A family dynasty which started from humble beginnings 65 years ago created an ice cream empire still loved in Liverpool today.
In 1951, Calogero Mancuso, also known as Charlie, was 21 when he left his home in Sicily to move to the UK for work. Taking on a five-year contract to mine coal in the St Helens collieries, Calogero, now 93, sent home his paycheck weekly to support his mother and siblings, after losing his father as a teenager, while also saving a little for himself.
Returning to Sicily in 1956, Calogero married his wife Elena, now 83, before the couple moved back to England, with Calogero returning his job in the coal mine. But he quickly realised it was no longer the life he wished to lead and after becoming a regular at Capaldi’s in Kensington, it was there that Mr Capaldi told him about an opportunity to buy a café for sale.
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By the end of 1959, Calogero had established Mancuso’s café, selling the likes of fresh sandwiches, Horlicks and Bovril. He later expanded his business to offer ice cream, handmade ice lollies and then manufactured ice lollies - becoming a household name in the city and beyond. Now known as Stella Ice Cream, the successful family business is still thriving over 60 years on and today is run by Calogero's son Salvatore and his wife Antonella, who have been selling delicious ice cream and frozen desserts from their base in Knowsley Industrial Park for over 20 years.
As part of the Liverpool ECHO's How It Used To Be series, we spoke to Calogero's son, Salvatore, about the history of the family business and how life has changed in the city through the decades. Salvatore, 61, told the ECHO: "Mr Capaldi took a liking to my dad because he saw he was a bit different, he was ambitious and wanted to achieve something.
"There was a place in Lodge Lane - 49 Lodge Lane - and it was a café. Mr Capaldi said go down, it's a good café, good location, buy it - and that's what my dad did.
"Within a couple of weeks, they turned it round and they were selling all kinds. They were doing milkshakes, toast, breakfasts. They were also open late into the evening so they had guys coming out of the pub and they would make them sandwiches.
"Then he started serving ice cream out of a hatch in the café window. The people who used to supply him were in Birkenhead and as the business grew my dad started thinking about making his own ice cream mix.
"They said to him, Calogero, the industry is finished, you're wasting your time. But he saw the opportunity and started to make his own to serve in the shop." In the early 60’s, the Mister Softee franchise emerged, paving the way for the more modern ice cream vans we know today.
Knowing how popular his own product had been with his customers, Calogero became one of their first franchisees. Salvatore said: "Mr Softee was innovative, it was brand new.
"Prior to Mr Softee, the ice cream vans that used to go around the streets were serving scoop ice cream and they were old converted ambulances or converted vans with a freezer in it. When my dad came along with his first Mr Softee ice cream van, it was all illuminated with a generator in the back, musical chimes because he had the electric, flashing lights and the soft machine.
"He used to have queues of people because they’d never seen anything like it before. Even the ice cream men who came before them used to stop.
"My dad bought the first ice cream van, he didn't have a driver's license and he employed someone and he took the van out. He was smashing it, he was bringing back buckets of money, it was coins in those days and he used to spend all night counting it.
"He had total control of his own destiny because it was so easy to get into the market, he had no competition in the beginning. We lived above the shop and behind the shop he later converted the yard into a small manufacturing unit and as it grew behind that was a dairy which he bought and then converted that into a factory."
Calogero went on to purchase a second van for his brother, Vincenzo, who left his job working in a brick factory in Stoke-on-Trent to move to Liverpool. Seeing the demand, Calogero started to make ice lollies by hand in 1965 to sell alongside the soft-serve.
He also began buying more ice cream vans to lease to his fellow countrymen, many who were still working in the mines, which was something he would go on to gain recognition for. In 1968, Calogero moved to automated production for his ice-lollies, increasing his capacity to 5,000 an hour and by 1971 there were 45 vans and drivers across the North West selling Calogero’s own products.
Salvatore said: "We were surrounded by Italians back in the day, all the immigrants that came over with my dad in the mines.
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"He encouraged all his friends that were working in the mines to buy an ice cream van. He said if you can't afford it, I'll buy it for you and you can pay me as and when.
"These guys were all family men, they were here for one thing, to make money and he tapped into that ambition. It wasn't just in Liverpool when they came to work in the mines - it was Bristol, Coventry, they were all over the country - and he encouraged them all to buy ice cream vans. He saw the success and he encouraged them.
"Because of what he did in the Italian community, the Anglo-Italian Association nominated him for a knighthood - he’s a cavaliere."
