So haute patisserie chooses the path of large-scale distribution

It is the sweetest declination of accessible luxury and is conquering Italians also because it has left the elite shops and starred restaurants to land in shopping streets, supermarkets, shopping centres and even stations and airports. "Haute patisserie is growing and changing," explains Marina Savoia, editor of Gambero Rosso's Pastry Chefs & Pastry Shops Guide 2025, "and it is approaching an increasingly broader public, driven by the success on social media and the popularity of pastry chefs who are now TV personalities, such as Iginio Massari and Damiano Carrara. And sometimes even real brands'. Rinaldini has become the signboard of a chain of pastry shops, Bruno Barbieri has redesigned and signed Motta sweets, while acknowledged masters Sal De Riso, Luigi Biasetto and Luca Montersino supply their delicacies to the premises of the Autogrill group.

The democratisation of artisan confectionery, which represents the Italians' touchpoint with the world of starred cuisine, is driving the expansion of the sector and opening up new spaces in a market 'greedy' for sweet novelties. In fact, Italy accounts for 40% of the total out-of-home pastry consumption of the five main European markets, which amounts to€11.4 billion, Circana estimates.

"We have intercepted at birth and helped develop the focus on the quality of pastry making, investing and multiplying the opportunities to meet and experience our brand," explains Alex Kossuta, CEO of Iginio Massari Alta Pasticceria, which has a turnover of 20 million euro and is growing at double digit rates year on year. Merit also goes to a multi-channel approach, which includes six flagship stores and 16 temporary shops (some in major railway stations). A few months ago, Iginio Massari also started collaborating with the retailer Iper La grande i, leading the R&S team that developed the BuoniMaestri project, a range of private label haute patisserie, sold (for now) only in some of the sign's shops. "This collaboration is a bridge between the art of confectionery and the world of large-scale retail, sharing innovation and attention to quality," explain Iper La grande i.

The success of Elisenda, the brand created by Esselunga in partnership with the Cerea family's Michelin-starred restaurant Da Vittorio, is proving that artisan confectionery is an interesting business. "Elisenda's challenge was to verify whether the large-scale retail trade customer could appreciate the high quality pastries," explains Giuseppe Ferrandi, head of bread and pastry purchasing at Esselunga. "The next step was to invest in setting up the in-house laboratory and studying how to incorporate the Cerea family's pastry production flows into the Esselunga system. So the company 'engineered' the pastry and took it on a large scale, finding solutions to keep the pastries good and beautiful even during storage, transport and display in the superstores, which were redesigned to accommodate the Elisenda corners.

The Cerea team follows the entire product chain, from development to quality control, directly in the brand's maxi-laboratory in Pioltello, which is as big as an average food company with its 145 employees working seven days a week, producing around 50 recipes every day, starting with ingredients from the Esselunga supply chain. Production is done on demand, according to orders received from the shops where they arrive within 24 hours. The best sellers remain the cakes with fruit, but the macaron, also sold at the bar of the Teatro alla Scala (15 thousand pieces a day with peaks of 35 thousand) and the maritozzi (1,200 pieces produced and filled by hand every day) are also flying.