A Hill Country Italian dairy known for its use of water buffalo milk is coming to Austin this year with a new ice cream truck. The OroBianco Italian Creamery ice cream truck will be located at the Hudson Meat Market at 1800 South Congress Avenue in the Bouldin Creek neighborhood starting in September.

OroBianco’s ice cream truck menu will include popular flavors like pistachio with nuts from Waco, single-origin chocolate, which the company makes from raw cacao, and citrus crema. There will also be seasonal options, like peaches from Fredericksburg and the newly popular maple bacon bourbon.

Owner Phil Giglio believes in the creamy magic of water buffalo milk, whose richness lends itself well to dairy products like cheese and ice cream. “Water buffalo milk is just much higher in fat than cow’s milk,” Giglio says, although people may think otherwise of milk from local cattle. “It’s not gross,” he continued. “It’s really beautiful, wonderful milk, and it’s all made locally.”

Giglio, who still works as a business lawyer, kept thinking about water buffalo milk and decided to get into the dairy business. Although this milk was popular internationally, especially in Italy, it wasn’t easily available in Texas. “Globally, it’s considered very special, but in the U.S. we just don’t have the context for it because there aren’t many people doing it,” he says.

Italian dairy OroBianco

Italian dairy OroBianco

For this reason, Giglio knew he had to raise the animals himself. He contacted Jason Peeler of the Texas ranch Peeler Farms, which was already raising water buffalo. They joined forces to build a dairy farm in Floresville, which was completed in 2020. There, the water buffalo roam, eat grass and are herded by horses. “It’s a very South Texas ranching tradition,” says Giglip, which is “a little unusual for a dairy.” It is now considered one of the largest in America, he says, but “by dairy farming standards, we are microscopic.”

OroBianco opened a brick-and-mortar store in Blanco in 2021 along with its Italian dairy. They expanded with a second location in Stonewall in 2022, an ice cream truck in Dripping Springs in 2023, and a third store in Fredericksburg in March 2024. (There was an ice cream truck in Dripping Springs from 2023 to July 2024. There was also a pizza truck in Stonewall that made Neapolitan pizzas.) The stores sell their merchandise as well as other products, as well as sandwiches, coffee, and spritzes.

OroBianco cheesemaker Adam Thompson and his team make this creamy mozzarella, but there are other cheeses available, including the spreadable Blanco Fresco, the feta-like Bufaletta and Bluebonnet, a variation of blue cheese.

Italian dairy OroBianco

Giglio purchased a defunct Detroit Industrial Vehicle Company (also known as Divco) delivery truck in Pennsylvania that was commonly used to deliver milk in the Northeast.

OroBianco was already working with Hudson Meats in South Congress, which makes sausages from the farm’s water buffalo meat, so the company had Giglio park the mobile ice cream truck at his store.

The ice cream truck is OroBianco’s first real expansion into Austin, aside from supplying ice cream and cheese to some Austin chefs and restaurants, like Italian restaurant L’Oca d’Oro. Depending on how well OroBianco’s truck sells, Giglio is poised to open a brick-and-mortar location in Austin.

Giglio is also working on selling ice cream in pints for retail, which he plans to launch in Central Market in April 2025. He wants to expand into other markets and stores like Royal Blue Grocery.

Italian dairy OroBianco