Gelato Wonderland didn’t start with a lifelong plan to own a gelato shop. It started with a simpler idea: come home to the Gold Coast, make something with our hands, and build the kind of small local shop where a good day ends with people smiling.
[PHOTO NEEDED: Kyle in the shop, natural and relaxed — talking with a customer at the cabinet, not a posed corporate portrait.]
A different kind of career change
Kyle grew up on the Gold Coast, then spent years working across engineering, technology and consulting — including about six years living in the UK with the family — before coming back to the Coast for good.
He’d always loved cooking and playing with flavours, but a restaurant was never the dream. Gelato was: creative, hands-on, and hard to separate from the simple pleasure of treating yourself. Something local and tangible, where the everyday interaction ends with someone smiling.
The gelato we went back for
Years earlier, while living in the UK, Kyle and Sam travelled through Italy. Most of the gelato was fine — pleasant, unremarkable. Then, in Burano, they found a little gelateria that stopped them in their tracks. The cabinet was full of flavours they actually wanted to try, and for once, choosing was genuinely hard.
They shared one serve, walked away, finished it… looked at each other, and went straight back for another two, just to taste more. Halfway through the second serve they had to admit enthusiasm had comfortably overtaken appetite.
That feeling — going back because there’s still another flavour to discover — is the idea behind Wonderland. Not to recreate one shop in Italy, but to make gelato worth being curious about, and to make trying more than one thing easy.
[PHOTO NEEDED: a Piccolo with three visibly different mini scoops, close-up in a natural shop setting — the "why choose one?" hero shot.]
Why mini scoops?
A serve here isn’t about committing to one enormous scoop of one flavour. Mini scoops let you explore the cabinet: three in a Piccolo, six in a Medio, nine in a Grande. Have three different flavours, repeat a favourite, or ask us what to try next.
It’s the Italian idea of choosing a size and combining flavours, rather than treating one scoop as one flavour. Mostly, it just makes a rotating cabinet more fun.
Come curious
The cabinet changes. Some flavours look familiar; others might surprise you. That’s the point. Not sure? Ask us for a taste. Try the one you’d normally walk past — you might still order chocolate, but you may find the flavour you come back for next time.
Made here
We make our gelato in small batches at the shop, with carefully selected ingredients — including Maleny Dairies milk and cream and premium Italian gelato ingredients. Good gelato starts with things we’re happy to put our name behind.
Just as much, we want Wonderland to feel like a local shop: friendly, relaxed, and happy to have a chat.
[PHOTO NEEDED: Kyle making gelato — a fresh tray coming out, or the machines behind the counter.]
Judged by people who know
In 2026 we entered the Royal Queensland Ice Cream, Gelato & Sorbet Awards 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, French vanilla bean and strawberry 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.