By Amanda Marroquin Monday, March 3rd, 2025

Growing up, Rori Trovato looked forward to Sundays, the days she would go over to her grandma’s house and eat her freshly-churned, homemade ice cream.

Decades later, she turned her love for homemade ice cream into Rori’s Artisanal Creamery — an ice cream shop that has plans for expansion in 2025 after roaring success over the past decade.

The creamery flourishes largely on locally sourced ingredients, attention to customer service, and community partnerships. 

“I don’t think people, at least in this area, had really ever experienced real small batch ice cream, which is just another word for home churned kind of ice cream,” Trovato told the Business Times. 

“You know, we’ve all had Ben and Jerry’s and all the big brands, but it’s a very different flavor profile and texture when you spin it on a small machine.”

Rori’s Creamery currently has eight locations spread out across the tri-counties and even stretches into Los Angeles and Santa Monica as well.

Rori’s also has locations in Carpinteria, Montecito, Santa Barbara, Arroyo Grande and Camarillo.

Though the creamery is now headquartered in Carpinteria, Trovato began churning her homemade ice cream right on State Street in downtown Santa Barbara right behind the Gelson’s supermarket in 2010. 

She began wholesaling soon after the small batch received heaps of popularity with Gelson’s customers. 

By 2012, she opened her first storefront in the Montecito Country Mart.

After opening three shops, Trovato recognized a need for business expertise on her team, which is when Damien Kriteman, now CEO of Rori’s Artisanal Creamery, joined and brought his experience as a consulting CFO to the organization.

Kriteman told the Business Times that Rori’s will be expanding. 

The creamery will add more locations in prospective locations like Goleta and parts of Los Angeles that lack a traditional creamery, he said.

“There’s just like these whole areas with communities that are full of families and hot weather all year round. I mean, it’s Southern California where, where we just think, hang on a second, they need Rori’s,” said Kriteman. 

“Essentially, the stores drive the business, and the stores drive the engagement. The stores drive awareness of what we do. And that’s that for us, is where the future of the company lies.”

Kriteman added that while Rori’s is expanding, it will continue to stay true to its authentically small business model, which is heavily supported by their connection to the communities they serve. 

Rori’s is beginning a long-term partnership with the Santa Barbara Food Bank, where they will provide long-term benefits for their members to encourage their membership to grow as well, Kriteman said.

“So it’s just nice little things that, for us, set us apart from the big, national chains who advertise on TV, or around the Super Bowl or things like that. That’s never going to be us,” Kriteman said. 

“We are a genuinely handmade, artisanal product and will always remain that, and we just sit really well within the community of Southern California.”  

Trovato and Kriteman added that while their ice cream is a treat, it is still marketable to the healthy and active culture in Santa Barbara. 

Rori’s focuses on a holistic ice cream experience in order to cater to Santa Barbara’s healthy consumer audience. 

They source their ingredients from local farms and make special flavor add-ins in the kitchen themselves — a classic being the cookies that go in the milk and cookies flavor, said Trovato.

“If you’re eating a healthy product made from local, sustainable, great products, it’s really a good thing to treat yourself and to allow yourself to have joy,” Trovato said. 

“People walk in and they’ve already decided to treat themselves.”

Rori’s homemade touch may contribute to the brand’s success, and now expansion, but for Trovato, her passion lies in the creativity of coming up with new flavors, making a flavor palette that is received by customers, and staying authentic to the homemade small-batch style, just as she grew up with she says.  

“My grandma would make ice cream every Sunday we would go to her house, and she would churn, and I would help my grandpa churn the ice cream,” Trovato said. 

“She left me her ice cream maker when she passed away, I still have it, which is awesome.”

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