Company Overview
In 1961 I began making fresh pasta with the help of ten women in a small shop in San Giovanni Lupatoto, a country village not far from Verona.
I produced Tortellini only on order. The filling was prepared on Thursdays and the whole product was made on Fridays and Saturdays. The Tortellini was then delivered on Sundays.
Initially I delivered the products myself – first by motorcycle and later in a Renault 4. In 1965 when the business started to increase, my sister and four friends joined me to help to deliver the products. Each of them was assigned a specific geographic area in the neighbourhood of Verona, Vicenza, Padua and Rovigo. My fresh pasta was initially made by hand. In 1968 self-designed machinery was used allowing for a significant increase in production. With this machinery, we increased from 50 kg to 60 kg per week to 10 kg per hour!
In 1971 the company grew out of its original space, so I moved the production to another site in San Giovanni Lupatoto. At the end of the seventies, with the introduction of the new machinery, it was finally possible to completely automate the production process. In the eighties, there was such an impressive increase in production that we set off to take over the Italian market.
It was in this time period that I promoted the great changes that were gradually to favour the shift from a small family business to a nationwide industrial organisation. The structure of the company was enlarged and a distribution network that covered all of Italy was created. The look of the packaging was improved and investments in advertising campaigns were increased. In 1990, I starred in my own advertisements to personally guarantee the quality and excellent taste of my products.
Today, my company, Giovanni Rana, is the unchallenged leader in the European fresh pasta market. It has reached this important landmark by continuously aiming at innovation and superior quality and by consolidating the strength of a brand that for decades has been able to gain the trust of millions of consumers.
My dream has come true! Giovanni Rana is now a European achievement. I have the ambition to expand to the whole world according to a model that my son, Gian Luca Rana, likes to call a “pocket multinational.” We are a big company, the only one in this category that has developed on an international scale. Moreover, we are centred on quality, technology, and development but never lose sight of our own traditional values.