Louisiana, Home of the SnoBall

The history of the summer treat's New Orleans origins

by

Louisiana is famous for its food and its cocktails, for its coffees and spices. But where do all these products begin?

We (writer-photographer duo Kristy and Paul Christiansen) are on a mission to discover the origins of some of our most famous and unique locally made products through the bi-monthly Country Roads series, “Made in Louisiana”.

On any summer day in New Orleans, hordes of people line the sidewalks waiting their turn to soften the sweltering heat with a decadently cold snoball. 

Growing up in Alabama, I spent my childhood enjoying a similar treat, albeit the ice was a little clunkier and we called them “snow cones”.  Having taste-tested both on numerous occasions, my preference has leaned Louisiana: snoballs, with their ice shaved so fine as to conjure up images of snowflakes melting on your tongue, are the superior summer treat. 

But it wasn’t until recently that I discovered that the secret behind snoballs’ particular delight actually had Louisiana origins. We followed them to a corporate-looking building on River Road near the Orleans /Jefferson Parish line. 

Walking into the headquarters of SnoWizard, Inc., my husband, Paul, and I were warmly greeted by a tiny, energetic Chihuahua, who herded us into the conference room to meet with SnoWizard CEO Ronnie Sciortino. Tall, animated, and Sicilian to the bone, Sciortino is the current owner of SnoWizard and the nephew of the business’s founder, George Ortolano—who invented one of the first mechanical snoball machines in the world. Sciortino immediately launched into his family’s illustrious history.

“We were a big, Italian family,” began Sciortino. “My grandparents had eight kids, one stillborn. They moved here from Vacherie and opened a grocery on Magazine and Constantinople in 1920. The former owners were Zatarains, who used to bottle Pa-Poose root beer in little bottles there.” 

Sciortino went on to detail how all the kids attended school until fifth or sixth grade before quitting to work in the grocery. Only Sciortino’s mother, Regina, the youngest of the children, was allowed to attend her full years of school. Years passed and several of the children opened their own groceries, including Sciortino’s Uncle George Ortolano. 

Hoping to bring in more income in the sweltering New Orleans summers, Ortolano noticed the popularity of a shaved ice business up the street—operated manually by turning a crank to grind the block of ice. “But he wanted a finer ice, like the hand planes could make.” In 1936, his uncle George successfully designed a machine that could create the delicate snow he envisioned. He made four original machines and put them in his family’s groceries scattered throughout the city. At his own grocery, he sold snow cones in Chinese food pails.

Using one of his brother’s machines, another Ortolano brother, Frank, opened a true snow cone “stand” on Elysian Fields, a pop-up shop that he could put together in half an hour and, at the end of the season, dismantle and store in his garage. Sciortino explained that this contraption was the origination of the phrase “snow cone stand.” Frank was so successful with his business that he made enough money to open the Steer Inn restaurant in the late 1950s, a car hop BBQ burger joint near Pontchartrain Beach. (Frank also designed a conveyer grill for his burgers, the prototype of which was incorporated into Burger King’s process and is still used by the chain today—but that’s a story for another time.)

Meanwhile, George Ortolano became a shipbuilder for the war efforts of the 1940s. Using his newly obtained welding skills, he began tweaking his machine and, in 1948, went into full-on production, calling his early invention the Snow-Wizard Snow-Ball Machine. In the early years, all the machine parts were made by hand; but as his sales increased, Ortolano began automating production and standardizing parts. With the new changes also came a new name, the SnoWizard SnoBall Machine®, and thus: the New Orleans snoball was born.

Ortolano’s wife, Josie, played a crucial role in the snoball business as well, mixing existing extracts and flavorings to create new snoball flavors. Some, like nectar cream, ice cream, and chocolate cream, still grace the menu today. 

The baton was passed to Sciortino in 1981, when he bought the manufacturing business from his uncle, George. Four years later, he assumed the supply business of cups, flavors, and all the miscellaneous snoball accessories. He set about making improvements to the SnoWizard and has since built the company into an industry leader.

[Read more from Kristy & Paul Christiansen's "Made in Louisiana" series, here.]

Walking us through the warehouse floor, Sciortino pointed out a row of SnoWizard machines with colorful front doors. “We can make twenty machines at a time in five door colors,” he said. “We sell about three hundred machines per year, so I’ve probably made fifteen thousand machines since I took over the business.” Ninety-nine percent of his sales, he said, are made in the U.S., but SnoWizards have also been shipped to Australia, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and Honduras.

Upstairs, we entered Sciortino’s lab, where he spends most of his days mixing snoball flavors, starting with a super concentrated compound that is then combined with water, a preservative, and citric acid, if needed, to create a concentrate. Snoball stands then make their ready-to-use flavors by mixing the concentrates with simple syrup. When Sciortino took over, SnoWizard offered forty snoball flavors. He’s now expanded that selection to 150, plus other specialty flavors he sells to bakeries for cakes. 

“Our number one seller is strawberry,” he noted. “It has been forever, but coming really close is Tiger’s Blood. I think it’ll take over in the next few years.”

Back downstairs, we marveled at the seemingly endless racks of flavors, a display worthy of Willy Wonka’s factory. Itching to taste a few, we acquired some samples to bring home and try out with our own shaved-ice machine, the stepsister to SnoWizard’s superior fluffy ice maker. 

The SnoWizard headquarters are open to the public, and visitors can stop by at 101 River Road in New Orleans from 9 am–5 pm Monday through Friday, or 9 am–noon on Saturday. You can also shop online at snowizard.com.