HiO ICE CREAM Atelier

A founder who left no discipline behind so much as invented his own: HiO began in April 2019 as a single small workshop on a residential green path in Jiyugaoka, built on Nishio Shuhei's own visits to more than fifty producers, and has since scaled from one atelier to a department-store counter and retail-chain distribution without moving its base of small-batch, glass-walled production. That trajectory from craft workshop to Nihonbashi Mitsukoshi is the scale-and-experimentation story Kyoto's specialists, by design, do not tell.

What we know

Founder personally visited more than fifty producers to select ingredients, stated in the brand's own 'Farm to Cup' philosophy text
Small-batch production explicitly chosen over industrial-line manufacturing so that limited-volume, single-origin ingredients can be used, per the official About page
Uses Italian-made ice-cream machines chosen for their ability to aerate and chill quickly, cited as the reason for the product's texture
Weathered a 2020 pandemic lockdown that closed the shop entirely, then in 2024 opened Tokyo's first permanent department-store counter for the brand inside Nihonbashi Mitsukoshi, and now also sells through Natural Lawson and Seijo Ishii retail chains
Customers can watch the entire making process through the Atelier's glass factory windows

Status: open
Address: Tokyo, Setagaya-ku, Okusawa 7-4-12
Maker: Nishio Shuhei, founder (signs the shop's own anniversary post as 'HiO ICE CREAM daihyo no Nishio')
Opened: 2019
Website: hioicecream.com/
Last checked: 2026-08-21

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