Soft serve manufacturers compared: Who you can actually get in Germany

Anyone looking for a soft serve machine for the first time has twenty manufacturer names on their list after half an hour. Most of them drop out for a normal hospitality business, and that rarely has anything to do with the quality of the companies. Some build something entirely different, others simply cannot be obtained in Germany. In the end a handful of companies remain, and those are the ones you really have to choose between.

Some names drop out because the companies do not build a soft serve machine with a draw valve. Nemox in Pontevico makes batch freezers and gelato machines. Bravo in Montecchio Maggiore has been known since 1974 for the Trittico, so for artisan gelato and patisserie. Catta 27 near Bologna builds pasteurising plants and hardening tunnels, which is plant engineering for ice cream factories. All three are excellent addresses, just not for what you need at the counter.

A second group drops out because there is no route to market in Germany. Electro Freeze and Stoelting are serious American soft serve specialists with long histories. Stoelting built the first soft serve freezer for Dairy Queen in 1951, Electro Freeze supplies chains such as Dairy Queen, Carvel and Sonic. Neither appears in the ranges of German specialist dealers. What counts for your purchase decision, though, is who stands at your door with a toolbox when there is a fault, and on a Saturday in July a good machine without a technician within reach is of little help.

What remains are the companies you actually come across in Germany: Carpigiani, Taylor, ICETRO, Gel Matic, Nissei and Spaceman, plus Frigomat from Guardamiglio and Telme from Codogno. And at the bottom end the nameless import goods, which are not a company in the real sense but turn up in every search.

Carpigiani was founded in 1946 by the brothers Bruto and Poerio Carlo Carpigiani. The headquarters is in Anzola dell'Emilia near Bologna, with additional production in Forlì, in Gandia in Spain and in Zhongshan in China. Since 1989 the company has belonged to the Ali Group headquartered in Milan, one of the world's largest groups in kitchen and food technology.

The strength of the brand is coverage. Five subsidiaries, around 220 authorised dealers, representation in over 100 countries, more than 500 service centres and machines in over 200,000 ice cream parlours, pastry shops, cafés and restaurants. On top of that the Gelato University, founded in 2003, with more than 400 courses a year in thirteen languages. That is aimed primarily at artisan gelato, though; for an operation serving soft serve at the counter, what counts is the authorised dealer within reach.

Technically the soft serve line covers a lot. The 191 is a single-flavour countertop unit fifty centimetres wide that manages over 250 servings of 75 grams an hour, either gravity-fed with an 18 litre tank or with a pump and a 12 litre tank. The 193 Twin Twist dispenses two flavours plus twist and sits at over 450 servings. The Hard-O-Tronic consistency control regulates cooling capacity via measured viscosity. On the self-pasteurising models the heat treatment allows cleaning intervals of up to 42 days.

And then there is the point that often goes unnoticed when buying and suddenly counts when selling: for Carpigiani there is a very lively used market. The manufacturer even runs its own refurbished catalogue with reconditioned machines, original parts, the same function tests as for new units and one year of warranty. A 191 Classic SP P is listed there at 11,000 euros. On used platforms and at specialist dealers, offers for the same series range from 6,500 to 10,860 euros net, depending on reconditioning and guarantee. Anyone selling again after five or ten years meets an established market with reference prices here. How much comes back in the end still depends on the condition of the individual machine.

The flip side of this variety is the difficulty of comparison. Condition, depth of reconditioning and warranty differ from offer to offer, and you cannot tell from the listing. The manufacturer does not publish new prices, you get those through the respective authorised dealer.

Taylor is the big American counterpart. Founded in 1926 by Charles Taylor, based in Rockton, Illinois since 1949. The ownership chain runs via Beatrice Foods, Specialty Equipment and United Technologies to The Middleby Corporation, which completed the purchase on 22 June 2018 for one billion US dollars. That is worth knowing, because the idea persists that Taylor and Carpigiani are sister companies within one group. They are not: Carpigiani belongs to the Ali Group, Taylor to Middleby.

The brand is designed for systemised hospitality, and you can see it in the machines. In 1956 Taylor made a handshake agreement with Ray Kroc for milkshake machines; in 2021 the C602 model was running in over 13,000 US branches of McDonald's. The C712 floor unit works with two cylinders of 3.4 quarts each and 40 quarts of mix in the refrigerated hoppers and manages over 800 servings an hour. So there is plenty of headroom with Taylor. The company works with over 160 distributors in 125 countries; in Germany import and factory service run through EmK Vertriebs GmbH in Katlenburg-Lindau.

