The founder of Little Man Ice Cream, Paul Tamburello, wanted to create a new ice cream shop in memory of his Mom, who loved sweets. She lived during the Victorian Era, which became the inspiration for this shop. KCA worked in collaboration with Xan Creative who led the interior design. Over the course of six months, the design team met and studied ice cream and confectionery prototypes to determine the best way to create a child like experience. The result is a truly unique design with a functional basement level kitchen. With the ice cream hidden away on the back counter, customers can chin up to the bar and directly relate to the service staff.
Like many projects in Denver’s older neighborhoods, this project was located at a streetcar “node” at 12th and Madison, where a small number of one story commercial buildings serve Congress Park. It became clear early on that the space would be too small on the first floor alone, so KCA led the charge to dig out and retrofit the old dirt floor basement into a kitchen. We fit a walk in cooler, dish cleaning area, prep area, office and future dumb waiter into the basement, which allowed the first floor to be customer centered with two gender neutral bathrooms.