Growing weight of catering in 'Iper la Grande i' supermarkets

Always retailing but also increasingly catering. Also in franchising. The Finiper Canova Group, one of the big players in the large-scale retail trade in Italy with the Iper La grande i and Unes brands (22 hypermarkets and 206 supermarkets), is resolutely focusing on out-of-home consumption in (almost) all its forms: from ice cream parlours to bars, from casual dining to street food. Today, in the group's catering menu, which is taken care of by the company Iper Montebello Spa (1.7 billion euro turnover), there are four brands (Rom'Antica, Ristò, CremAmore and Portello Caffè) with 109 establishments in five regions, employing 1,200 people and with a turnover of 87 million euro. And other openings are planned by the end of the year, such as Ristò in Savignano al Rubicone, Rom'antica in Rimini and the tenth Iper restaurant at the Montebello della Battaglia shopping centre.

As Il Sole 24 Ore is able to anticipate, if today catering weighs 8.5% of the company's revenues, the objective is to reach 12% by 2027. "For us, however, catering in all its forms has more value in terms of service and image than in terms of revenue," emphasises Gianluca Grassi, communications director of the Finiper Canova Group.

The flagship store is Rom'antica, which offers 30 variants of Roman-style pan pizza every day, sold by weight, and which will close 2025 with 36 million euro in receipts. By the end of the year there will be 60 outlets, 40% in city centres. But the group also wants to increase this number to one hundred within three years by opening up to franchising, through the new business unit dedicated to this commercial formula already adopted for over a third of Unes supermarkets and now being extended to catering, with the declared objective of increasing the current value of franchising tenfold, entering new geographical areas more easily, including Rome.

This is an important turning point for the group, founded in 1974 (and still controlled and led) by Marco Brunelli, who until now in the catering sector has always invested in proprietary formats, of which he was a pioneer among the entrepreneurs of the Italian large-scale retail trade. The Iper were, in fact, the first large-scale distribution outlets to be equipped with spaces where gastronomic preparations and recipes made in in-house laboratories could be chosen and consumed, often directly before the eyes of customers. The group has been involved in catering since 1982 and in 2012 developed the first restaurants inside shopping malls, with the opening of the Musi Lunghi braceria in the Iper di Lonato. Since then, the openings, restyling and renovations of food outlets have been relentless. This is demonstrated by the recent repositioning of Ristò, the historic free-service restaurant brand in shopping centres, which now offers a more gourmet look for a better food experience, with the free flow reduced in favour of table service and the environments redesigned by the Amdl Circle studio of the famous architect Michele De Lucchi. And then there are the important partnerships, such as the management of the Casa Milan restaurant.

Among the latest novelties is the development of Giannasi, the historic Milanese delicatessen kiosk (4,000 roast chickens sold per week) in which the Finiper Canova Group took over the majority at the end of 2024, supporting a development plan that has already seen it enter two recently renovated urban covered markets (Isola and Rombon). And then there is street food: there are eleven 'Iper 1974-branded' food trucks that not only park outside the group's six shopping malls but also preside over important events throughout central and northern Italy (from tattoo conventions to Frecce Tricolori exhibitions), exclusively managing the entire food and beverage service.