ESE ROME students visit EATALY

On January 23rd 2020 the European School of Economics Rome Campus‘ students had the chance to visit EATALY Rome that is located near the Ostiense train station, in the Garbatella neighborhood. EATALY stands for “Eating Italian” which encompasses the history and the food culture of Italy, the ease to prepare its dishes, and the many qualities that Italy has to offer. As well as EATALY is a food market it is an international company. EATALY Rome is the biggest store of the 35 stores all over the world with its 4 floors, 17.000 sqm, 400 employees.

Our company visit started with a welcome coffee break with our guide Gregorio Baffigo, Business Planning Analyst, that introduced us to how employees of EATALY are thinking: they are passionate about food and the Italian culture. After the coffee, the group went to the Aula del Vino where the students got a brief introduction of EATALY’s concept, presented by Gregorio. He explained that the idea behind EATALY was born in 2002 by Oscar Farinetti, an Italian entrepreneur that wanted to create a place where the Italian food and specialties are presented and sold in the best way possible. At the same time he wanted to build a place that customers really enjoyed and would love to return a next time. EATALY’s motto is “eat, shop, learn”, because in all EATALY stores it is possible to eat (taste) and buy Italian specialties and learn everything about the producers behind the Italian food culture.

The presentation carried on in a very interactive way, ESE Rome students read the “Manifesto” of EATALY that allowed them to understand the key points of this firm: passion, customer first and the importance of story-telling. Thanks to many interesting questions asked by the students, Gregorio also talked about the biggest challenges: finding the right place first of all, with a lot of traffic in sense of people. And secondly finding the right people with the same passion.
The tour led the students through all 4 floors of EATALY, showing the different sections of fresh and dry food. Thanks to the knowledge and shared experience of Gregorio, the students also learned how important sustainability is in this current decade.

Finally, the group got the chance to try the Italian food culture themselves as well! All started with bread, followed by three kinds of pizza and finished with the famous pasta ‘cacio e pepe’.

The European School of Economics of Rome  would like to thank EATALY for this interesting and delicious tour of the store itself, but most importantly, for showing our students all the business, internship and career opportunities within a company like Eataly and for inspiring them to learn more about the field the Italian food culture.