If I close my eyes, I can hear the peaceful sound of our sea. If I touch my skin, I feel the sea breeze. If I smell, I can perceive salt, sand and pine. If I open my eyes, I am aware of where I am, of the beauty of all that surrounds me, of the pleasure of doing everything calmly, our way.
At La Menorquina, we know how a more leisurely, delicious pleasure tastes, the pleasure of things done well, with patience, affection and proximity. Which is why we make our artisanal recipes with natural ingredients: cream, fruits and nuts from our region and certified sustainable sourced cocoa.
It isn’t just a way of doing things - it’s a way of life, an authentic pleasure. And the pleasure is all ours.
For many years we have been doing things our way, the La Menorquina way. But until reaching this point where our flavour has become a lifestyle, we have walked a long road.
Sometimes fate marks the way for you. For young entrepreneur Fernando Sintes, that way was a winning lottery ticket, with which he was able to open his first factory in Alaior (Menorca) and start building the foundations of the most important ice cream company in Spain.
The young artisan’s dream had always been for his recipes to reach everyone, young and old alike, and so he started distributing his ice creams around the island of Menorca on carts.
As a way of providing a more personalised service in the street, Sintes installed the first counter with a chest freezer in Ciutadella.
Fernando Sintes had a vision: to bring his artisanal cakes and ice creams to all of the island’s restaurants. And to do so he had a plethora of ideas, which was how the first shop came into being. From that point on creativity and ingenuity became part of the company’s philosophy.
For the very first time, confectionery and the world of ice creams were combined in what was called Bombón 57, a totally revolutionary product that has the year of its creation in its name.
Following on from the first ice cream counter - and almost in the ‘60s by now - a new format came into being, which was installed in different towns across the island: the La Menorquina ice cream kiosk.
In the mid-1970s, there was an increasing number of competitors. But La Menorquina did not want to halt its climb, and so the decision was taken to buy the Barcelona-based firm Helados Marisa, and then merge with the multinational Beatrice Foods. And all this took place maintaining control of the management, and without forfeiting that way of doing things which had become a trademark in itself by now.
The unstoppable incorporation of fridges in homes meant the company could take advantage of the consumption of cakes in the family setting. Consumers could buy them in local stores.
Inspired by French chefs, who served ice cream as dessert on special occasions, Sintes adapted the idea and offered frozen filled fruits on the national market. They were peeled and filled by hand. The more innovative restaurateurs could not wait to make them their own.
That same year the first La Menorquina board was printed, with the aim of displaying the large variety of products and recipes.
La Menorquina started the decade off with a bang, inaugurating a new ice cream parlour, where passers-by were offered desserts and other refrigerated products.
One year later, La Menorquina crossed the Mediterranean to attend its first trade fair in the city of Barcelona, with its own stand.
Another great industrial innovation was the whisky cake, because the sponge cake used is extruded. It was such a success that the cake is still finished manually today, just as it was back then.
In the 1990s the know-how of this Menorcan family and the emblem of their lifestyle was already being exported to 24 countries.
The ‘90s saw a boom in frozen gateaux at Christmas. They were served in EPS foam boxes and were a big hit with Spanish families.
On the occasion of its seventy-fifth anniversary, La Menorquina maintains the legacy of that intrepid young confectioner who was known as “The Artisan”.
In 2022 we are recovering the historical recipes of Fernando Sintes in order to make the most of the unparalleled wealth of the produce of our region. And we are relaunching the company with a new brand positioning that seeks to pay tribute to pleasure, to that way of enjoying that is so very Menorcan, so traditional, so very much our own.
