A “Christmas Miracle” In Verona: The Melegatti Case History
The golden bread – after named “Pandoro” – created by Domenico Melegatti was born on 14th October 1894 in Verona with the famous star shape and the unmistakable taste that many people have tried to imitate without success.
One hundred and twenty years later the historic company, based in San Giovanni Lupatoto (Verona), met the crisis that risked to leave his employees without work (90 annual employees and 220 seasonal employees), which found themselves for months without salary.
The causes of the Melegatti crisis are many, among which the opening of a new establishment for croissants and snacks in San Martino Buon Albergo (Verona), for which have been invested several milions of euro.
In November the Court of Verona approved the safing planning for the company allowing this way, thanks to Abalone’s fund of 6 million euros , that Melegatti had the necessary liquidity to allow the recovery of the production necessary for the marketing of Christmas Pandoro.
In less than three weeks Melegatti has packaged and sold one and half million of products thanks to the diligence of the employees and to the availability of suppliers who quickly delivered eggs, flour and butter to enable the production chain to start up.
The same consumers had a decisive role: they launched #NoiSiamoMelegatti hashtag (#WeAreMelegatti) on social network that had a strong reply by the web community, with several photos about the purchase of Melegatti pandoro and many messages of solidarity.
It were a strong mobilization also from the students of Verona and Veneto, who started a word of mouth on web explaining: “They are our parents, the parents of our classmates, our future colleagues. We wanted to defend our work and guarantee a Christmas and a more paceful future”.
Also an important multinational, Tal Group based in Italy, Austria and Germany, participated in the initiative #NoiSiamoMelegatti, giving away their employees a Melegatti Pandoro as Christmas present: a gift made with the heart to substain a reality in difficulty, that will be surely appreciated.
Next step for Melegatti, after the “Christmas miracle”, will be the restart of tipical Easter desserts production – “Colomba” – for which it will have to wait for the approval of the Court of Verona.
Considering the broad participation to help the company we hope that soon this crisis will be just a bad memory of the past and that Verona returns to see one of the most important companies in its territory shine.