Little Italy Group, which operates a chain of speciality restaurants, entered the gourmet food market with Acasa in 2020. It has now launched its first factory in Pune for the same.
Acasa offers gourmet Italian products and aims to enable Indians to easily cook gourmet food at home with their DIY kits, signature sauces, gourmet cheese and fresh pastas.
In conversation with medianews4u.com, Amrut Mehta, Managing Director, Little Italy, said, “We want to make Italian gourmet products accessible to the average Indian and everyone easily and at the right price. The vision is to enable home cooks to easily make gourmet food at home and to share with them the knowledge, products and ingredients, so that they can easily execute it. Now with the new factory we are launching products like fresh pasta.”
The factory also produces desserts, artisanal breads and sauces like salsas, flavoured oils and dips. It also houses Italian machines equipped with the latest technology to produce high quality products, explained the spokesperson.
“Since we started with Italian restaurants, our vision was to share the Italian cuisine and grow the Italian food culture in the Indian market by making the food accessible at home. Currently, the sauce and the cheese lines are most popular. But what we see being more popular in future is surely going to be the fresh pasta because that is something new that we are launching and it will be our specialty product. Our best-selling products are arrabiata in sauces and spaghetti in the pasta category,” explained Amrut.
“We are at a very nascent stage, so we are all ears to the customers in terms of what they want. Right now, the benchmark for us for Acasa is what we did last year which is around ₹1.2 cr and what we are projecting this year. But that’s not what we are focusing on. What we are focusing on is entering the market with the right kind of product which in a way attends to our company vision, which is to be a pioneer in whatever we do,” he noted.
Expanding Distribution
Acasa products are available online on BigBasket, Instamart and on Little Italy’s website, besides in stores like Dorabjee’s, Fine Foods and Deli Essentials.
Amrut underlined, “The first target is to expand our distribution channels and to increase our modern trade reach. We can increase this through our tie up with Nature’s Basket and Reliance. We can be available pan-India by doing direct tie-ups with modern trade stores. Once we do that, then we can focus on introducing more product lines. So, step by step we can work on getting more and more market share.”
The London Foray
With 50 outlets spread across 25 cities, Little Italy achieved a revenue of Rs.82.7 cr last year and is targeting to reach Rs.100 cr this fiscal year. It is also keen to expand its geographic presence.
Raj Mehta, Chairman, Little Italy, said, “The South India market is where we are very strong. At the same time, we would like to focus on the Northern market and the international market as well. We are already present in Nepal and Dubai and are planning to open a restaurant in London soon.”
The brand’s loyalty programme Green Card Club has over 4.5 lakh customers.
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