Buon Anniversario!

Happy Anniversary to La Trattoria! Believe it or not, it has been 35 years since my Uncle Dino first launched La Trattoria in 1990 as our quarterly Idea Exchange for Independent Restaurateurs.

Longtime Editor Steve Rouse reminded me that back then, our quality-oriented restaurateur customers were facing especially tough price competition and deep discounting from the aggressively expanding big restaurant chains.

Beyond providing superior ingredient quality, Dino wanted to find another way to help our Independent restaurateurs fight back by strengthening and elevating their businesses. Sharing business building ideas and information via La Trattoria was his solution.

The way that Dino put it: “Ideas are more valuable than money. If you have a dollar and I have a dollar and we exchange them, we both still only have a dollar. But if you have a proven idea and so do I, and we exchange them, now we both have two good ideas!”

So, for the past 35 years, thousands of your fellow Independents have generously contributed their proven business ideas via La Trattoria, on everything from enhancing service and finding good employees to increasing food quality, consistency, and efficiency!

Based on comments from many individual restaurateurs over the years, we know that the ideas shared in La Trattoria continue to positively contribute to their success.

A lot has happened in the restaurant industry during those 35 years. Thankfully, the ultra-deep chain discounting of the 1990s wasn’t profitably sustainable and ran out of steam. That said, competition from cost-driven chains, along with ingredient and wage inflation, remain equally challenging today.

While the industry has experienced numerous boom times and tough times, a few things have remained steadfastly constant:

1. Loyal Quality-Oriented Restaurant Guests. There continues to be a huge population of loyal patrons who value great tasting food over cheaper menu prices, regardless of economic conditions. Over the last 35 years, their tastes, preferences, and expectations for exceptionally fresh flavors have continued to evolve and elevate.

2. Disloyal Price-Oriented “Shoppers.” A significant portion of the population continues to value cheaper menu prices over superior food quality. Rather than being loyal to any particular restaurant or cuisine, they tend to switch between competing options, largely based on price.

3. Cost-Driven Restaurant Chains. Because of their “buying power” cost advantage over smaller competitors, chains are hardwired to compete on the basis of cheaper menu prices. When given a choice between further enhancing the quality of their food or reducing ingredient costs, they dependably reduce ingredient quality.

4. Quality-Driven Independents. Because chains emphasize price over quality, they continue to create a huge opportunity for motivated Independents to win by further elevating the quality and consistency of their ingredients and strengthening personal relationships with loyal patrons and their communities!

By the way, you may have noticed some small changes to La Trattoria’s “look” in the last few issues. For example, we decided to add some color to our story illustrations. We are also incorporating the other part of our family business, Corto Olive Company, as a co-publisher of La Trattoria. For anyone not yet familiar with Corto, it was founded by Uncle Dino and my cousin Brady Whitlow back in 2010 to pioneer a new method for growing and making really fresh-tasting olive oil here in California.

We still miss Dino every day. But with every new issue of La Trattoria that we publish, we are reminded of his lifelong dedication to self-education and self-improvement as paths for increasing business success.

Finally, as always, we invite you to let Editor Steve Rouse know if you would like to share some proven ideas of your own with your fellow Independents here in future issues of La Trattoria!

On behalf of everyone at Stanislaus and Corto,

Buon Anniversario!

Tom Cortopassi, President and Co-Owner