Amorino Brand Guidelines: A 2002 Paris Gelato Chain With Flower Scoops and an Orly Lab

Two friends from Emilia-Romagna open a gelateria in Paris.

Amorino is a French company that sells Italian-style gelato. It was founded in 2002 by two childhood friends, Cristiano Sereni and Paolo Benassi, both from Emilia-Romagna, the business magazine Capital reported in 2012. French Wikipedia gives the company’s registration as April 2002 and says the pair opened their first shop on the Île Saint-Louis, the small island in the Seine in the centre of Paris.

Before Amorino, the founders worked in other fields. Capital described Sereni, a Bologna graduate who had moved to France in his twenties, as the man who had launched Cinebank, a network of video-cassette vending machines, and sold it in 2002. Benassi had worked in finance at the fashion house Max Mara. According to the magazine, Benassi spent several months back in Italy learning the craft before the two opened their shop on the island, directly across from Berthillon, the well-known Paris glacier.

Capital explained that “amorino” is the Italian name for Cupid, the winged god of love. The magazine also put the paradox plainly: the brand looks Italian, yet it is a French invention, built in Paris by two Italians who wanted to find the taste of the gelato they remembered from home.

The company’s own founders page tells the same story in a personal voice. It says the chain was created by two childhood friends in 2002 and lists a favourite flavour for each founder: a pistachio and the Amarena cherry.

Italian names, a spatula and a central kitchen.

Amorino’s look starts with the scoop. Rather than serving round balls, staff shape the gelato with a spatula into a flower, petal by petal, on a cone or in a cup, French Wikipedia says, citing Capital and L’Express.

The shops were designed to feel Italian. In 2012 Capital described boutiques in tobacco tones at a time when rivals favoured bright white, and a menu where every flavour keeps its Italian name: hazelnut is listed as “nocciola tonda e gentile,” strawberry as “fragola,” and dark chocolate as “cioccolato senza latte.” Staff, a vendor told the magazine, were taught to pronounce each one with an Italian accent. In shopping centres the chain went further, with stands shaped like an old-style Vespa ice cream van.

The magazine also described how the chain dealt with cold months in northern France. Since 2005, Amorino shops have doubled as tea rooms out of season, selling hot chocolate, a dessert-and-coffee plate under the Italian name “caffè goloso,” and panettone and other sweets imported from Italy. Sur in English listed macarons filled with ice cream, cakes and Italian coffees on the menu of a new parlour in 2024.

The gelato itself comes from one place. French Wikipedia says production was centralised and that, since 2011, every shop has been supplied from a single laboratory at Orly, in the Val-de-Marne, close to the Rungis wholesale market. Capital gave the laboratory as 8,000 square metres and noted the contrast: the customer feels as if in a Roman gelateria, while everything is made on the edge of Paris. The magazine reported that the founders sourced Alphonso mango from India and Bronte pistachio from Sicily, and in some cases bought directly from growers. The company says it has developed more than twenty organic flavours since it was founded.

How the category presents itself.

Ice cream, gelato and frozen-yogurt chains sell something that melts within minutes, so much of their identity sits in the shop itself. The counter, the cabinet of flavours, the cone and the cup are the brand’s most visible surfaces, and the companies’ own pages tend to describe their shops, their kitchens and their ingredients before anything else.

Serving style can become a signature. Amorino, the Paris gelato chain, shapes its gelato into a flower with a spatula, according to French Wikipedia, and in 2012 the business magazine Capital described its shops in tobacco tones rather than the bright white then common among its rivals. The guides in this series look at how each chain describes its own counters, cups and cones, in the words the companies publish.

Names carry a lot of the work. Gelato chains may keep Italian flavour names on their menus, as Capital reported of Amorino, and some chains tie their story to one place. Grom, the Turin gelateria, describes its history through a single founding square, Piazza Paleocapa, and a single central laboratory near the city, and says its shops churn the gelato each day.

Ownership is part of the story too. Some chains grow through franchising, some stay with their founders, and others pass into large groups: Unilever announced its purchase of Grom in 2015, and Grom says it has been part of The Magnum Ice Cream Company since 2025. Each guide in this series sets out who founded the brand, who owns it now and where its products are made, and marks clearly what rests on the company’s own word.

A franchise network spread from Paris.

Amorino grew through franchising. French Wikipedia says franchised shops opened in France from 2005 and abroad from 2008. By 2012, Capital counted 81 boutiques opened in under ten years, 52 of them in France and only three in Italy, and reported that several of the main shops were run by people the founders already knew, including former Cinebank staff and relatives.

The network kept spreading. English Wikipedia’s timeline says the 150th boutique opened in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, in 2016, the 200th in Mexico City in 2020, and a shop at Lincoln Center in New York in 2025, taking the total past 300. In April 2024 Sur in English reported a new franchised parlour on the seafront in Marbella, in the ground floor of the Hotel El Fuerte, and said the chain then had 26 shops in Spain and more than 250 shops in 17 countries, with more than 30 flavours on offer. The newspaper said the company aimed to place its shops in the most exclusive area of each town, citing recent openings at Muelle Uno in Málaga, in the Canalejas shopping centre in Madrid, on a Tenerife beach front and in Lanzarote, and that the Marbella parlour would let customers order and pay at screens in more than 11 languages. English Wikipedia dates the chain’s arrival in New York to 2011.

The company has stayed in its founders’ hands. French Wikipedia lists Sereni and Benassi as its managers and names Benassi as a shareholder, with the head office at Orly, and English Wikipedia describes the company as private.

For a design guide, Amorino shows how a shop format can carry a brand: the flower scoop, the Italian flavour names and the warm interiors do most of the work. Compare Grom, a Turin gelato chain of the same period, and Venchi, an Italian chocolate maker with gelato shops. For this guide we use a tobacco brown, cream, a wafer gold and an amarena red with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Amorino’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.