From a delicatessen in the heart of Modena to the European markets focusing on the importance of the time element as, in this story, everything revolves around preserving time, away from the temptation of industrialization just for the sake of it. The story of Mec-Palmieri and their recipe for success. For FARE Insieme Giampaolo Colletti interviews Francesco and Marcello Palmieri, the heads of the family business.
di Giampaolo Colletti
@gpcolletti
This is a true fairy tale story, what in Italian is called 'favola', as it narrates a tradition that rhymes with innovation. Because it is the demonstration of how the values of a company can connect with the community where it is born. And also because, although with just a little over one century of history, you can knowingly choose to never stop astonishing, of always giving the best. As we said, a true fairy tale, but not just because we are talking about a product that is nowadays appreciated everywhere. We're moving beyond that, we are going on a journey through time. It was 1919 when grandfather Emilio Palmieri opened a small shop in the heart of Modena where he worked with the most genuine meats to make high-quality artisanal cured meats. This art was handed down to his son Carlo who decided to work in his uncle and aunt’s cold meats and salami factory when he was still very young and then fulfil his dream in 1961: he set up his own business in the lowlands of Modena for the artisanal production of mortadella, salami, pork rinds, bacon and coppa (a cured meat made from the back of a pig) with the meat of the animals he bred and slaughtered. Today, it would be defined as an extended supply chain but, at the time, Carlo Palmieri wanted to create a unique product starting from high-quality raw materials. Then, in the 1970s, the company grew and moved to San Prospero, a town with 6,000 inhabitants crossed by the state road a few kilometres from Modena, with a facility that now covers 30,000 square metres. This is the history of the cured meat factory called Salumificio Mec-Palmieri, known on the Italian markets as a brand of reference for the production of high-quality mortadella and pre-cooked products. «As this is a historic company - this year it’s our sixtieth anniversary - we have always focused on quality. Tradition and quality are the most important things for us and we always try to respect and enhance their value. The company currently exports to Germany, Spain and France for the high-end restaurant industry.
The beginning of the Favola (Italian word for fairy tale)But let's see how the Favola (Fairy-tale) with a capital F came to be. «It’s a product that has written the history of Italian charcuterie, as it is the first and only mortadella in the world stuffed in pork rind. We came up with the idea of the Favola mortadella because we wanted to stand out from other producers by offering something unique,» explains Marcello Palmieri. From here, our intuition - applying the knowledge acquired producing zampone (a mixture of pork meat seasoned with salt and spices, then wrapped in a pig's foot casing) and cotechino (a cured meat consisting of a mixture of various cuts of pork, seasoned with salt and spices and stuffed into a pork guts) to mortadella. The mixture of the two pre-cooked products is similar, but their flavour and texture are different: zampone results in a more tender and more harmonious feel on the palate than cotechino. These different organoleptic properties are due to the outer casing in which the products are placed and cooked - cotechino is encased in guts while zampone is encased in pork rind. As rind is a natural skin, it enables the mixture to breathe during cooking conveying a softness and a harmonious flavour to the mixture, making it more delicate and, most of all, more easily digestible. So we carried out a test: the same mortadella mixture was stuffed into two different casings and compared - one mortadella was stuffed into the pork guts, as tradition dictates, and another was stuffed into pork rind bags. . «The name Favola came to us when we first tried the mortadella encased and cooked in the rind: I remember my father was still around back then and, when he first tasted it, his first and spontaneous reaction was “this is a fairy tale” (questa è una favola). We registered the Favola brand and patented this innovative casing for mortadella in 1997, so 25 years have passed,” reminisces Marcello Palmieri. Favola mortadella is processed according to a purely-artisanal method - everything is done by hand, from casing to tying, meaning the shapes are all different, and cooking is carried out in traditional stone ovens. A unique signature. «For us, cooking in stone ovens means traditional cooking. The cooking of mortadella varies depending on its diameter. On average, Favola mortadella needs 24 hours,” reports Marcello Palmieri.
The solidarity from the community But we all know fairy tales have their difficult moments, as with the 2012 earthquake. «We were badly hit by the tragedy as, in just a moment, the facility was condemned and had to be rebuilt.» It was a painful moment, though the community showed its solidarity and even competitors became allies in such a difficult period. This is how the company managed to recover. «We realised we needed to restart quickly despite the great difficulties and everybody worked hard. I still remember our guys leaving with our special spicy marinades to go and make mortadella in another facility, and the same thing happened for zampone and cotechino. After the earthquake, we rebuilt the company in a modern manner without renouncing a few traditional elements such as the ovens, which we built using stone they way they used to be, knowingly not opting for more modern systems,» says Marcello Palmieri.
The time elementFrancesco Palmieri, who represents the fourth generation of this fairy tale success story, now also works for the company. «What has remained unchanged over time is my grandfather’s set-up, although there is an ongoing strive to evolve, specialize and grow with a constant search for high-quality. The values are still upheld in these modern times when they are actually even more valid. What I try to bring as my contribution is not just linked to production, but also to communication, brand culture and connection with the territory. We are one of the few food producing companies left in our territory. We are deeply connected to this community and our land, which we try to enhance and support in the best way possible,” explains Francesco Palmieri. Then there’s the time element. Because, in this story, everything revolves around time, which becomes a compass that steers choices. A time to be preserved, far from the temptation of industrialisation just for the sake of it.
«We have a modern system, which is very time-conscious when it comes to quality. There’s the element of cooking, which is slow in stone ovens. Then there's blast chilling with cooling and spraying systems that maintain the products healthy and intact.» In the fast times we live in, this Emilian company reminds us that using time well is an ingredient for success.
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