Giuseppe Caprotti’s social commitment at Esselunga: caring for the environment, for people

The one related to care and concern for the environment is a project that goes back a long way, to the 1980s, the first years I spent at Esselunga, and began with organic and natural products in general. It is also the project I am most fond of because it had a soul, a social purpose, as well as a business purpose.

Quick Take — Amazon and the $100 billion grocery business

Amazon claimed to sell $100 billion of consumer packaged goods.

Two big problemsremain : fresh produce and the fact that it has not yet found an integration between all the group’s brands.

Here are the latest tests:

  1. Co-location of selections from Whole Foods Market, Amazon.com and Amazon Fresh in the same distribution centre, allowing customers to purchase items from all three brands and have them delivered in one order
  2. Open a small-format grocery shop under the same roof as Whole Foods Market in Chicago, allowing customers to purchase their favourite natural and organic products from Whole Foods and get a larger assortment of products from Amazon in one trip.
  3. Launching Whole Foods Market’s Daily Shop, a fast-food fast-shop format.

p.s.: the fact that there are ‘too many’ signs and too many tests is not a good sign. for the food industry: Walmart is definitely dominant and has much clearer ideas.

Quick Take — Agriculture: organic on its knees

The alarm from the Matera hills: unsustainable increase in production costs. And the boar emergency worsens RaiNews The organic situation is very well explained in the article below: we are big organic farmers but we buy very little of it because it is very expensive(many intermediary companies, not producers. Some are on ‘everyone’s lips’ because of recent scandals: Bioera and Ki.Group, for example).

Drafted 13 March, updated 18 March 2025

Giorgina Venosta and Bernardo Caprotti’s friends: Giulia Maria Crespi, Indro Montanelli, Marisa Spaini Rivolta

If Mario and Vittorio Crespi were partners of my father Bernardo and Uncle Guido in the foundation of Esselunga, their niece Giulia Maria, for some fundamental years in the management of 'Corriere della Sera' and later founder of FAI-Fondo Ambiente Italiano and agricultural entrepreneur, was a friend of Bernardo's ex-wife, my mother Giorgina...

Quick Take — Extra virgin oil of dubious origin supplied to Milanese police and army canteens. Alleged fraud in public supply and forgery. Involved the Penny brand

The Sapio and Ladisa companies were supposed to have supplied extra virgin olive oil, also of EU origin, from organic farming ‘for at least 60 per cent’ to the state police, and oil ‘obtained exclusively from domestic olives of any cultivar’ for at least 40 per cent from organic farming for the armed forces. But, this is the thesis of the Milan Public Prosecutor’s Office, the oil actually supplied would have been very different, of German origin (from the discount chain Penny Market, see photo below). Source

We are and remain the country of the clever : Maxi tomato fraud: the BBC scoop on British supermarkets and the Petti group

Compiled 19 December, updated 20 December 2024