Alongside his siblings, Stefania and Vincenzo, and his cousins, Salvatore has fond childhood memories of growing up around the family business and Liverpool's Italian community. He said: "Me, my sister and my eldest cousin who has the same name as me, we used to come home and help pack ice lollies and make cartons.
"That was our youth and I'm glad it was the way it was. We’d go down to the lolly machine and help pack lollies into boxes, when we were eight or nine years old.
"In those days, it was a family business and we were all working together for a common goal. I used to love it, we used to go downstairs and play in the factory when everyone went home - it was an adventure playground for me growing up.
"I couldn't speak English until I went to school because we were surrounded by Italian ice cream men, Italian employees. It was exciting, there was never a dull moment - it was good times.
"When we were growing up we had the Italian Consulate in Liverpool 8 because that’s where the majority of people were living and it was a clubhouse. We would go there on a Saturday and Sunday and we’d have snooker, we’d play games together, we’d play cards.
"The community was massive then, we had Italian delicatessen who used to supply all the community because in those days we didn't have Italian food on tap like you do today. You couldn't find pasta, you couldn't find tomato sauce, so there were specialist delis who catered for the community."
By the mid-70s, more households in Britain owned their own freezer and seeing an opportunity to supply smaller domestic packs into retail, Calogero started to sell some of his products to what was known as small "freezer centres," such as Cordon Bleu and Lennons Supermarket, as well as supplying the very first Iceland store in Rhyl.
The factory soon reached capacity and in 1972 Calogero moved from Lodge Lane to Tuebrook, where his new and improved factory was able to produce almost 40,000 ice lollies per day. Through the years, Calogero's children have all been involved in helping grow the business and Salvatore began working with him shortly after his 15th birthday in 1977.
When his brother Vincenzo made the decision to move back to Sicily in 1979, Calogero rebranded the Mancuso Brothers business to Stella, the name it still carries to this day. Salvatore shadowed his uncle for a few weeks as he'd spent more time with his mum, Elena, working in the cash and carry side of the business. At the age of 17, Salvatore had 40 people working for him - and he hasn't stopped since.
In 1984, Stella found a new home in Fazakerley, with Salvatore taking an increasingly greater role in the running of the business. Stella became a key supplier to UK supermarket chains Tesco and Sainsbury's and an international export business had been established with clients across the globe.
This secured Stella as one of the top three privately owned ice cream manufactures in the UK at the time, as well as the UK’s largest manufacturer of ice-lollies capable of producing one million ice lollies per day. When his father retired in 2003, Salvatore took the decision to move the business operation to the old Pendelton’s factory in Knowsley which he had acquired several years earlier.
His wife Antonella joined him as a partner in the business in 2006 and together they made the decision to actively seek a different direction for Stella. Whilst Salvatore knew that the supermarkets provided volume, he was aware that contracts were not guaranteed and as the margins became too small to manage, Salvatore instead decided to take the knowledge he had acquired over the years to take the business back to its roots – making delicious products for local independent vendors.
He said: "I realised that I wanted to pass my knowledge – and my dad’s knowledge – on to the next generation of business owners. We’ve been through hard times, but we’ve also had some great times, so we bring a different level of expertise to the industry.
"We pass that knowledge and technical experience on to our customers to make sure that they have the greatest possible chance of success with their own businesses, because we see great value in that."
Salvatore has also worked alongside some of the UK’s most recognisable brands to create bespoke products, including specials for Vimto, Real Nice Organics, Nando’s, Carluccio’s and Wagamama. In 2013, Stella launched a range of frozen desserts and their passion lies in working with small chains and independent businesses. Antonella said: "We like to say we’ve been making ice cream, frozen treats and happy days since 1958, and we hope there’s many more years to come."
Over the last 65 years, the family has come to know generations of loyal customers and has created a legacy in the city. After decades in business, Salvatore said he is most proud of the business's "name and the history that goes with it."
Salvatore said: "It’s hard to keep it going I've got to say that, but we keep it going. Behind every great man is a great women as well and my mum, she was the rock behind him all the time, it wasn’t just my dad.
"People come here and I have a brochure and I show people our history because they don't know. It has a picture of my mum and dad on it and me as a child and they’re blown away because they don't realise this business has been around for so long and done so much.
"We've got customers here who’ve been with us from of the beginning. A lot of them have passed away because of the length of time we’ve been in business, but my mother used to run the cash and carry and she saw people coming as kids with their father then take over from their fathers and become grown men with families.
"There's so much history there and we still see it today. It's a privilege and we don't take it for granted."
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2023-12-17 07:31:00Z
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