Lockdown hit Italy first and we didn’t know whether to expect help from the government and for how long we would have to keep our businesses closed, however we knew from the begging that we had to get ourselves out of this crisis. Fear was definitely present. It was present between my partners and I, between our teams and in our customers. Our London restaurants started decreasing in sales even before the announcement of lockdown in Britain and our revenue in Italy had ground to an halt: we just knew we had to take the bull by the horns!

We quickly took the decision to close our London venues and furlough our staff, we reassured them we were going to look after their welfare and we set up systems of communications to keep everyone up to date and create a network of support; we quickly designed take-away products -including vacuum packed cocktails and mocktails- for our restaurants and bars in Turin and we began focussing on the most important task of all: diversifying out business! We opened an online deli in London, offering local deliveries of Italian and French food and decided to revive our hospitality consultancy business -that had been put on the back seat since our London restaurant operations took off in 2019.