Gelato photo by Jenna Day on unsplash.com

When Bitwise Industries furloughed its entire staff in late May, hundreds of Fresno residents suddenly found themselves without income — 401(k) plans frozen, checks wouldn’t clear, a feeling of general hopelessness palpable for many.

For one former Bitwise employee, where one door closed, another opened.

That door was located at the Warnors Center, where former Bitwise employee Jordan Sanchez, along with her friend and business partner Tami Waters, plan to open Gelateria Del Centro, bringing together ice cream, coffee and theater while providing a second chance for recently terminated Bitwise employees.

 

After considering the idea of opening a gelato and Italian ice business for a while, the doors of opportunity opened when Sanchez was furloughed. Shortly after, Sanchez and Waters partnered to open the store, which will also employ former Bitwise employees including Sanchez’s brothers.

There’s some creative entrepreneurial firepower behind the venture. Sanchez also owns J-Street Studios in Downtown Fresno and Waters owns The Tipping Pointe, an event venue also located downtown.

On June 29, the duo launched a Kickstarter campaign with a goal of raising $25,000 to open the shop. With no paychecks rolling in and Bitwise retirement accounts still frozen, Sanchez was left with no access to emergency capital, causing her to turn to the community.

“We were inspired by Ampersand,” she said. “In 2015, they did a kickstarter and were successfully able to fund a $21,000 raise to start Ampersand.”

Kickstarter requires the goal to be met in order to receive any of the donated funds. It’s everything or nothing for the duo’s upstart business.

With that in mind, Sanchez and Waters are offering rewards for donations, ranging from a “Pint of the Month” offering for $100 donors to free daily gelato for a year offered for donations of $1,000.

Sanchez and Waters are both self-described “boomerangs,” who left the Valley following high school and college, only to return to Fresno years later.

“Right when I moved back I got a loft in the Security Bank Building,” she said. “I enjoy all of the change that downtown has gone through and being able to be a part of that.”

Sanchez, a single mom of two who has lived downtown for eight years, is also the chair of the Downtown Fresno Foundation, and believes that Fresno’s revitalization still holds a lot of potential.

“We had a really great conversation with the Warnors Board and the vision that they had for the Warnors Center,” she said. “They had been looking for an ice cream type of business to go in to support theatergoers and so it just all kind of started falling into place.”

 

Warnors is also providing assistance by replacing the glass on the windows, as well as collaborating on future deals for theatergoers, and will work closely with the Italian ice cream shop.

“We just took so much inspiration from the design of the building to go into our building as well,” she said. “Along with Fulton Street Coffee, which is just a wonderful business that we’re going to be located next door to.”

She said that the two will likely collaborate on an affogato creation, featuring gelato and espresso.

A soft opening has been scheduled for the first monthly ArtHop event in August.

“It’s been amazing to see the community support this aggressive timeline as well,” she said. “Now we’re really hoping that we can continue to spread the word over this coming week to really achieve the goals that we set with Kickstarter to open by August.”

Gelateria Del Centro’s Kickstarter campaign will remain active for 21 days. Currently, the campaign has 32 backers and has raised $2,676.