Giuseppe Caprotti at OSA360, in front of 2000 entrepreneurs, in Milan on 8 November 2024

At OSA 360, the biggest event for entrepreneurs in Milan, I had the pleasure of telling an audience of more than 2,000 entrepreneurs, producers and retailers about the origins of Esselunga and all the innovations I introduced in the company up to 2004, inspired by the themes of my book ‘Le Ossa dei Caprotti’. It was exciting to share this vision, which continues to evolve through the initiatives of the Guido Venosta Foundation

The Caprotti family and Coop: the ‘war’ on several fronts

(…) Let’s start thinking of a dossier that shows how, from both the members’ and the social point of view, cooperatives are enterprises like any other. It follows that the favourable conditions from which they benefit are state aid. We set up an internal working group and (…) gather all the necessary documentation to support our conviction. The dossier will then be taken to Brussels by Federdistribuzione and will change, at least in part, the taxation of cooperatives. In their defence even Massimo D’Alema is moving …

From I to We: Human Resources

With the enormous development of the non-food part and the emergence of marketing, we create hundreds of jobs, to which more will be added in food purchasing and quality control. My rule is to move from 'I' to 'we': and results pay off, because an internal survey in 2003 conducted by CIRM shows that in two years the proportion of those declaring themselves 'satisfied' or 'very satisfied' has risen from 49 per cent to 72.1 per cent.

The Caprotti family and architects: Ignazio Gardella and the first Esselunga Superstore

When Bernardo Caprotti, with remarkable foresight, decided to build larger supermarkets, his passion for architecture led him to seek the collaboration of great architects such as Ignazio Gardella, whose designs changed the concept of the supermarket from a simple container to a building with distinctive architecture, another element that allowed Esselunga to strengthen brand recognition and establish its shops as a central service to neighbourhoods, especially the most peripheral ones. Such large supermarkets, however, need to be filled, and at that point my American experience suggests how to do this through 'non-food', that is, 'everything that is not food': from products of all kinds (from stationery to laundry to crockery) to services (customer care, express checkouts, home shopping, e-commerce).