Your experience, you have a number of views of the food landscape and beverage landscape. So are there some trends that you feel are important today? I mean, the trends that in the next future will be interesting in the business, or as a broad view for the food and beverage business. Yeah, I think there are so many trends. It's almost scary to even try to pick a few. I hope sort of for ecological reasons, and for reasons related to people who make their living growing food that people continue to be interested in eating food that is produced in a sustainable approach. And I hope that the sort of widespread green washing of food products starts to not be a trend anymore. And hopefully we can, as consumers, as eaters, and as people who sort of have to live on this earth and drink its water and eat food that comes from its soil can start to rely on individuals producing food again, rather than exclusively relying on industrial food. I love this trend that's going on in Italy right now towards Italian craft beer production. I think it's an interesting time for beverage culture. And although there's this stereotype that Italians only drink wine and they drink wine at every meal. That's simply not true, like statistics show that and we can go to do lots of interviews and prove that for ourselves. And although there are a lot of elements of traditional Italian culture, craft beer is this ultimate expression of creativity and socializing and culture and territory that is a lot easier to enter into than let's say a vineyard or a pasta company. So I like these trends of small businesses opening and people who are dedicated to not just making food but also knowing the people who grow the ingredients that make their food. Those are promising trends for sure. I hope that those persist. Basically, it's going back to the community value of food, food consumption and food production. Yeah, I hope so to a certain extent. I know that sort of from a global agricultural development standpoint, we shouldn't just exclusively be devoted to local food. But hopefully, we can start bringing dignity back to the people that make food and wine, and do these beautiful products. Whether they're very creative like Italian craft beer, or super traditional like pasta di gragnano. >> And this is more on the food, let's say, prepared through the food manufacturer, let's say. What about food service? Do you feel there are any interesting trends in the food service, the restaurant business or bars, or? Yeah. Shall I speak about Rome? I think that there's an interesting moment happening in Rome and some other cities in which many young people maybe a decade ago, left and went to work in bars abroad. And were exposed to new flavors and new spirits, or maybe introduced to Italian spirits for the first time. And then have come back because they want to live in their hometown or their home country. And they're bringing a knowledge, like a really deep knowledge to beverage culture that was absent before. And I see that in Milan and I see that in Rome and to some extent in other cities where there is for a long time many young people who went into food service were perhaps just doing it to pay for school or earn money, but now are considering those jobs once again to be professional jobs for life. So I think that in terms of the service trends seems to be something I've been observing a lot of in big Italian cities. My perception is one of the trends that I actually don't have a clear point of view about this is that the blurring of the, basically of the differences across some services. You find food in shops selling many different things. Yeah. Once food was sold in specific, although with different formats, but with specific outlets. Restaurants and bars, with differences. Now you can find the food sold in places where they sell flowers, where they sell books, where they sell everything. I see it as a trend. Um-hm I don't know, sometimes I struggle to have a clear point of view about it but I must admit that I don't have a clear point of view. Do you have one? I do, I do have a clear point of view on this. I mean, I think I have also noticed the same losing of structured food spaces. And in Rome or Milan or really any Italian city, there have been longstanding laws in unification that establish food spaces and sort of dictate what types of things can be sold there. And since the European Union has become a reality, because laws that govern food spaces can sort of be negotiated a little bit differently, you find in markets in Rome or Florence. People prepare food and actually sell sandwiches to go, which for Rome that's a totally new thing, and it's something that is emerging for a variety of reasons. One is decade of recession and economic difficulty. And people wanna have something that's traditional and tastes good and feels home made, but costs three euros and is made by someone who they can see face to face. And not get their food from a vending machine necessarily. And definitely, the cost of everything involved in the food industry, from rent to labor to raw materials mandates that places monetize their real estate as much as possible. So we're finding restaurants that will open for breakfast even, and serve pastries and coffee. And then they'll stay open until two in the morning which was not ever the case a decade ago, but is slowly being phased in. So that places can sell food, they can sell beverages, they can sell the ingredients that they use off the shelves, and generate more revenue in a time when you can't close in the afternoon, or all of August anymore and expect to survive. So you're saying there's more of a financial reason behind this new evidence? I do. I do, and I think there wasn't necessarily critical mass a few years ago but that's changing. There were just a few spaces that looked at other European models or American models for food halls and have adapted those for modern Italian economic exigencies. And they've been really effective in a lot of places. And the market which is the most symbolically traditional place in all of Italian food commerce is where we can actually see a really dynamic change in a very short time. And individual neighborhoods are mirrored by their market spaces. And so, it's a little bit more difficult to open a restaurant and sort of chart how that changes and who's demanding what at what time. But to see a market in sort of in the swing of providing what locals need based on their economic needs, offering things they might