Bravo Brand Guidelines: The Vicenza Maker Behind the 1974 Trittico Gelato Machine

A metalworking firm in the province of Vicenza.

Bravo was founded in 1967 at Montecchio Maggiore, in the province of Vicenza, by Genesio Bravo. Italian Wikipedia describes it as a metalworking company that made machines for the gelato trade, and says its first products were multi-machine systems, pasteurisers and batch freezers — the separate pieces of equipment an artisan gelato shop used to heat a mix, age it and freeze it.

The company takes its name from the family. On its own website Bravo calls its history “the story of a family, of a dream, of commitment and passion,” and says Genesio Bravo has since handed the business to the next generation, his sons Giuseppe and Stefano, who took it into the international market. The firm still gives Montecchio Maggiore as its address, and its homepage carries the lines “Leader since 1967” and “Made in Italy”; we give both as the company’s own description of itself.

Bravo does not describe itself only as a gelato machine maker. Its site sorts its range under four headings — gelato, pastry, chocolate and Ho.Re.Ca., the Italian trade term for hotels, restaurants and cafés — and its catalogue runs from multifunction machines to accessories. Italian Wikipedia calls it a multinational in the metalworking sector making machines for gelato, pastry, chocolate and catering.

One machine instead of three.

The product that defines Bravo arrived seven years after the company. In 1974, Italian Wikipedia says, Genesio Bravo devised and built the Trittico, which it calls the first multifunction machine for making artisan gelato. The company tells the same story in its own words: Trittico, it says, was “the first combined machine for the gelato shop,” bringing the stages of artisan gelato production into a single square metre, pasteurising the mix and then batch-freezing it, and it was protected by a patent.

The name fits the idea. A trittico is a triptych, three panels joined into one object, and the machine joined what had been separate steps. As Bravo describes it, Trittico has an upper vertical tank that heats and stirs the mix, an internal passage through which the hot mix drops into a lower freezing cylinder, and temperature probes in contact with the product in both tanks. In the 2000s, the company says, the machine became multifunction for pastry and chocolate work as well, so that the same unit could cook custards and creams and temper chocolate. Bravo now describes Trittico as “unique for eight generations” and lists current versions including the Premium Plus, the Bio, the Executive Premium and the Executive Evo.

Around the machine Bravo has built a training and community programme. The Trittico Club runs courses, recipes and webinars for owners, with a team of pastry and gelato teachers the company calls its Maestri. Its newer products extend the same idea of a connected workshop: Equilibrio, a tablet app paired with a scale that the company says is patented, guides a cook gram by gram through a recipe and can link to a Bravo machine; other lines include a vacuum system and a filler for tubs. The Equilibrio app is free on Apple’s App Store, Bravo says, and sells recipe packs, including recipes from the pastry chefs Angelo Grasso and Luc Debove; the same system also tracks ingredient stock.

The company frames all of this in a short set of slogans on its “Vision & Mission” page: “Bravo is innovation,” “Bravo is technological avant-garde” and “Bravo is at the customer’s side.” It says its research and development department builds new technology into the machines, and that its relationship with a customer begins, rather than ends, with the sale — through its GSG Service after-sales arm, the Trittico Club teachers and its sales network. Among the endorsements on its homepage is one from the chef Alessandro Borghese, who says Trittico lets him make high-quality products quickly and in large numbers.

Machines, schools and fairs.

Ice cream machine makers sell equipment that most customers only glimpse from the other side of a counter. The trade’s visual language is stainless steel: batch freezers, the mantecatori from which fresh gelato is squeezed out, and soft-serve machines whose taps pour a single flavour or a twist of two. Wired, writing about one soft-serve machine in 2021, summed up the basic process: liquid mix fed in through a hopper and frozen in a spinning barrel. The Los Angeles Times, reporting from a gelato school near Bologna in 2010, heard instructors say that gelato is at its best as it comes out of the machine.

The finished product goes on show. The Gelato Museum Carpigiani’s account of the trade traces how the cone made gelato easy to eat in the street and how gelato moved out of tubs and into glass display cases, so that the shop counter itself became a stage for colour and texture.

Teaching is part of the pitch. Carpigiani opened a gelato school at its headquarters outside Bologna in 2003, and the Los Angeles Times found students there from more than 100 countries; Middleby describes a Technical Development Center for its Taylor brand used for research, customer demonstrations and training. Makers present their machines in working kitchens as much as in catalogues.

Trade fairs are the other stage. SIGEP World, held every January at the Rimini Expo Centre in Italy, presents itself as an international event for gelato, pastry, chocolate, coffee, bakery and pizza, with equipment and technology among its exhibitor sectors; La Repubblica reported that the first Gelato World Tour, in 2013, was organised with SIGEP. The guides that follow set out what can be checked about each maker — who founded it, who owns it and where its machines are made — and mark clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

From Vicenza to five subsidiaries.

Bravo grew abroad through its own branches rather than through acquisitions. Italian Wikipedia dates them: a French subsidiary in 1982, an Asian one in 2010, a North American one in 2011, a German one in 2015 and one in the United Arab Emirates in 2017. The company’s website names Bravo France, Bravo Asia, Bravo North America, Bravo Deutschland and Bravo Middle East, and says that alongside them it sells through a network of more than 200 dealers and distributors around the world. It explains the branches as a way to be closer to customers, with after-sales assistance, support and training rather than sales alone.

The company is still run by the Bravo family, by its own account, and remains in Montecchio Maggiore. Its public face is the gelato trade’s own calendar: its news pages point to SIGEP, the international show for artisan gelato, pastry and bakery, to the Sherbeth gelato festival in Palermo and to the Sirha food-service show. Bravo also relays the work of ACOMAG, the Italian association of gelato machine and equipment makers, on a logo for traditional Italian artisan gelato.

For a design guide, Bravo shows how a single invention can carry a whole brand: the Trittico name appears in the club, the courses and the product families. Compare Carpigiani, the Bologna batch-freezer maker, and Frigomat, another Italian gelato machine maker. For this guide we use a laboratory navy, a cream and a custard yellow with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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