GRAND JUNCTION, Colo (KKCO) -- On a hot summer day there's nothing better than treating yourself to a nice cold helping of delicious gelato.

Denise Bucher makes a batch of delicious gelato, but it's not what she's always done. Nearly 8 years ago her mom and dad owned an ice cream parlor shop in Idaho Springs.

"People kept coming in saying I don't want ice cream they were health conscious and they said, if you had gelato we would come in more often,” says Jim Hawkins the owner of Gelato Junction.

So the family started researching gelato and they thought what better place to do their research then where gelato got it's start, Venice Italy.

"We were able to actually have a fourth generation gelato maker come from Venice and teach us, he spent two weeks with us, and he brought his homemade family recipes with him,"says Denise Bucher, Hawkins daughter.

During the training they also learned the difference between American ice cream and Italian ice cream.

"To be classified as an American ice cream it has to have 16 percent butter fat where as with gelato you have less then 4 percent butter fat and in your water base sorbets you have none at all," says Bucher.

So with that extra butter fat coating your taste buds you don't get the satisfying taste as you do with gelato.

"A lot of times people try gelato and they think the flavor is so much stronger, and it’s not necessarily that we intensify the flavor we just don't have all that butter fat in there," says Bucher.

And to get these flavors, Gelato Junction uses local dairy and produce from other businesses around town, such as Palisade Peaches and Olathe Sweet Corn.

"We really want to back the local economy as much as we possibly can were all about community involvement," says Bucher.

Even though Gelato Junction is all about supporting locals there is one special ingredient they can't get anywhere on the Western Slope. "The secret ingredients are basically the products we buy from Italy," says Hawkins.

Flavors such as avocado, and beet along with more than one hundred different flavors of gelato have crossed the counters at Gelato Junction, and nothing stops Denise and her family from experimenting different flavors, especially now that they have two locations to serve up the sweet treat.

"The sky's the limit and we love to do research and experiment in the kitchen and we'll try different flavors and variations of flavors, and combinations of flavors," says Bucher.

With so many flavors this local creamy treat is for sure going to satisfy you taste buds with their new location located at 2913 F Road in the Safeway shopping center.

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