London Grilling: Andrea Rasca, CEO and Chief Leader at Mercato Metropolitano
In this London Living Christmas Special, we chat to the visionary food pioneer, Andrea Rasca, about his family, his culinary passions, Mercato Metropolitano and his incredible mission to change the food industry, one olive at a time.
Hi Andrea, it’s so lovely to meet you and thank you for the amazing spread that you have put on for us! Can you tell me a bit about the food that's on the table in front of us right now?
Well, I love my Spanish cousins, and, in that sense, they have an amazing Pata Negra. But when we talk about the variety of the Charcuterie, I’m sorry to say this, but there's very little comparison with Italy. Here we have a very proud Tuscan crew who prepared all this food for us. This is a typical Schiacciata from Tuscany - the filling can be changed, localised with local ingredients, but the process is the same.
The focaccia, which is a pressed focaccia style bread, unsalted normally, or salted to enhance the taste of the ingredients. The rest is typical charcuterie, as you can see, from Tuscany, apart from the Mortadella, which is more from the Parma Reggio Emilia area that we all know well and the Bruschetta’s everywhere.
What about the wine?
We have an expert, and we have our wine manager. We choose our suppliers the same as the way we choose our Trading Partners. We give a chance to smaller producers who are organic, natural, biodynamic - never big corporations. I don't like the industry of food. I actually despise it, because it's ruining everything that is good about food. This particular wine is a Valpolicella from the area of Verona, it’s from a small producer called La Formica. They make this amazing super easy wine to drink for lunch and that’s why I chose it. You can go deeper into it and then you go into the Amarone, but this one is very good for a ‘light lunch’ or ‘appetiser’ as I call it. I like it a little bit chilled, this kind of red should not be too warm.
You are obviously very, very passionate about food and cuisine and where food comes from. I wanted to know where that passion developed and where your interest in food originates?
Firstly, you need to understand that I'm Italian, so it's part of our DNA. We grew up in our Grandmothers and Mother's kitchens. Since we were kids the kitchen was the place where we all met in the evening, eating what Mother was cooking and discussing with the Father about the problems of the day, was always done around the table, so food always played the most important role in our lives. My passion came from that, but I didn't realise, until the day I went to Japan in 1995, that food could also become my scope in life.
What brought you to Japan?
I went to Japan for the simple reason that I had a lot of Japanese people at home because of my Father's business. They always came with a nice present – you know how kind the Japanese are - and I got a certain interest in their culture.
Since I was a kid, I started leaving home, or escaping from home, very often coming to London, going to Paris, going to Spain to study language and culture. I loved it. So, when I read in The Economist that there was a possibility, after that my degree in Milan and Spain, to do my first Masters, totally sponsored by the European Union and the Industrial Association of Japan, I applied, and I won the scholarship. I went to Japan for 18 months and I studied Japanese language, Japanese management and worked in Japanese companies for 18 months. It was when I was there that I realized that they loved Italy immensely for many reasons; for the food, for the music, for the art - but mostly for the food. This was very important.
I just flew back from Japan. We are looking at locations now and are probably going to open in the next two years. There’s something very important to understand, the Mercato is not something that we open because it's a ‘Movement’. We find people who believe in the same values, who share our manifesto with us, and they open it themselves. We are the enabler. We are not there to open a stupid franchise. That's not what we are here for.
“We are here to spread the Movement of a new food system which concentrates on the importance of the health of people and the health of the environment”
I was so interested to learn about the process that every trader and food vendor must go through to become part of that movement. Can you tell us a little bit more about this process?
You need to see the Mercato as a platform - a big incubator. What we try to look for are people with passion. The process of how we choose our Trading Partners, (we call them Trading Partners because they are part of the Movement) is that we ask for them to understand what we are fighting for.
If they want to be part of the Movement, then we are happy to have them with us, but they need to go through a process of study, understanding and changing the sourcing of their ingredients, with the team that we have. Then they come with their recipes, and we test the way they cook with our operations and chefs. Once they go through all this process, they can become part of the Movement.
How many different cuisines and trading partners do you have in Mercato Metropolitano Elephant & Castle?
48 in this market.
Can you tell me about the recent event that you held called We Sustain? How did that go?
Absolutely. First, ‘We Sustain’ stands for ‘Weekend on Sustainability’. We are going to change this name soon, probably next year, because now I realise that the word sustainability is being used by anyone.
“Everything we do needs to be sustainable, so I don’t even want to talk about sustainability anymore. We talk about regenerative processes.”
We want to attract people who want to go a little bit deeper into what we do. We don’t use sustainability as a tool for marketing and we don't talk too much about what we do inside the markets, because we want people to come and enjoy - not to come here and be preached at by us. We want them to come and realise that they can have amazing food around a table with people who have different taste, different religious background, who don't believe in what you're eating, and they hate you for what you are eating, but they sit next to you. It's a process of peace-making, in a society which is so full of anger. We create a very warm atmosphere. I want people to come for that, for the amazing food and for the social aspect of it.
