Opening its first London restaurant in the middle of a pandemic was always going to be a challenge for Nicola Farinetti, the chief executive of Eataly, the world’s largest Italian food market and restaurant concept.
Already a staple in the GCC where the brand has outlets in Dubai, Riyadh, Kuwait and Doha, Mr Farinetti said London has been on its radar for several years, but the pandemic delayed its launch date.
Londoners were able to eat indoors in the UK for the first this year on May 17, with the easing Covid-19 restrictions allowing the expansion to go ahead.
“It’s been pretty challenging,” said Mr Farinetti, while seated in Pasta e Pizza, one of two restaurants set to open at the company’s new Broadgate location in the UK capital, situated next to Liverpool Street station.
“The UK government made it as easy as they could by giving us such a long roadmap with a lot of visibility through the month. We haven't seen that anywhere else, and that really helped us plan the opening.”
The brand pushed back its original opening date in the second half of last year as the pandemic took hold and the restrictions “made it impossible” to launch the 42,000 square foot space that includes restaurants, bars and a retail concept.
Eataly opened the market and retail space on April 29 along with its takeaway offering and outdoor dining concept, La Terazza di Eataly.
Its indoor ground-floor restaurant began serving customers on May 17 in line with the government regulations, with its new restaurants Cucina del Mercato and Pasta e Pizza, opening on Thursday in a ceremony attended by London mayor Sadiq Khan.
While the roadmap eased the opening timeline, managing this process from the head office in Milan has not been an easy task for Mr Farinetti.
“It's been difficult working remotely, understanding Covid regulations from a different geographic area, hiring people, training people – so it's been challenge,” he said.
“But at the end, because of this incredibly weird period that we had over the past year, the opening part is actually the best, because we are finally actually doing it.”
Like many hospitality businesses, finding 300 workers to staff its new store was also no easy feat. As venues reopened to the public last month, hospitality employers said they were struggling to recruit waiters and chefs to fill the 355,000 positions lost during the pandemic.
While some furloughed workers chose to work in other industries because of the unstable nature of the hospitality sector during the crisis, European and foreign workers are struggling to return to the UK because of travel restrictions, creating a “crunch point” for the sector.
“Yes, it’s been difficult but we are seeing that all over the world,” said Mr Farinetti.
“We've been able to find good talent but it's going to be a challenge for quite some time. A restaurant job has been a hard position to handle in the last year so many people are deciding to transition, or maybe they feel it’s not a job they feel secure in anymore.”
Mr Farinetti considered a number of locations for the London branch before settling on the large space next door to Liverpool Street Station in the heart of the city, that is not too touristy but somewhere that people work and live.
However, the UK capital is only just recovering from the lockdown, with the majority of workers still toiling away at home rather than getting on to trains and tubes for the commute to work.
“Of course, today the footfall is not the same, the regulations are still not defined, we still have many challenges with Covid, and the rest of the industry only just opened inside on Monday,” said Mr Farinetti.
But the businessman remains hopeful, saying human beings are “always going to share time and space together” and with time activity will pick up.
“Is it going to be a little different? Yes. Is commerce going to have a bigger role? Yes. Is delivery going to be more important? Probably,” he said.
“We are ready to face whatever challenge we're going to see but today, it's too early. Within a few months, we're all going to be much happier and the traffic is going to be even higher.”
Despite the uncertainty, the company has more than 20,000 reservations in June for the two restaurants opening on Thursday, and the response to the opening of its other dining outlets has also been positive.
“Considering the amount of people that we can let into the store, which is actually much smaller than what we planned before the pandemic, we did more than 100,000 customers in the first 15 days," said Mr Farintetti.
“Almost 10,000 people a day ate in our outside space and the retail is going very well as well."
With the UK's Covid restrictions set to be lifted fully from June 21, Mr Farinetti expects an even higher footfall in the summer.
“People cannot wait, they are ready to go out," he said.
“They understand how Covid works and what they need to do to be careful. The number of vaccinations is growing, there is trust in the scientific community. So I'm not worried. I just know I need to be patient."
He also hopes some of his clientele in his Middle East stores will drop in when they can eventually fly into London as travel restrictions to the UK ease.
The region’s flagship store in Dubai Mall is under renovation and is set to reopen in the summer, to tie in with the start of the Dubai Expo 2020 in November.
“We want to make sure that we are there settled, ready and looking good. It’s a big important moment for the world and you want to present yourself all cleaned up,” he said.
More Eataly stores will open in the GCC this year, including in the UAE, but Mr Farinetti did not disclose the locations. The region's stores are part of Eataly’s franchise model with its partner Lebanon-based Azadea Group.
“The partnership is working very well, we have such an open line of communication and we send people over there and they send people to us to be trained,” he said.
The success in the Middle East is also down to the discerning tastes of its clientele.
“We have noticed how curious the customers are and how their expectation for authenticity is much higher than many retailers believe,” he said.
“The fact that Italian food was born in the kitchen and not in restaurants makes it easier to appreciate and understand and it’s also easy to be learnt and replicated at home.”
This is the basis for Eataly’s business model, with customers able to "eat, shop and learn” at the outlets, with the brand’s name a fusion of the two words eat and Italy. Customers can either eat at the outlets, shop for high-quality Italian food or learn through cooking classes.
First set up in Italy in 2007 by Mr Farinetti's father Oscar, there are now more than 40 Eataly stores across the globe, with the company either franchising the concept in the Middle East and Far East or directly investing into new outlets across Europe and the US.
In London, a direct investment by Eataly, the company is rolling out new concepts, such as a restaurant where customers can buy the ingredients they want for their meal and the chefs cook it on the spot.
The London venture also focuses more on sustainability, with a bulk refill section, the first packaging-free area in the world and an online shop and delivery service from the fresh market counters.
While the pandemic delayed the UK launch, the company has still managed to expand to Dallas and Japan during the pandemic.
However its growth rate, which was 20 to 25 per cent on average every year pre-pandemic, was severely dented by the Covid-19 crisis.
“Obviously 2020 has been a bad year for our company – almost 50 per cent of the business is based on restaurants with many closed all over the world. But now we're back on track almost everywhere and the numbers are growing very quickly,” Mr Farinetti said.
The stores in the Middle East are proving particularly resilient, with two already reaching their 2019 pre-pandemic numbers.
One thing that has helped the business was the fact that Italy was one of the first countries across the world to go into lockdown, giving the business valuable insights into the challenges to come.
“In a moment where everything was so confused, and no one really knew exactly how big the issue was, we unfortunately got to experience that first hand. So, we were able to transfer our know-how through all our stores across the world and we were ready much earlier than others,” he said.
Now the company’s growth strategy is ramping up again, with a store in San Jose in the US on the cards as well as another in Verona, Italy.
“Our expansion plan hasn't really changed. Of course, a few things were postponed – we lost the last six to nine months – but we're pushing forwards and expect to keep growing again from 2022.”
For today, however, the focus is London, with the store opening with the traditional cutting of a ribbon made from fresh pasta.
Mr Farinetti said: “We have this idea that if you eat better, you live better and in order to do this we need to go in the most important cities and London is one of the most important – we call it one of the megaphones of the world.”
