Really good (SL Manifesto)
San Lorenzo exists to collect and supply the best of Italian gastronomy – but that’s not all.
San Lorenzo doesn’t have all the best products, but it has a lot of them, and is working to get even more. If you know a very good product that’s not yet on San Lorenzo, please let us know.
Out of a hundred products that we sample, we approve three or four. We’re not very happy about this: it means that the quality of production is not improving. TV and magazines tell you fairy tales, but that’s not how it is: we are losing the culture of authentic food production, even in Italy, along with some of the best ingredients.
San Lorenzo tries to do what it can to remedy this dire situation. How? By asking the best producers to improve, not to give in – at least for the products they produce for us – to those who say, well people don’t understand, they won’t notice. It’s not true. People don’t notice poor quality until they have the chance to try real quality: give them the chance, and you’ll see just how they take note.
Please, don’t believe in fairy tales, even when they’re about wine and food. Don’t believe in the fable of food producers who are all good and kind (there are some, but they’re a minority) or the one about retailers who are all incompetent and nasty (there are some, unfortunately the majority). There are few good and kind producers, and there are a few competent, decent retailers. Without wanting to blow our own trumpet, we are part of the second category. This demands work, money, and passion. Which is why, to protect all our hard work and investments, we don’t tell you who our producers are:
- We select a product: if X is the best producer today, and Y is the best one tomorrow, we’ll change.
- The characteristics (ingredients, doses, production methods) of most of our products are researched, recovered, studied and developed by us. The producers make them as we want them: the product is more ours than theirs, and that product is specially made exclusively for us.
- All too many producers, celebrated by the TV and the press, having gained a bit of a reputation, think they can pull a fast one, reducing the quality of their products and commercial reliability. We don’t want to help to increase this number.
- Our producers are very happy to work with us under these conditions: they treat us well, respecting their commitment to quality, and we treat them well, paying the right price for their excellent work, on time.
- We love freedom: we don’t demand exclusivity from our producers (except for products they make specially for us), so they are free to deal on the market as they choose; they don’t ask us to commit to buying things that we don’t like so we can have things we do like.
- Doing this, we put our neck on the line: in protecting our work, we assume full responsibility for what we sell.
San Lorenzo is far from being perfect. If we’re on the web, it’s because we are convinced that nowadays, we learn to change on the web, and change all the time. Give us a hand: put your comments in our wiki page.
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