The freezer is just bigger now.
Guarracino abandoned prestigious modeling roles at Hermès and Armani to pursue family ice cream business with health-focused innovation. Benlive generates $180M pesos annually with 300+ sales points in Buenos Aires, offering protein, keto, vegan, and collagen-infused ice cream varieties.
- Tomás Guarracino modeled for Hermès, Carolina Herrera, and Armani before launching Benlive in 2021
- Benlive generates 180 million pesos annually with 300+ retail points in Buenos Aires
- The company produces roughly 30,000 kilos of ice cream per year from a facility in San Martín
- Five-year revenue target: $5 million, with planned expansion to Uruguay, Mexico, and Paraguay
Tomás Guarracino, grandson of Freddo founder, left a modeling career to create Benlive, a protein-rich, sugar-free ice cream line that modernizes his family's 80-year legacy while targeting wellness-conscious consumers.
Tomás Guarracino spent his twenties on European runways, modeling for Hermès, Carolina Herrera, and Armani. He was good at it—the kind of career that looks like success from the outside. But somewhere between New York and Milan, he kept thinking about freezers.
His grandfather, Salvador Guarracino, had arrived in Argentina from Italy with nothing. In the 1940s, he opened a fruit stand on the corner of Callao and Melo in Buenos Aires. When the fruit began to spoil, he started making ice cream to use it up. That small act of resourcefulness became Freddo, one of Argentina's oldest and most enduring ice cream chains. The family business was woven into Tomás's childhood—summers in Punta del Este, afternoons spent inside walk-in freezers, the smell of cream and sugar as ordinary as air.
At 35, with a decade of modeling behind him, Guarracino made a choice that surprised no one who understood what family legacy actually means. He walked away from the fashion world and returned to Argentina to resurrect his grandfather's work—but not as a museum piece. In 2021, working with his father Juan Martín, who had guarded the old recipes and techniques like state secrets, Guarracino launched Benlive: a line of ice cream engineered for the wellness economy. High protein. No added sugar. Collagen-infused. Keto-friendly. Dairy-free options for vegans and the lactose intolerant. Each product category addressed a specific dietary philosophy, a specific consumer need that his grandfather's generation could never have imagined.
The business started small, almost embarrassingly so. A freezer in his house. Orders dispatched from the kitchen. But Guarracino had learned something from the fashion industry: how to see what consumers wanted before they fully knew they wanted it. Living abroad, he'd noticed protein bars and functional foods everywhere in the United States and Europe. Why not here? Why couldn't Argentina have the same options? The question became the business plan.
By 2024, Benlive had grown into something substantial. The company built a production facility in San Martín—a $250,000 investment—and now manufactures roughly 30,000 kilos of ice cream annually. Revenue reached 180 million pesos per year. The distribution network expanded to nearly 300 retail points across Buenos Aires, with additional reach into the greater metropolitan area and provinces beyond. The company works with a food science laboratory, employing engineers and nutritionists to develop each product line. Guarracino, a father himself with a 10-year-old daughter, had built something that honored his grandfather's innovation while speaking to contemporary anxieties about health and aging.
The collagen line represents his proudest innovation—Argentina's first collagen-infused ice cream. Each 180-gram container holds five grams of collagen peptides, marketed to strengthen skin, hair, nails, and joints. The science is straightforward: collagen production declines with age, and supplementing it addresses a real biological fact. It's the kind of product that would have baffled Salvador Guarracino, yet it flows directly from his original impulse—taking what people need and making it delicious.
What comes next is already in motion. Guarracino is developing sleep-aid ice creams and workout-specific formulas with creatine and glutamine. More ambitiously, the company is building an AI tool called Ben—a digital assistant accessible via QR code at point of sale. Customers will be able to ask it questions: "I'm tired. I just ran twenty kilometers. What should I eat?" The system will recommend products and portions based on individual circumstances. It's food technology, the convergence of nutrition and artificial intelligence, delivered through a medium his grandfather invented.
Demand already exceeds production capacity. Guarracino admits they cannot keep up. International investors are circling, interested in funding expansion. The five-year target is ambitious: $5 million in annual revenue, with the brand established in Uruguay, Mexico, and Paraguay. It's the kind of growth trajectory that requires capital, infrastructure, and ruthless focus. But it's also the kind of trajectory that suggests his grandfather's corner fruit stand, transformed once by necessity into ice cream, is being transformed again by his grandson's vision into something the modern wellness economy recognizes as essential.
Notable Quotes
Papá aportó el know-how y las recetas de mi abuelo, y yo traje la innovación. Así mezclamos la tradición con el futuro.— Tomás Guarracino, on combining his father's recipes with his own innovation
Hoy no damos abasto.— Tomás Guarracino, on current demand exceeding production capacity
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
You left modeling at Hermès and Armani to make ice cream. That's not a lateral move. What made you certain?
It wasn't certainty at first. It was recognition. I'd spent years in fashion seeing what sells, what people actually want versus what they think they should want. Then I'd come home and see my father guarding these recipes like they were blueprints for something sacred. I realized the real inheritance wasn't the brand—it was the permission to innovate within tradition.
Your grandfather made ice cream because fruit was spoiling. You're making ice cream because people want collagen and protein. Are you solving the same problem or a different one?
Both. He solved scarcity. I'm solving abundance—too many choices, too much confusion about what's actually good for you. The method is identical: take what the market needs and make it accessible. He did it with fruit. I'm doing it with wellness.
The AI tool, Ben—that feels like a leap. Why does ice cream need artificial intelligence?
Because personalization is the future of food. Right now, someone buys a product and guesses whether it's right for them. Ben removes the guessing. It's not about the technology for its own sake. It's about making the relationship between what you eat and how you feel more direct, more honest.
You're already outgrowing your production capacity. Doesn't that scare you?
It validates something. It means we're not chasing a trend—we're meeting a real shift in how people think about food. The fear isn't demand. The fear is executing at scale without losing what made this work in the first place.
What would your grandfather think of all this?
He'd probably laugh at the collagen. Then he'd understand immediately. He'd see that I'm doing exactly what he did—listening to what people need and finding a way to give it to them. The freezer is just bigger now.