even never have thought they needed. Nobody was standing in front of the butcher stalls in the Testaccio market saying, I wish you would make a tripe sandwich. In fact it was a clever butcher who said look, I don't wanna do this anymore. I wanna make food, so I'm just gonna open a stall and sell tripe. And people followed him and his stall's packed. His name is Sergio Esposito. I highly recommend a visit when you go to Testaccio, at box number 15 in the market. And he inspired a huge number of prepared food stalls in the same little strip of the market where he is. So I think it takes a little bit of a catalyst. But it's a small but significant paradigm shift in dining in that very traditional neighborhood. And I've seen other examples like that elsewhere. Yeah. Now, there is a sort of narrow obsession about sustainable food, organic food. I mean, it seems like an ideology. So although there are extremely sound, good reasons obviously behind the idea of more sustainable world, in general, also sustainable food that it seems to me that now it has taken a sort of a very ideological approach. I mean, it's like you are in favor or against. And if you are against, you are against. And since you are against, you have something wrong. Sure. No, I mean I definitely agree, I think marketing has played really considerably into that. And I think that it's such a difficult topic to discuss because the definition of sustainability is constantly shifting depending on your source but also what are the parameters, what are the geographic definitions of sustainability? Should we shun a certain ingredient because it grows far away, and then leave the people that cultivate that product to not have a revenue source or a way to perpetuate their traditional food? And I think certainly in some sectors, it has become ideology for sure. But I think, generally, I mean maybe we should sort of change the terminology about it and just strive to think about where our food comes from, think about who makes it. Think about who is trying to sell it to us and why. Ask, are the people who pick the oranges that go into my orange juice being paid? If so, how much? And sort of think of food as not just the end product but as part of a larger global system. And we, I think in a lot of ways as consumers, we're kept in this deliberately obscure place where we're not really supposed to know all the steps. But knowledge is power, so I mean, I definitely agree, sustainability is a word that's used. Organic is a word that's misused. Biodynamic is a word that is constantly changing depending on who's using it. But yeah, it's difficult to mandate behavior from people without sounding ideological or dictatorial. But I think we can all sort of agree that if someone's making food, they should be paid a fair price for it, and it probably shouldn't be distributed in the least efficient way. Try to be as non-wasteful as possible. Maybe that's a good mantra. Yeah, I agree with you that this theme of terminologies are important. And I'm sure that your job, the job of people writing about food is a very revalent one in order to set a clear terminology. I remember a friend of mine, a few weeks ago, a friend of mine living in San Francisco, told me that she went to a coffee bar. And in the coffee bar, there was written, everything you eat and drink and here is zero kilometer grown. Right. And so that coffee grown in San Francisco is very, so the idea is, no, when you talk about zero kilometers, what does it mean? Yeah, you always have to ask that question. What are you trying to sell me? Exactly. Terminology is important because it helps people make sense, and so we go back to one of the main topics about food marketing and reviews, about the terminology used. The terminology is inclusive. So it really helps people to make sense of the world in a way that they could use in order to be happier or more expert in the topic. Or the terminology is exclusive so people tend to, they don't understand very clearly and so they basically learn the term but they do not learn what the term means basically. So there is a lot of confusion. Absolutely. Since that storytelling is a very hot topic today. Many companies, whichever the sector they are, they try to tell a story and sometimes the story goes much father than the industry or the sector they compete in. So in this case, Coca-Cola, according to few is more into the fashion world. How do we appreciate this? I mean you are a food expert. You write about food, so I mean being a food specialist could be or should be something that we appreciate. But in some cases like Coca-Cola is an example of a huge multinational, but we can take it as an example of a broader topic. How do you appreciate companies that try to, or companies, or restaurants or operators in the business who try to move a bit further from their main business or main tradition by innovating basically? I think it's something that's so common. And sort of like expanding beyond your base and creating new opportunities is something that corporations have been doing for decades. So I think it's a sort of natural feature of businesses like this, and cross-promotional partnerships are a fundamental aspect as well. So I don't find it necessarily offensive. I find it completely valid and normal way for a corporation to maneuver to expand its market. Particularly one as dominant as Coca Cola, which has such global reach and they have to innovate in order to stay relevant. I remember, a few years ago I'm passionate about food and I'm also passionate about contemporary art. And I was impressed, but I completely understood when was invited in one of the most important contemporary art fairs at Documenta in Kassel. As one of the artists to present his artworks, and so I reflected a lot on this, but I found it really comprehensible. It's a matter of creativity, and creativity has basically ways to manifest itself, but not necessarily constraints given by the typical industry or typical area where you manifest them, this kind of creativity. No, it's a super fascinating factor. Okay, I think we are perfectly on time so let me thank you so much. My pleasure. For this conversation. And thank you all the members of our community interacting with us, and we will have the forums to keep on interacting and debating this topic. So have a nice day, for those of you who are in the day time, and have a nice night, for those of you who are in the night time. And keep on enjoying on the hour, the rest of the course. Ciao.
