The lines formed immediately and continued to stretch out the door all summer and fall as islanders, Kitsapers and tourists alike couldn’t seem to get enough of the Argentinean couple’s gourmet ice cream flavors and unique parlor atmosphere.

Orselli and Perez were delighted by the public’s response to Mora’s Iced Creamery, but a bit overwhelmed trying to keep up with demand.

“Once we opened we couldn’t do anything else,” recalls Perez, who spent more than a dozen years in his native land running the family grocery business. “It took us two or three weeks just to catch up. Our employees (seven in all) had to learn on the job.”

Mora’s is not your typical ice cream or ice cream eating experience. The shop, just a few steps behind the Blackbird Bakery on Madrone Lane, takes a more European approach to both making and serving its ice creams and sorbets.

Orselli and Perez use only fresh ingredients to make their 48 flavors of ice cream, borrowed from recipes they carried with them from the old country.

“We purchase fresh fruits, hand-squeeze our lemons, peel every banana,” says Orselli, the mother of two teenage children. “It’s very labor intensive.”

Mora’s uses real wines, fresh cognac, Belgian chocolate and milk from local dairies to make ice cream concoctions with exotic names such as Dulce de Leche, Caramel Latte, and Marion Glace.

“We’re different than industrialized ice cream,” Perez says. “When American’s think of ice cream, they think of what they buy in a grocery store. In our culture, it’s a store like ours. People here got it right away.”

Indeed, customers have been literally eating it up.

Sales for the Bainbridge store are well beyond expectations and the shops’ airiness, chrome fixtures and cool signage keeps a steady clientele coming through the door.

“You can’t be sad or grumpy in a place like this,” says Orselli. “People have been acting like little kids on the other side of that counter.”

Orselli and Perez built their business model on three fundamental concepts: product quality, customer service and in-store ambiance. “The experience is what we do well,” Perez says. “Those three things are what creates the experience.”

Unlike traditional ice cream parlors, where customers order and then pay, often juggling their change while trying to hold on to a dripping cone, Mora’s has taken a different tack.

Customers at Mora’s select the size of their cone and pay first. Then they take their time sampling varieties of ice cream before ordering.

“Ice cream is a very happy commodity,” says Orselli. “It’s for all ages. (Mora’s is) a place for family, friends — for everybody. People have liked our high quality products and they’ve rewarded us.”

Customers have not only come back but they’ve hardly blanched at Mora’s higher prices, another testament to Orselli and Perez’s business philosophy.

“It’s a matter of value compared to price,” Orselli says. “Do you appreciate what your eating or not? People pay more because they realize that what we are doing is different.”

Mora’s business stretches beyond its successful new shop on Bainbridge Island. The couple operate a manufacturing facility at the Day Road Business Park and in July 2005 opened its first ice cream parlor in Bellevue Square.

“We were looking to open a store on the island (then),” Perez recalls, “but we couldn’t find a place, so we decided to go over to the other side. You could say we were born on Bainbridge but raised in Bellevue.”

The Bel-Square store is still going strong but is not the type of market Orselli and Perez foresee for future Mora’s stores.

“We want to grow and expand the experience of our ice cream,” Perez says. “You (in the United States) don’t have a William Sonoma’s atmosphere for ice cream. That’s what we’re trying to do.”

Along those lines, Orselli and Perez are experimenting with new aspects of their business. They are mulling plans to wholesale their ice cream products to selected restaurants and grocery stores.

Soon the couple will begin home delivery of ice cream — much like home pizza delivery — and are starting to ship their ice cream off island to customers who want to share the Mora’s experience with friends and family elsewhere.

“It would make a great Christmas gift,” Perez says. “We’re always trying to improve.”

(Author’s Note: Bainbridge is blessed with another great ice cream purveyor. Cream of the Crop, owned by islanders Dana Gargus and Deanna Johanson. It makes wonderful handmade ice cream available at its year-round stand at The Pavilion, outside Bainbridge Cinemas on Madison Avenue.)

(Editor’s Note: Kevin Dwyer is a Bainbridge Island free-lance writer)

Mora’s Iced Creamery
139 Madrone Lane,
Suite 1100
Bainbridge Island, WA.
(206) 855-1112
www.moraicedcreamery.com