QUALITALY 140

June/July 2024 VII MAGAZINE neighbourhood, or so Marco Magnocavallo and Juliette Bellavita (founders of Tannico, forerunner of online wine sales, which they sold to the Campari and Moet Hennessy group venture) felt, so much so that they decided to take over the reins while keeping the name, Rosticceria Palazzi since 1992. Shaping the culinary offer was a well-known name, chef Matias Perdomo of Contraste , a Milanese star, who joined the project with partners Simone Press and Thomas Piras . But the substance remains the same: tasty, comfort food, of which the Italian regional tradition is very rich, and no gourmet elucubrations. Thus, lasagne, mondeghili, parmigiana, vitello tonnato and roast chicken appear in the shop window. Particular attention is paid to the wine list, and this is not surprising given the (new) birthplace: at the aperitif, the union of wine and food finds its most accomplished moment. LESS IS MORE A desire for simplicity, ‘the joy of a well-made dish’ as Magnocavallo and Bellavita call it, a return to origins, perhaps even a tiredness towards a haute cuisine that has lost sight of the customer’s ‘’stomach’’ desires and needs. And that (also) for this is risking its very existence. And then, of course, there is the crisis, the stagnant wages and the rising cost of living, in the face of less and less time and ability to prepare dinner at home and the gradual disappearance of grandmothers and aunts who are cooks (who nowadays, perhaps and fortunately, also have other things to do). The time is probably ripe again, in short, for this revamped, revised and corrected format. __________________________________ BOX From Dolce Vita to today, the pioneer lies in the capital Among this forest of new openings, a pionerr if you like is there: it is in Rome and is called Ristorante Salumeria Roscioli. Founded in 1992 as the ‘’offshoot’’ of the family bakery, a historic bakery that Marco Roscioli built after arriving from the Marche region in the 1950s, it is a true institution and, in a sense, he was right on the mark. Entrusted to his son Alessandro , for ten years he ‘researched and experimented, searching for an identity’. And in 2002, completely renovated, he opened the new Salumeria Roscioli: ‘restaurant, delicatessen, cold cuts and cheese counter. Wines and spirits, take- away and home delivery. In the heart of the capital, just a few steps from Campo de’ Fiori, a historic restaurant with a menu based on great ingredients, constant interaction with the cold cuts and cheese counter, and true Roman and Italian cuisine’ Is this not the alpha and the omega, and the sum of it all? __________________________________ AT PAGE 28 DID YOU KNOW? Food, competitive leverage for hotels and restaurants LOCAL, ORGANIC AND HIGH-QUALITY PRODUCTS ARE APPEALING TO ITALIAN AND INTERNATIONAL CONSUMERS, OFTEN REFERRED TO IN POSITIVE REVIEWS LEFT ONLINE. THEY ARE ALSO AN ELEMENT THAT MAKES THE ESTABLISHMENT OR RESTAURANT BE PERCEIVED AS SUSTAINABLE. by Jessika Pini In Italy, food is the sector that registers the highest number of online reviews by users; in 2023, 25% of the comments left online were about food, and the number is growing compared to the previous year. A figure that underlines consumer interest in this component of the service offering and the importance they attach to it when eating out. Because of the wide range of customers that CIC has in the eating out sector, both in the catering and hotel industry, and because of its commitment to selecting quality products and communicating their added value, the Consortium was called upon, during the last edition of Cibus, to speak at the meeting Cibo: competitive advantage in the hotel and restaurant industry , organised by AIFBM (Italian Association of F&B managers and TrustYou). On this occasion, TrustYou presented research on the online reputation of hotels in Italy’s four most popular tourist cities: Florence, Venice, Rome and Milan. The analysis of millions of reviews left on various online portals showed that, in general, hotel ratings tended to be better in 2023 than in 2022, but the degree of satisfaction has not yet returned to pre-pandemic levels. Going into detail on the various semantic categories (services, reception, food, etc.), food is the only one that performs better in all cities than in 2019, while, compared to the same year, the ratings are more negative for price, attention to room cleanliness and facility maintenance. “Food quality has improved,” explained Beatrice Odelli , TrustYou’s Italy market development manager, “and when guests talk about it they do so by emphasising aspects such as local sourcing and organic certification, which leads to the inference that food represents a competitive lever for the hotel and is also crucial in the perception of how sustainable it is, it should therefore be considered an element on which to build a strategy to improve the hotel’s performance.” Riccardo Genovesi , director of the Salò Du Parc hotel on Lake Garda, confirms what emerged from the research and believes that organised catering is a fundamental component within accommodation facilities: a survey carried out in the lower Garda area showed that 40% of people prefer to book in a facility offering a catering service. BETWEEN TERRITORIALITY AND SUSTAINABILITY The trend of the importance attached to the link with the local territory through locally- sourced products and experiences with local cuisine now extends all across the country. “However, working on the competitiveness of the internal restaurant offer is more complicated in the historical centres of large cities, where the concentration of external restaurants is very high and varied,” observes Paolo Solari , corporate food & beverage manager of the Una Group. “The Group has set itself the target of being able to retain 15-20% of its customers in the structure. We realised that applying discounts is not enough, we need to improve the culinary offer with more local, traceable, regional and organic products. That is why, every week, we analyse the reviews of all our hotels, share the data and adapt the offer according to customers’ opinions.” Customers who, following the experience of the pandemic, have rightly become much more demanding with respect to food quality, observed Roberto Santarelli, founder of AIFBM, so much so that “after Covid in many supply contracts it is stipulated that failure to maintain a certain rating level in reviews can be cause for termination of the contract itself.” ‘MORE QUALITY, LESS WASTE’ In this discussion, Manola Scomparin , sales manager of CIC, explained what the Italian Catering Cooperative is actually doing to Luca Riccardi , il responsabile del bar di Attymo