Franchise Interviews

Just in time for ice cream season! Rita's opened in the summer of 1984. Asphalt was bubbling. Swimming pools were evaporating. The tires were melting off of ice cream trucks. Needless to say, it was a very successful summer, but it wasn't due to just the weather. In the months preceding the May grand opening of the first Rita's store, Bob Tumolo and his mother, Elizabeth, were busy experimenting on recipes for Italian water ice. A fresh-squeezed lemon here, some chunks of fruit there - even