At Identità Golose, Autogrill brings a contemporary approach to food

For the second time after last year’s debut, Autogrill will be at the Identità Golose meeting due in Milan from March 4th to 6th, 2017. The company’s booth will be dressed up like  Bistrot, the innovative concept developed by Autogrill in partnership with Pollenzo Università degli Studi di Scienze Gastronomiche (Unisg).

As announced last year, Bistrot will be expanding its range to include options for the increasing number of vegan and vegetarian food lovers. In addition to the current fruit juices, detox smoothies and of course the salads, the new options will include a vegan brioche (lactose free), a vegan pizza (with tofu, tomatoes, spinach and leek), vegan sandwiches (with chickpea flour, chicory, humus), a vegetarian sandwich, and Bistrot soups with selected vegetables. All made with fresh, healthy ingredients, these products will bear the “Vegan Certificate” when made with all-vegan ingredients. These new products add to the Bistrot’s traditional offering: a brand that combines an eclectic atmosphere – where the layout recalls the typical atmosphere of a covered city market and the design enhances its genuine, minimal mood – with the concepts of natural, seasonal and local, in keeping with the life cycle of each ingredient. Great care is taken of selecting the best local suppliers to offer seasonal, regional and locally-sourced ingredients only, for a unique experience that blends the flavours of regional traditional foods with the principles of sustainability.

This year, at Identità Golose, Autogrill, as part of its endless research efforts, will show up as a veritable ‘open lab’, an incubator of ideas to reflect and experiment with new food trends, partly through a new partnership with Dr Mauro Mario Mariani, a specialist in vascular medicine, who has been using food for years as a key factor to rebalance, treat, detox and boost health, introducing a new approach to food and leading the visitors in a journey through the day’s meals to please the increasingly demanding tastes of travellers with conscious food choices.

“Our partnership with Identità Golose began in December 2012, when we invented and developed the Culinary Council - an international lifelong food innovation plan – with which a few times a year the Group brings together chefs, food experts and foodservice opinion leaders to exchange ideas and take tips to implement new eating options. We are particularly sensitive to one of this year’s key topics – travelling – because travellers are the hub all of our corporate philosophy, our research and our selection of brands tailored to the needs of any type of customer and in support of the licensors’ projects, is built upon”, commented Ezio Balarini, Autogrill Chief Marketing Officer. “This year, we wanted to go a step further and so we developed a new approach to food that uses high-quality, tasty yet nutritionally-balanced products, based on strategies developed with Dr Mariani’s help. We share his idea that food is the key factor that affects our wellbeing, that is, our health and our mental and physical energy. Everyone knows how much food affects everyday life: so it is even more important when travelling, a moment that requires great energy, that can be provided in a well-balanced way by the so-called Mediterranean diet, praised and loved all over the world”.

Consistently with this approach to food, then, at Identità Golose this year we will present snacks and dishes that meet the requirements of an increasing number of consumers who are health conscious and look for quality ingredients that combine healthiness with pleasure. For breakfast, for example, a selection of fruit and coffee, followed by two small fruit snacks and a vegetable dip provide the vitamins and minerals you need to cope with a day of travelling in the best possible way. For lunch, you can start with a salad that reduces that hungry feeling before you eat the rest of the meal, then of course plenty of sandwiches and pizzas, in the many styles served by Bistrot, including a vegan and a vegetarian one. In the afternoon, you can find two little snacks: a pack of sliced fruit and a cereal bar. Lastly, dinner starts with a salad and includes a combination of proteins, carbohydrates and vegetables.