The limits lie where your operation is small and your budget tight. Taylor does not publish prices, and the specialist dealers list the soft serve models on request throughout. The manufacturer ties spare parts to the authorised route and points out explicitly that third-party parts can void the warranty. And the German used market is thin: the importer writes itself that a used Taylor is rather rare on the market, because the machines stay in service with their owners for a long time. Anyone wanting to start out used will therefore rarely find an offer.

Few people in Germany know ICETRO, but the same group stands behind it as behind Taylor. The company started in 1981 as SE-A Incorporated in South Korea, began making soft serve machines in 1997 and has carried the name ICETRO since 2010. Middleby took it over on 30 June 2022, at the time with around 40 million US dollars of annual revenue, with a plant in Incheon and a US operation in Anaheim.

The positioning is interesting. Middleby explicitly names heat-treat pasteurisation as the reason for lower cleaning and staffing effort, and sales and service run through the dealer network of sister company Taylor. The models ISI-161TH, ISI-301TH, ISI-301THP and ISI-163TTH sit there in the self-pasteurising range alongside the Taylor machines, with the same factory warranty and the same service network. So you get a machine with the backing of a premium brand without buying the premium brand itself.

The limitation: there is so far no dedicated German ICETRO dealer. If the brand interests you, your first call is to the German Taylor importer, and the question is who takes on guarantee and on-site service here.

Gel Matic has been based in Grassobbio near Bergamo for over fifty years and is the special case in this round. The company concentrates on soft serve and express gelato and explicitly names as customers ice cream parlours, yogurt bars, cruise ships, dairies, gyms, petrol stations, cinemas, fast food and bakeries. If you are equipping a petrol station or a cinema, you will find yourself in that list. The sales network reaches nearly a hundred countries, and German dealers carry the brand in their soft serve range.

Frigomat from Guardamiglio near Lodi has likewise been active for over fifty years, is certified to ISO 9001:2015 and runs its own training through the GPS Gelato Professional School. Gelato, soft serve and pastry technology come from one house, and the company belongs to no large group. Telme was founded in October 1987 in Codogno and builds machines for gelateria, patisserie and cioccolateria, in the soft serve segment mostly under the Corema brand.

Both companies are smaller than Carpigiani or Taylor and have no group behind them. That has two sides: short routes to the manufacturer, but a service network that hangs on individual partners. Anyone buying from such a brand should know the name of the responsible technician before signing.

Nissei is the best-known soft serve machine that comes neither from Europe nor from the USA. The family business started in 1947 in Japan with ingredients for ice cream and has also built the machines for it since 1967. European sales including the service centre are based in Bunschoten in the Netherlands.

Technically this is the most elaborate design in this round. The machines work with a sophisticated pump system and achieve a high overrun with it, so a lot of volume from the same amount of mix. The build quality is considered outstanding, the machines powerful and reliable.

Two things belong to the same story. The pump system has many sealing points, and cleaning is correspondingly demanding. That is not a defect but the flip side of the overrun, yet it costs staff time, at every strip-down. And on price Nissei sits at the top end of this field, above Carpigiani. Anyone who wants the build quality and can plan for the effort gets a very good machine. Anyone who has to count the money usually ends up elsewhere.

Alongside Nissei and Spaceman there is a third group of Asian machines that comes in through marketplaces and direct imports, often under changing brand names. The price is unbeatable, and that is at the same time the only argument.

What is missing only becomes apparent in operation: reliable equipment and hygiene standards, a dealer and service network in Germany and spare parts available at short notice. Pure import goods have nobody responsible in a fault. If a seal goes in July, you wait for a shipment from China, and the counter stands still that whole time. A machine for 1,500 euros that costs you three weeks of peak season is more expensive than one for 6,000 euros that keeps running.

That does not mean every inexpensive machine from Asia is bad. Nissei and Spaceman come from the same region after all. It means that the manufacturer's name and a reachable contact belong with the machine. If you find neither, the price is not an offer but a risk.

Spaceman has been building freezing technology since the nineties. Production runs in Daixi near Huzhou in Zhejiang province across 26,670 square metres, the head office is in Shanghai, the American company in Loveland, Colorado.

Spaceman is an official supplier to McDonald's and KFC in China, with over 1,000 machines in use at each chain. Anyone listed there has passed those chains' hygiene and quality audits and has to keep spare parts available for years.

One point nobody else in this round manages: the prices are openly online. A single-flavour countertop unit is 5,999 euros net, the same machine with automatic pasteurisation 8,999 euros. Carpigiani and Taylor publish no prices, there the route runs via the authorised dealer. Anyone who wants to compare two quotes or simply do the maths notices the difference immediately.

