Gelato Wonderland wasn’t born from a grand plan to build a gelato empire.
It started with a love of food, an idea that stayed with us for years, and a desire to create the kind of small local business we actually wanted to spend our days in.
Gelato Wonderland opened on 24 September 2025: a family-run gelato shop at the Aqua Complex in Labrador, on the Gold Coast.
Back where it started
Kyle grew up in Palm Beach on the Gold Coast and left at around 17 to study in Brisbane.
A career that began in civil engineering moved into technology and consulting, and eventually took Kyle and Sam much further afield — including around six years living in the UK, which made travelling through Europe easy. Italy became somewhere they returned to more than once.
Decades later, the Gold Coast called them home.
After years of work that often meant travelling to Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, Kyle wanted something different: a local business, closer to family, built around something he genuinely enjoyed.
Food had always been part of that.
But a restaurant wasn’t the answer. Neither was another café.
Gelato was different.
Then there was Burano
On one trip to Venice, Kyle and Sam took the boat out to the colourful island of Burano.
They’d eaten plenty of gelato in Italy by then. Some was wonderful. Plenty was surprisingly ordinary.
Then they found a small gelateria advertising “luxury gelato.”
The cabinet was different. Beautifully presented flavours. Combinations such as lavender and ricotta. Apple, cinnamon and other flavours that made choosing unusually difficult.
They eventually settled on two.
They walked away, ate them — and stopped.
There were still too many flavours they wanted to try.
So they turned around, went straight back and ordered another two.
Halfway through the second serve, it became fairly obvious that appetite had been overtaken by enthusiasm.
But the memory stuck.
Gelato could be about discovery.
More flavours. Smaller decisions.
Years later, when Gelato Wonderland began taking shape, that idea returned.
Instead of making customers choose one enormous scoop of one flavour, why not make it easier to explore?
That’s where our mini scoops come in.
A Piccolo gives you three. A Medio gives you six. A Grande gives you nine.
Choose different flavours. Double up on something you love. Try the one you were curious about but weren’t ready to choose on its own.
And if you’re unsure, ask us for a sample first.
We’d much rather help you find something you love than watch you walk away wishing you’d chosen something else.
A shop where people leave smiling
There was another reason for choosing gelato.
Kyle wanted to build the kind of business where talking to customers wasn’t an interruption to the work. It was part of the work.
So don’t be surprised if we ask what you’ve chosen, offer you a taste of something unexpected or remember what you had last time.
You don’t need to buy anything just because you’ve tried a sample.
Come in. Have a look. Taste something.
That’s what the cabinet is there for.
Made in Labrador
Our gelato is made here in our Labrador shop in small batches.
We choose ingredients because of what they contribute to the gelato, including Maleny Dairies milk and cream and premium Italian gelato ingredients.
Sometimes that means keeping things beautifully simple.
Sometimes it means Pear & Ginger.
That’s Wonderland.
Judged by people who know
In 2026 we entered the Royal Queensland Awards Ice Cream, Gelato & Sorbet Competition for the first time, when we’d been open barely six months.
Our pear and ginger gelato — Enchanted Orchard — won gold in Class 6 and was named Champion Flavoured Ice Cream or Gelato of Show, the best flavoured gelato or ice cream in the competition. Our chocolate (Class 2), French vanilla bean (Class 1) and strawberry (Class 3) each won gold too, and our vegan and sorbet flavours took medals in their own classes.
Local
We sponsor Breakers Netball and the Labrador Tigers junior AFL club. If your kid’s brought home a voucher after a good game, that’s us.
And in September 2026 we turned one. See how we celebrated our first birthday →
Come with a favourite. Leave with a new one.
We can’t promise you’ll go back for a second serve.
But we know at least two people who have.