Chelsea great Zola chills out with ice-cream business

Gianfranco Zola

Former Chelsea star Gianfranco Zola was an intelligent footballer and rarely missed a pass or trick on the field. Carrying these traits into the corporate world, he is now a successful businessman, owning the Unico brand of gelato parlours in London and Milan.

The ice-cream brand has won a number of awards and is loved by food bloggers too. His cafe offer 20 different flavours of ice-cream, with six vegan options besides a range of pastries, cakes and some hot food too.

So how did a footballer think of an ice cream start-up? Zola, 51, said that idea came about during a holiday a few years ago. "It was five years ago, me and a friend used to Grand Cayman very often. We saw that there was no decent ice-cream out there, so decided to open one. It was very, very successful and with that in mind, we decided to open one in England too," Zola told British tabloid, The Sun. Zola opened his first branch in 2015 at Bromley, south London.

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