, until the market conditions allow us a different approach to this key premise for the development of any business,'' explained owners of the Zagreb company Pri Suncu.

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June the 2nd, 2021 - Croatian Premium Ice Cream will bring together a company from Lika and one from Samobor in a joint venture.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Marta Duic writes, Vedrine, a small family cheese factory located in the middle of the green heart of Lika, presented a novelty - Medenko loves Vedrine ice cream. This is the result of their cooperation with the Samobor-based company Medenko, which produces homemade ice cream and a cheese factory that produces traditional Lika dairy products.

As Milana Mileusnic from the Vedrine cheese factory explains, the collaboration began back in January, and the process lasted until the recipes were adjusted because the ice cream wasn't made from dairy components but from finished products such as liquid yoghurts.

"The farm, ie the dairy farm, is a natural and true environment for ice cream, and the milk from Vedrine took me back to my childhood with the very first sip. When I created Medenko, I was proud to have created an original product from exclusively Croatian milk during a big crisis for the Croatian dairy industry.

Today, I'm proud that during the time of emigration from rural Croatian areas, we're creating a product with people who have returned to the countryside by their own choice and who are proving by their own example that it's very possible. There were a number of challenges in designing the products, from making the recipes, which I had to adjust to the quality of the milk, to the packaging where two visually very different brands had to be merged.

We produce the Croatian Premium ice cream in our small factory in Samobor, and diligent people from the Vedrine cheese factory take care of the distribution and sales. In creating and choosing the flavours, we tried to cover all of the basic taste groups: basic, chocolate, fruit, nuts… ", explained Ivana Bakovic, the owner of Medenko.

They "launched" six flavours on the market - Varenika a la Splitska torta (Split cake), sour with cherries and chocolate, chocolate yogurt with raspberries, Varenika with hazelnuts and chocolate, Liquid yogurt with strawberries and Yuzu basa (citrus).

“Our production is based on fresh products, with a shelf life of five to fifteen days, so we were forced to start producing a durable product due to market variability, especially in the summer months, when our main market - Zagreb, almost closes down. Fate somehow intervened because Ivana from Medenko contacted us just then. A small circle of people have had the opportunity to try out Croatian Premium ice cream and the feedback from that has been fantastic. We think that with our products and Medenko's knowledge we really have a premium product. But, in the end, let's let the wider audience decide on that,'' Mileusnic stated.

Croatian Premium ice cream will be marketed through specialised stores (Mrkvica, Grga Cvarak, Speceraj, Zelena baka, Duckas, Skarnicl, Grincajg in Samobor, abd Koni in Gospic) with which they are already successfully cooperating and in Vedrine's stores at the Kvatric and Tresnjevka markets in Zagreb, as well as down in Zadar. In addition, they are in negotiations with several top catering and hospitality companies and a hotel company.

"We have about 70 cows who are milked, and with the young ones, the number is always around 130. All our products, including the ice cream, are made exclusively from the milk of our cows.

We don't buy milk and we don't have any subcontractors because we believe that we're very specific in the market when it comes to our raw materials, our milk, and we want to stay that way. In addition to all that, we have complete production control: from the production of the cow feed to the finished product. The most sought after products are our fruit yogurts that come in 18 different flavors, and Varenika and Skripavacpa,'' concluded Mileusnic.

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