Creams Brand Guidelines: A 2008 Dessert Café Brand, Southall, Own Gelato & Tesco Cafés

Two founders, a long run-up and one café in West London.

Creams is a British chain of dessert cafés, and its own story starts slowly. The company says it was founded in 2008 by Adam Mani and Balal Aqil, and that it took “many years of research and tasting” of gelato, waffles and crêpes before the concept was ready. The trade title Restaurant Online gives the same founders and the same year, and reported in August 2026 that the first Creams dessert café did not open until 2011, in Southall, West London.

The Southall café drew queues, the company says, and the brand began to grow. In a September 2020 interview with Restaurant Online, Mani, by then co-founder and chief executive, said that after the second site opened the small gelato maker that supplied the cafés could not keep up, so Creams opened its own gelato factory in 2011. He also described trips through Italy with his business partner looking for gelato, and named the founders of the Nando’s chicken chain as an influence on how he approached the restaurant trade.

Growth came mainly through franchising. Restaurant Online wrote in 2026 that the brand at one stage opened more than 20 restaurants a year and reached 100 sites in 2021. Its September 2020 interview put the estate at 90 locations, and its August 2026 survey of the UK dessert market listed Creams with 92 sites and described it as the biggest player in that category, with an estate “closing in on 100.” The company’s own website, read in November 2026, says it has “circa 100” cafés across the UK.

The company named on that website is Creams Franchising Ltd, which Companies House shows was incorporated in March 2012. Since December 2020 its register has listed a holding company, Creams Café Ltd, as holding three-quarters or more of its shares.

Gelato in the middle, waffles all round.

A Creams café is built around a gelato counter. The company says it makes its own signature gelato “with ingredients sourced straight from Italy,” and that the gelato is “hand-crafted and made in England” at its own factory; those are the company’s statements. When the Tesco deal was announced in 2023, Restaurant Online reported that the co-branded counters would carry Creams’s full range of 24 gelato flavours.

Around the gelato sits a long menu of hot and cold desserts. Restaurant Online lists gelato, waffles, crêpes, shakes, smoothies and sundaes, and the company adds cakes, sorbets, cookie dough and vegan desserts. Creams added its first savoury menu in 2019 and, in 2020, popcorn chicken waffle bites, the 2026 survey reported. The same survey said that earlier in 2026 the company was seeking a trademark for its Froffle Toast, a cross between French toast and a waffle, after selling more than 5,000 portions in its first month.

The interiors carry much of the brand. The company describes a gelato counter in every café, the Creams logo placed at the centre of an open-plan kitchen, and neon signage, with BMX bikes and colourful skateboards hung from ceilings and walls. It lists a mix of wood, metal and cement surfaces, and brightly coloured tabletops decorated with decals, which it says give the brand a “fun and nostalgic character.” Its own phrase for the visit is the “ultimate dessert dining experience,” and it calls its desserts “every day celebrations.”

The company also points to trade awards. Its website says Creams won three categories at the QSR Awards 2026, for brand transformation, food-and-drink innovation and digital work, after a menu-innovation award at the same event in 2024; those are the company’s own listings.

How dessert chains present themselves.

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 dessert café inside a supermarket café.

In recent years Creams has looked beyond the high street. In November 2022 it opened a standalone café inside the Tesco Extra store at Streatham, in South London. On 1 August 2023, Restaurant Online reported that Creams had signed a nationwide franchise agreement with Tesco Family Dining, under which Tesco Cafés would run co-branded Creams spaces. The first Tesco Café-run Creams opened at Tesco Extra Gateshead on 3 August 2023, followed the next day by Tesco Extra Maryhill in Glasgow. The co-branded counters were to offer the full gelato range alongside waffles, milkshakes, cookie dough, crêpes and sundaes, while Tesco Café kept its own menu, the report said.

The 2026 survey listed two further steps: concessions within Tesco cafés and Creams Direct, the company’s own ordering platform. In 2020 Mani had told Restaurant Online that falling high-street footfall had pushed the brand towards home delivery, its own platform and click and collect, and that a Creams visit was usually a planned outing rather than a passing stop.

Creams sits in a crowded field. Restaurant Online’s August 2026 survey of UK dessert parlours listed it beside Kaspa’s, founded in Croydon in 2012, and several younger chains, and noted that most of them had grown through franchising, with broad menus of ice cream, waffles, crêpes, cookie dough, shakes and coffee. The website footer names Creams Franchising Ltd as the company behind the brand.

For a design guide, Creams shows how a dessert café can lean on its fit-out: a gelato counter, an open kitchen, neon and street-sport props, and colourful tables carry the brand more than any single product does. Compare Kaspa’s, the Croydon dessert parlour chain that grew the same way, and Baskin-Robbins, a long-running ice cream franchise. For this guide we use berry pink, deep plum and mint with a rounded sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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