The range is broad and staggered in series, from countertop to floor-standing units with high throughput, each gravity-fed or with an air pump. The models we carry at Cooltura all have a pump. Overrun therefore comes from pressure rather than gravity, and you can set it: more volume from the same amount of mix, or denser ice cream with a stronger taste, depending on what your concept needs. The models with automatic pasteurisation stretch the full strip-down clean to a cycle of 21 days. Spare parts are available on the open market, and the manufacturer publishes manuals and a fault database, which makes self-maintenance and third-party service easier.

The limits belong here just as much. Service and guarantee hang on the dealer, not on a factory network as with Carpigiani. With us that means 24 months of spare parts warranty instead of the one-year factory warranty, parts from stock and certified service partners. And the running effort needs planning: scraper blades at least every three months, shaft seals and O-rings every one to three months. That applies to every pump machine with many sealing points, regardless of brand, but it is visible in the purchase price of none of them.

Spaceman therefore sits between the two poles of this field. From the European companies comes the ambition to build for continuous operation and a dealer within reach who owes you guarantee and service, which is exactly what the nameless import goods lack. From the Asian production comes a price level clearly below the Italian one. That combination is why we carry the brand, and at the same time the point where you should look most closely: a dealer who promises service has to commit to it in writing.

The ice cream parlour that also makes its own artisan ice cream alongside soft serve is in good hands with Carpigiani, and the reason lies less in the soft serve itself. You get batch freezer, pasteuriser and soft serve machines from one house, bundle the service through one authorised dealer and can have your people trained. If you sell in ten years, you will find an established used market for these series. Frigomat is the more direct alternative in the same field if short routes to the manufacturer matter more to you than group size. Anyone looking for the highest build quality who can plan for the cleaning effort of an elaborate pump system should look at Nissei, knowing that the bill there starts at the top end.

The bakery with soft serve as a sideline generally needs a single-flavour countertop unit with a pump, and that is the case where Spaceman is most clearly ahead. One flavour, a normal 230 volt connection, little footprint and no second task in the morning. A countertop unit for 5,999 euros net changes the calculation if soft serve runs four months a year for you, and the price is openly in the shop rather than behind a quoting process. If the strip-down clean every 72 hours eats too much staff time, you take the pasteurising model and set the difference against the working hours. In our series that is a 3,000 euro surcharge, which at fifteen euros an hour corresponds to around two hundred working hours.

The petrol station and the kiosk are the classic Gel Matic case, because the manufacturer itself lists these customers as a target group. A single-flavour countertop unit from Spaceman works there just as well. With both, the decisive question is who provides the technician within eighty kilometres. That question belongs before the price negotiation, and you should ask for the name of the company.

The beach kiosk and the seasonal business have a different problem: four months flat out and eight months idle. There a robust machine with a manageable purchase price makes more sense than a high-performance machine, especially if you can change the wear parts yourself. With a season of a hundred days, expensive technology is hard to amortise, and standstill is a harder strain on any machine than operation.

Systemised hospitality and any chain with several sites is the field of Taylor and ICETRO. There what counts is identical machines at all locations, a service contract across the area and usability for changing staff. Anyone who also wants to serve shakes and frozen beverage will find combination machines at Taylor that save a second machine.

Spaceman belongs in the same list, because that is exactly where the brand comes from: over 1,000 machines at McDonald's and as many again at KFC in China, both continuous operation with changing staff. For a chain in Germany the difference is less the machine than the question of who looks after the area. A service contract across many sites is the strength of the American companies; whoever has a refrigeration engineer at every site anyway moves faster with open spare parts and public manuals.

The newcomer testing a concept is best served by the cheapest machine that reliably handles the expected throughput. In that role Spaceman is hard to beat: an entry-level machine costs around half of a comparable new European unit, and because the parts are on the open market you tie yourself to nobody. You put the money saved into mix and staff. If the business works, you can still upgrade in two years.

Every one of the companies named builds machines you can sell good soft serve with. The differences are in price, in cleaning effort and in the question of who turns up when the compressor stops in July at thirty degrees.

The most important question before any signature therefore concerns the technician: what is the company called, how far away is it, and how quickly is it there. Ask for the name, not just the assurance. And if you are unsure what suits you, write to us with your expected daily volume, your power connection and the space at your counter. On that basis a recommendation can be made.

All prices are net and reflect the status as of 27 August 2026.