One of South Lanarkshire’s best-known businesses is marking its 100th birthday… and is still run by the family that started it.
Equi’s moved its ice cream production last year to a new state-of-the-art factory in Rutherglen, with the help of South Lanarkshire Council, after spending no fewer than 99 years at Hamilton’s Peacock Cross.
The company will never forget its roots, however, with the café remaining at the familiar location.
And those roots are strong, with tradition running in the company’s DNA not just in a business sense, but in a literal one, for founder Pietro’s great-granddaughter, Alex, having become the fourth generation of Equis to join the business.
Managing director David Equi is rightfully proud to have his daughter working with the family business, but Alex revealed that there was a vital condition to her employment.
She told Lanarkshire Live : “My dad made it clear that I could only work here if I got a degree first, the same as he did.”
Alex did so in style, achieving a first in Business and Administration from Glasgow University, and opening the door to her continuing the family tradition.
“Once I had graduated, I began work here, and have loved every minute of it,” she smiled. “We are brought up with the business so it’s not just a great job, there’s a real sense of being a part of history as well.”
That history began in 1914 when Pietro Equi and his uncle, Dante, left Coreglia Antelminelli in Tuscany to seek their fortune. While Dante ended up in New York, Pietro got as far as Hamilton, where he started a café at 6/8 Burnbank Road, Hamilton, in 1922.
The business grew at a steady rate to the extent that more room was needed and, in 1965, Equi’s moved across the road to 9-11 Burnbank Road, knocking two shops into one to accommodate a restaurant, takeaway and ice-cream parlour – and where they can still be found to this day.
It is not just customers who have relished their wares – the family firm’s success has also been recognised by their peers, with the Diploma of Merit in 1952 for the Ice Cream in Vertical Freezer class being the first of a host of awards that have come their way over the years since.
Accolades have been won at the Royal Highland Show, Scots Italian Awards, Great Taste Awards, the UK Ice Cream Championships, the UK heats of the European Gelato Festival, the Scottish Ice Cream Awards and the Scotland Food and Drink Awards.
In 1984, they were the first-ever winners of the Scottish National Ice Cream Competition and more recently, they were a finalist at the Lanarkshire Business Awards in two categories – Lanarkshire’s Best Business (11-50 employees) and Lanarkshire’s Best Family Business – before in 2022 winning Lanarkshire’s Best Business (11-50 employees).
The company does not set out to win awards, but achieves them as a result of their fusion of tradition and progression.
David, who has been managing director since 1995 (having joined the business following his own graduation from Edinburgh University with a degree in Business) said: “Tradition runs through this company, which is a great thing because it instils in you the standards and ethics that have made it such a success for an entire century.
“We made ice cream at our ‘home’ of at Peacock Cross right up to a year ago when we moved the manufacturing side to the new factory and, in fact, what is the staff room at the café was actually where my father was born because the family lived in two rooms above the shop.
“However, to let us maintain the traditional values and standards in the best possible way, we have always seen it as vital to invest and innovate, whether it be in machinery, flavours or into new markets.”
Although known far and wide for its ice cream, the manufacturing side originally began as an off-shoot of the café. However, Equi’s are now so established in manufacturing ice cream that major contracts are in place with supermarket and convenience store chains across the UK and most recently they have added the biggest supermarket chain in Texas.
David explained: “We had expanded and expanded over the years at the back of the café, but got to the stage where there was no option but to look at new custom-fitted premises, given that we are now producing one million litres a year of finished ice cream.
“However, we had very specific needs, as you can imagine, such as the right size, access to a lot of power and a big yard, for example, and the council’s Economic Development team were a vital help with this, not only spotting a suitable site for us but also with advice and grant funding right through the process.
“Clyde Gateway were extremely helpful too, and overall it was very smooth – we didn’t miss a single day’s production during the move.
“We invested £2m in the factory and are delighted with what we’ve got: an environmentally-friendly facility that uses a host of solutions to let us run more economically and better for the world around us – for example, we recycle all the water in the production process, saving 16m litres a year using a system designed by a local man, and we have an eco-steam boiler that uses a third of the gas but heats three times quicker.”
One major consideration for the new factory was that it had to be in South Lanarkshire.
Alex said: “We try to stay local in every way we can, and one aspect where this can be seen clearly is in sourcing our products.
"One of our biggest raw materials is, of course, milk and we buy that from East Kilbride company What’s Fresh.
"It not only helps the environment in keeping the carbon footprint low through short transport links, but it also keeps our links with this area.
“That is very important to us – we started in South Lanarkshire, our home is here and this is where we want to be, because this is where our heart is.”
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