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No, somewhat surprisingly, we had never made gelato or ice cream before. We were trained by a marvellous Italian chef in the art of gelato.  So it is traditional gelato we make but with our own British twist.

For us “Hooray’s” has a double meaning – Hooray as in “Hip Hip Hurray!! it’s my birthday!!” Or “Hurray! Lets’ have ice cream” , and a little touch of Hooray (Henry) as in the Sloane Ranger handbook which is quintessentially British, slightly quirky, comical but generally all round a jolly good egg!!

Sara – Must admit this does change. I used to be a pistachio nut (haha!), but once I tasted our Nocoilli (hazelnut), I was converted. Hazelnut with Raspberry sorbet and a dollop of whipped cream for me is just bliss.

Sasha – I am more of a sorbet fan! They are just so refreshing I can’t help but have a little every day! My favourite combo is Raspberry sorbet with Ferrero Rocher Gelato and of course a flake!

It’s a difficult one, sometimes we seem to have days where for absolutely no good reason everyone wants the same flavour, often it’s a “Mint Choc Chip day” or a “Kinder day”.  We do have about 12 flavours which you’ll always find in our display freezers….the old faithfuls…. Chocolate, Strawberry, Vanilla…we’re sure you can guess the rest.

We have 38 napoli’s (that’s the rectangular tins) in our display freezers, but we make more than 50 different flavours of gelato and sorbets. Specialities flavours for Christmas, Easter and even Halloween have been great fun, stretching our imaginations & creativity.  And sometimes the decision of what flavours to make just depends how we feel that day!!

If you’ve visited us at Hooray’s you’ll know that we describe ourselves as a “British Gelato Kitchen”, which is both literal, in that we make our gelato on our premise, in our kitchen in Great Britain, and descriptive of our chosen theme and décor.

Our décor is based on a British Country Kitchen, actually it’s my mum’s  kitchen, but that’s another story. The phrase “the heart of the home is the kitchen” is a widely used in Britain. Growing up in England we spent many happy hours at the kitchen table,  many memorable moments & events are shared by families and their friends alike, around that trusty piece of furniture. It gives us a warm comfortable feeling. Living overseas in a different culture we really missed the British Kitchen, now we’re back we wanted Hooray’s customers to be able to experience that feeling. Whether it’s a celebration like a birthday, a cosy chat with friends over a coffee or time spent as a family, we want all ages to feel comfortable and “at home” at Hooray’s.

Sometimes the most unlikely people surprise you. The gentleman who wins our award for best customer quote, was, to say the least, not the type of chap you’d expect to say the following……….

Wife to Husband ..”So how did you know about this place?”, referring to Hooray’s British Gelato Kitchen on the High Street in Stratford upon Avon.

His response is a classic… “ Well, I put “heaven” into my TomTom and this is where it bought us”….Arrr isn’t that just too cute?

So the customer says “What’s the difference between a cup and a cone?”  Of course we knew he was referring to our pricing, but we couldn’t resist stating “ Well you can eat the cone, but the cups made of cardboard so we wouldn’t recommend eating them!!”