An interview with Alessandro Savelli and Chris Rennoldson, founders of Pasta Evangelists, one of Forward Fooding’s top 500 Food Tech startups.

Alessandro Savelli, founder of Pasta Evangelists

It’s time to put a face to the name…

We asked our FoodTech 500 top-runners to give us a bit of insight into how they started out as a company and their thoughts on the role of technology in Food innovation. Meet Alessandro and Chris, the power-duo behind Pasta Evangelists, the freshest artisan pasta meal boxes delivered to your door which allow you to prepare authentic, restaurant quality dishes in 5 minutes. Let’s see what the founders had to say.

So tell us a little bit more about you! Where did the idea for your FoodTech company come from?

Alessandro: When I came to the UK, I was incredibly disappointed with the pasta choices available – both in terms of the scarcity of fresh pasta, as well as the amount of machine-made pasta available which was, quite frankly, a world away from the pasta I’d grown up with in Liguria. It saddened me that people had become complacent with the limited options available; I wanted others to experience fresh pasta, just like the handmade pasta I’d grown up making with my nonna. Pasta is so much more than a great tasting product – it’s a craft, it requires skill and artistry, and we seek to evangelise this through our artisanal dishes. We want to open up people’s minds to the myriad of pasta shapes and types across all of Italy’s regions. When a customer orders from us, we take them on a journey, transporting them to Italy through providing a story of each dish’s origins in our menu brochure and, I hope, enthusing them about great tasting, authentic Italian cuisine!

How is tech central to your business?

Alessandro and Chris: Tech fundamentally underpins our entire business model. As an e-commerce business, tech is an enabler for us as it transforms the way that consumers interact with us, enabling us to open up the touchpoints that we can have with our customers. It is also critical in fuelling our growth because of the ways it enables us to understand our customers better, allowing greater personalisation and service, thus ensuring their experience with us is as seamless as possible. Being a tech business is really exciting for us because it’s ever-changing and as a result, we are continuously adapting and changing in line with what our customers want!

Why do you think it’s important to see the food industry embrace tech?

Alessandro: I strongly believe that embracing technology is critical for long-term, sustainable growth for businesses within the food industry. It’s truly transformational. Not only in terms of its use in processing and packaging development and overall production efficiencies such as wastage control, but also in the overarching consumption experience. Consumers’ tastes and consumption habits are ever-changing – with increasing value placed on time and convenience, the way that consumers shop and eat is changing. Allowing customers to order with speed and ease, as well as offering greater personalised choices facilitated by technology is key. Technology allows businesses operating in the food industry to respond to these changing demands and failing to adapt in line with such changes is ultimately detrimental to business longevity.

 

Want to know more? Check out Pasta Evangelists’ full profile here.

Congratulations again to Pasta Evangelists for ranking 4th in the “Food Delivery” category of the Foodtech 500 list.

To find out who else made it into the FoodTech 500; the top Food Tech companies in the world, click here.

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