1 · Position
Oscar Farinetti, previously in consumer electronics, opened the first Eataly in January 2007 in a closed vermouth factory in the Lingotto district of Turin, in partnership with Slow Food. The New York Times described it as a megastore combining a European open market, a Whole Foods-style supermarket, a high-end food court and a New Age learning centre. The learning centre is the part that matters: a cooking school inside a shop, on the argument that the customer has to be taught before the product can be sold.
2 · Why it is in the Library
It is the food hall running backwards. Harrods and La Grande Épicerie put food inside a department store; Eataly built a department store out of nothing but food, and then added restaurants, a bakery, a school and, later, restaurants aboard MSC ships. Fifty-nine locations across four continents in under two decades makes it the fastest-spreading format in this group by a wide margin.
3 · Candour
⚑ The 2024 figures are the honest part of the entry: €684 million of revenue and a net loss of €13.4 million. A format that teaches, feeds and sells at once is expensive to run, and scale has not resolved that. Eataly also sits in an unresolved position with its founding partner's philosophy — Slow Food is an argument against industrialised distribution, and Eataly is a chain on four continents.