A moment of serendipity has seen the world’s most recognised cat, that ginger, lazy, mouthy furball called Garfield, fall in love with an Australian-made lasagne from Cucina Classica. CEO Roberto Cardone has seen a lot in his 25 years in the food industry, from cafes to restaurants and now a ready meal company, but a purr of approval from Garfield is an unexpected first.
The path to becoming Garfield’s lasagne of choice started 25 years ago, when Robert Cardone opened his first restaurant in Adelaide, Cibo Ristorante & Pasticceria. He then expanded into cafés, launching Cibo Espresso, a bastion in Adelaide for excellent coffee.
While Cardone sold Cibo Espresso in 2012, he retained the manufacturing side of the business and continued as a supplier for around 230 clients until Covid hit.
As with almost every hospitality enterprise during the pandemic, Cardone had to pivot the company and quickly.
“In 2021, the contract with the Cibo cafés ended. We took over from the other partners and recognised we needed to change the model of the company to survive. We decided on an ambitious retail strategy to move into the national ready meals market; and it has been a quick turn around,” he said.
The shift was not without its challenges.
“Initially we lost more than half our staff – from 55 people down to 21 – and turnover. But it was the right decision. We’re up to 40 employees and turnover is back to where it was.
“This shift has also streamlined operations; from operating seven days for 18 hours a day, we’re manufacturing five days a week for 12 hours and delivering every day. We started out making between 4000-5500 meals a week to our current output of 20-22,000, with the expectation we’ll reach 25,000 quite soon,” Cardone said.
The speed with the turnaround was not a case of good luck, but one stemming from a lifetime in the food industry.
Cardone’s mum and dad owned a deli and Cardone said it was a natural progression for him to be in the industry. He said that his father set the bar for him as to how you should be in business.
“When dad was in the nursing home, we’d take him meals and he’d criticise how we were making the sugo. Praise was hard won but doing a job well was ingrained in me.”
When the contract with the cafés ended one of the first things Cardone did was sign an agreement with Canadian vegan company Modern Plant Based Foods, known as Modern Meat, seeing the long-term opportunities for plant-based meals. Signed in November 2021, Cucina Classica has exclusive rights to produce and distribute Modern Meats products in Australia and New Zealand for four years.
Cardone also wanted Cucina Classica to appeal to as broad an audience as possible, using only beef in the lasagne sauce to meet religious and cultural requirements for some consumers.
Its range includes ready meals, ready sauces, gelati, cakes and pastries, bread, and coffee.
“We have reduced a lot of waste in our manufacturing processes, with a 35 per cent drop in food waste. We streamlined SKUs from 250 to 70 and reconfigured all our packaging,” he said.
The company stopped using black trays that could not be recycled to an opaque tray made from 60-70 per cent recycled materials.
Cucina Classica has its own ecommerce channel but is also in more than 730 stores nationally including Coles, Woolworths, Harris Farm, and some independents.
Which is where Garfield comes in.
The initial approach from Paramount Pictures came in an email Cardone thought was a scam with promises of selling more lasagnes and increasing sales.
But the business ethics instilled by his father run deep, with Cardone always responding to every email he gets. It quickly became obvious it was not a scam.
“When we got into Coles, the range went national quickly. A Paramount Pictures employee bought our lasagne for dinner one night and loved it. They bought it again and took it to the creative director – who happened to be Italian – and he loved it.
“With Paramount doing a lot to mark Garfield’s 45th birthday, the obvious question for them was, why aren’t we doing a Garfield lasagne?”
It took more than six months of negotiations between the various legal teams within Paramount, with Cardone agreeing to buy the APAC licence for Garfield’s image, which will appear on the Cucina Classica’s lasagne.
Cardone is anticipating a major uptick in sales, at least 25 per cent, with the wheels of a global company’ marketing machine promoting the products ‘endorsed’ by Garfield.
It’s the latest chapter for Cardone, who sees both new opportunities and a repeat of the past in the sector.
“Our sustainability credentials have greater importance and there is a lot more interest in vegan and vegetarian options, but then this many years later, the sauces, tortes, and gelato we were making when we first started have come back to life, we’ve come full circle.”