“I want people to start understanding that what we are serving can change the world”
Just by choosing an olive you can change the shape of the world because you give a better job to a farmer, who farms in a soil which is healthy. Then that amazing healthy soil will help to fight the carbon dioxide in the sky, because the biggest sequestration of carbon footprint is the soil. But this is not enough. That amazing olive is fed to a child, and it will improve his health and his mental capacity.
So, you see, we are talking about a process where food can intervene on every aspect of life. We understand how complex this is, but I don't want people to come and think about this. They need to come and enjoy - like we do in Italy!
We also create We Sustain events so that people can come and understand more about waste control, waste management, and why we are choosing a certain kind of meat and not another. It's a way to go deeper into the real issues that we want to talk about, but always in a fun way. We organise discussions where a lot of volunteers, come and chop vegetables, we organise soup which is free for all of the community with music and people dancing. So, yes, there is education, but always with that sense of fun and enjoyment. Food is pleasure, it doesn't have to be a science. First it is pleasure, which translates into your better health and the health of the environment.
We know you have this Mercato in Elephant Castle. Where else in the UK can we find Mercato Metropolitano?
We have just opened the third one, which is a new concept - a small version of the Mercato called MMy – ‘My Mercato’. We are testing it to give a chance to a new neighbourhood, where there’s a high density of people living, to have their own grocery store in their own place, so they don't need to pick up the phone and call someone, who will then drive through London for 20 minutes, in the rain to deliver a cold product, made in a dark kitchen. Blasphemy! We are testing this out in Canary Wharf.
“We want to connect people to food and culture and to deliver a real experience to people”
Also, because of what we do with kid’s education and the London living wage, the Mayor of London has asked us to open in Ilford. Thanks to his contribution (he gave us the biggest grant ever) we are now building a wooden structure on an abandoned parking lot. We will create a new Mercato for the people of Ilford. We will change the offer, as we are not a chain. I really despise chains and I despise junk food, so we will create something for them. It’s going to open probably around Spring 2023, it's not finished because we are also opening another one in Elephant Park - Lendlease asked us to create a new concept for the big developments they have created there.
Elephant Park regeneration project
We are also opening studios and shooting documentaries, not about the Mercato, but about the people, our Trading Partners. They will be released around March on Netflix, Apple, etc but we talk about the people. We want to give hope to people and for them to say, ‘Oh, I can be like that’. It’s not about Mercato. Mercato is not important. We are just a platform. Behind Elephant Park will have a big 2000 square meter building called The Factory where we will bake and make products, in particular cake and desserts, that we will then deliver to the markets. Apart from that, we are also signing in each single capital in Europe. Not because we are so strong that we can do this, but because we find people and because people call us, to tell us they want to have something similar. We then go and help them build their own Mercato Metropolitano.
“I’ve always had vision, ever since I was a kid, but I didn’t know what it was. I just knew inside that I was heading towards something important”
Elephant Castle was the first place that you came to with Mercato Metropolitano. What has it been like to be based here?
Fun! So, when I opened the first Mercato in Milan, it was just for six months during the 2015 Food Expo. During the Expo I was invited to do something, but when I went there, I realised that the three main sponsors were the companies that are destroying the world of food so I said, ‘I can't be here sorry’ and I left. I then found an abandoned train station/warehouse in Porta Genova, in the Navigli are which is one of the coolest areas of Milan with a parking lot of 15,000 square meter and I literally went and knocked on the door of the railway station company and said, ‘Can I use this to do an alternative expo for the people who live in Milan?’
“I came to London because it is my second city. I left home when I was 15 to come and study in London. I fell desperately in love with London. I love everything about it”
When I look for a location, I don’t do any market research. I don't do anything. I spoke to my friends and just said, ‘take me around’. They took me to first to, Oxford Street, because, of ‘the footfall’. I said, ‘I don't care about the footfall! I want to go to places where there is no footfall because I will create it!’. They said, ‘No, no you don’t understand’, but I asked them to show me other locations and they took me to many, until we came here.
In the first three months we immediately got around to 200,000 people. And then at the end of the year, we were at 1.5 million. It was cold. It was terrible, but people loved the atmosphere and the sincerity of the place. Since then, I have been renewing the contract year by year and we went up to 4 million visitors per year in 2019, just before Covid. It was a big success.
Then Grosvenor then called me about giving back the church that was abandoned in Mayfair, to the community. So, I went. So, I never look for a location. People ask me to renew them.
Would you describe yourself as an industry disruptor?
That, I'm sure. Totally. Very few people understand what I'm doing.
I have one last question; Christmas!?
We're going to have a lot of music, a lot of singing, a lot of special cakes, special occasion education classes for kids like ‘How to Bake Your Own Christmas Cake’. It’s going to be a full immersion in Christmas, because obviously we come from that kind of background and our religion is Christianity, but we don't use religion as a tool. It is just a way for us to still be together. We celebrate every single festivity of all our Trading Partners. For us it's all the same because we are all part of the same world, but with a different time schedule. It’s just another excuse to drink and eat together!
To eat, drink and be merry.
And be merry. Exactly. Be MMerry with a double M!
Well, Andrea, it's been such a pleasure talking to you and I can't wait to eat this food!
Yes, now to the serious things. Now, we eat!
