The opening of Expo 2015, which is a historic event for our country and, in particular, for the Italian food system, raises the question as to which image of made in Italy we want to showcase.
Take the example of SanPellegrino: it well used the Italianness of the brand within the power of the Nestlé Group, which intelligently defended the peculiarity of the Italian brand in the international markets and has created dedicated commercial structures, it has lead other Italian brands and continued to create wealth in our country. We were pleased to find confirmation of our thesis in an essay by Francesco Pugliese (ceo of Conad) written with the intention of breaking down clichés that hamper the development of the country: “We can say that the expression ‘Italian’ was used for many years as a useful excuse to avoid affecting trade-union agreements, conservativeness, dated dynamics, ailing companies. – writes Pugliese – Our interest, I speak as an entrepreneur and as a manager, can not be linked to ‘who is the company’, but ‘what does that company’ do for our country. ”
Following this line of thought, which places made in Italy above any question of propriety dimension, but links it to quality of a unique ‘know-how’, we can only be glad to represent within Expo this concept through a format like Eataly. An extraordinary merit of Farinetti (besides that of being able to tell the world the beauty and flavour of our biodiversity) is what he has been able to do by putting small artisan local companies and large multinationals all under one umbrella – not without incurring criticism from the most fundamentalists. In the name of quality the idle cliché of ‘small is beautiful’ was bypassed because beauty is not synonymous to greatness, but of production. “We speak of Italian know-how – he explained in the interview published on Food magazine –. I want to be able to offer consumers around the world who seek the best of made in Italy both mass market products (which are of high quality) and super niche products. We want to continue to export Barilla together with our 1,900 small producers who we have helped to grow”.
By Maria Cristina Alfieri