Nicola Farinetti jokes that his mission is to “ruin” his customers’ lives. According to the boss of Eataly: “Once you’re a foodie, that’s the only thing you’re going to think about for the rest of your life. It comes down to, ‘How much can we make you fall in love with food?’ ”
Eataly’s six-month-old London outlet, a 42,000 sq ft site that’s a stone throw from Liverpool Street railway station, offers no shortage of temptations. There are more than 6,000 Italian products, from pasta to panettone, four restaurants, London’s biggest Italian winery, a butcher, a food-to-go area and a cookery school. All that may sound like a food hall with bells on, but Farinetti, chief executive of the family-owned business, insists that’s to miss the point. This is not a marketplace at all: Eataly owns and operates almost every store or restaurant on its sites. “We are a very non-standard organisation. People confuse us with food halls, but the difference is we do everything.”
Eataly may be a start-up in Britain, but it’s well established elsewhere, employing more than 8,400 people in 16 countries and welcoming about 39 million visitors a year. The company was founded by Farinetti’s father, Oscar, 67, in 2007 in Turin, Italy. Farinetti Sr had sold Unieuro, a household appliance chain, in 2003 for £230 million and wanted to start a business on the back of his observation that most people know surprisingly little about food.
“Less than 35 per cent of Italians know the difference between soft wheat and durum wheat, but over 60 per cent know what ABS means. It’s because car salesmen explain anti-lock braking systems, but food sellers don’t explain a thing,” Farinetti Sr explained last year.
His son, 37, has bought into that vision. “We go into a country knowing that people know about 10 per cent of what Italy does. We need to focus on the 90 per cent so we can preserve biodiversity. Look at prosecco. We are bringing in about 20 producers who are very much not known in London and who can raise the game.”
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Born in Alba in Italy’s Piedmont region, Farinetti has been working in the family business since 2007 after graduating with a political science degree from the University of Turin. He started in Eataly’s beer department, before managing the opening of the company’s Bologna site and going on to become head of its business in the United States. His father, now focusing on his career as an author, is no longer directly involved, although his son still uses him as a sounding board and for “fuel and creativity”.
The company’s mantra is “eat, shop, learn” and there is an emphasis on live demonstrations, tastings and open kitchens. “Our focus is convincing you to buy better food and for you to learn how to treat food at home.
“Italian food is fantastic because it was born at home. French food is born in the restaurant. There’s nothing wrong with that, but you are never going to learn how to make foie gras, it’s too complicated. But you can make spaghetti with tomato because the quality of the ingredients is more important than the skills you carry.”
Fresh local produce is on the menu alongside Italian goods — for example, in Britain, small local farms are used for the milk in the cheeses made on-site. “It gets the cultures closer together. We only export what we believe is truly worth exporting, where the terroir truly makes a difference and where we want to preserve a tradition and help a community that makes the products. Food is connected to ethnicity, dialects, down to a small village. And if they [stop producing local food], they lose part of their culture.”
Working with local suppliers is fun for staff: “There are always things that are awesome in all the countries we work in. Producers are the most beautiful human beings, you want to spend time with them to put your life in order. The guy in the produce department in London knows the name of the person behind every single tomato or artichoke we sell. We try and [cut out ]the middleman as much as we can and talk directly to the producer.”
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Working with lots of relatively small producers brings its headaches, but Farinetti insists the business is determined not to pass pain down supply chains. “We never force them to try to make more than they are capable of. Finding enough pasta should be my nightmare, not the producers’.”
The company has sometimes taken a stake in its suppliers — for example buying half of a meat business when it noticed price pressures were lowering the quality. “They were finding themselves treating the animals worse, the meat isn’t as good for us and their son or daughter doesn’t want to work in the business any more. So we decided to pay more and sell the meat in the right way; something you eat less of and explain why it’s fantastic.”
Eataly has not been immune from problems in supply chains. “It’s not the food itself. Pallets cost four times more than they used to. Aluminium, transport, it’s everything around the food.” Farinetti adds that Brexit is likely to add to the complications as import controls are phased in next year. “The changes are drastic, there will be issues. Paperwork won’t be done 100 per cent right, [particularly among] the type of producers we work with. But I don’t think it will be a big issue or a long one. This is an important market and people will work it out. For sure something’s gonna happen. Food, we’ve got it, and everything else, we’ll work on it.”
The company has long said that a flotation is on the cards, but the disruption brought about by the pandemic — sales were down by 30 per cent in 2020 compared with 2019’s €520 million — means it’s on the back-burner for now, but it remains the long-term goal “if we’re going to keep growing and be what we’d like to be. In business, Italy is known for fashion, such as Versaci, Armani, for cars, with Ferrari and Lamborghini, but there is not a big Italian global food brand. If we are going to be that guy. We should be owned by everybody.”
Trying to make progress when you can’t get the staff
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Eataly’s London venture, representing store No 43 and its 16th country, has created about 300 jobs and Nicola Farinetti says that 150 more could be on the cards in the capital — if he can find the workers, that is (James Hurley writes). The biggest contemporary challenge for Eataly is dealing with a staffing crisis in hospitality, with one in five workers having left the sector during the pandemic.
Brexit is often cited as having exacerbated the problem, but Farinetti notes it’s not a uniquely British problem: “It isn’t just London, it’s everywhere in the world, from Sao Paulo to Dallas to Rome. I didn’t see this issue coming so strongly.”
Thus companies like his will have to work harder to attract people, including having a “mission people buy into. Few people want to work now just for the payment, you have to carry some value to be chosen.”
Companies are also having to find ways to offer more flexibility for staff, “the ability to plan your life not only to company priorities” even when that is difficult to do. “For restaurants, that is a harder challenge. You have evenings and weekends to work. We’re working on it and we’re confident we’ll get better.”
Difficulties in hiring added to the hurdles that Eataly faced in opening its London site in April, with the launch delayed by Covid lockdowns. “Everyone has been going through a lot in the pandemic and then you finally open and you’re missing 50 people and have to work twice as hard — it’s difficult. We were really confident about London but, it’s been quite complex. We needed faith in the vaccination programme, faith that people wanted to come back to real life. It has been difficult because you have a team on the ground in London you want to keep motivated. You can’t fly to see them and the opening day keeps changing. I’m very happy we didn’t wait [any longer].”
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A desire for new experiences boosted visitor numbers once Eataly opened its doors, with strong trade even while traveller numbers through nearby Liverpool Street station remained markedly down on pre-pandemic levels.
The emphasis is on quality, not hitting a certain price point: “Food is the only thing you buy that enters you and becomes you. Our budget for it should reflect that.”
Not that Londoners have all been going for healthy options. Thus far, they have shown a taste for Eataly’s made-on-site mozzarella and various delicacies from its sweet counter.
