Gelato Messina Opened Softville on Orchard Street

The joint venture with Studio Jeremyville merges soft serve sales with art programming in a 2,500-square-foot space.

Updated on Oct. 5, 2026 in Openings & Closings

Bold vector editorial illustration showing a ceramic soft-serve machine beside a stack of sketchbooks, representing a creative retail space. — Gelato Messina and Studio Jeremyville have launched Softville, a 2,500-square-foot hybrid retail space on Orchard Street in New York City. AI Illustration. Upload story photo >

Live Poll

Do you prefer new international businesses in your area to offer unique local community experiences?

Gelato Messina launched Softville, a 2,500-square-foot concept store on Orchard Street in New York, as a 50/50 joint venture with Studio Jeremyville. The store integrates soft serve production with art exhibitions, ceramics, and drawing clubs to foster community engagement.

Why it matters

The venture seeks to differentiate from standard food-service retail by prioritizing shared spaces and rotating programming over purely transactional volume. This model highlights an increasing trend among operators to use experiential retail to secure a foothold in competitive urban markets.

The new 2,500-square-foot Softville location is a 50/50 joint venture between Gelato Messina and Studio Jeremyville. The menu currently features five sundaes, supported by a supply chain using milk sourced from New York's Hudson Valley.

The players

Gelato Messina

An Australian-based gelato producer that has evaluated United States market entry for six or seven years.

Studio Jeremyville

A creative studio based in Sydney that provides art installations and exhibition management in this joint venture.

The details

The operational model departs from typical food retail by treating the shop as a destination for art installations, collectable ceramics, and community drawing clubs. By sourcing milk locally from the Hudson Valley, the team produces all soft serve on-site. The project leverages a professional relationship between the two firms that has spanned more than two decades, culminating in this shared creative venture.

Softville opened on Orchard Street on October 1, 2026.

Market Landscape

The entry follows a documented industry trend toward experience-first retail models that prioritize community engagement over traditional square-footage efficiency. It signals a move away from the high-throughput, low-touch service standard previously dominant in urban dessert franchising.

Operators in high-rent districts should evaluate whether dedicating retail space to community programming can drive brand loyalty that justifies lower direct-sales volume. Monitor the success of this non-transactional footprint to determine if art-adjacent retail is a viable competitive edge.

The takeaway

The store illustrates that physical retail survival in crowded markets increasingly requires integrating secondary revenue streams like exhibitions and collectibles. Track how the rotating specials and event schedule affect foot traffic relative to standard QSR competitors in the Lower East Side.