Paolo Barilla is a man who feels the weight of history and understands the importance of legacy. As one of three brothers who together run Barilla, the world’s largest pasta business, he is striving to maintain and grow a company that has already lasted four generations. His great-grandfather, Pietro Barilla, founded the business in 1877 when he opened a bread and pasta shop in Parma that became very popular with local foodies. It is now the number one pasta brand in Italy, the USA, Sweden, Belgium, Germany and Switzerland. They produce over 150 varieties of pasta and sell 1,821 million tonnes globally.
I met Paolo Barilla at the company’s headquarters in Parma, a place that is of course already renowned for fine Parma ham, Parmesan and in 2015 was named as a ‘creative city for gastronomy’ by UNESCO. The original factory was in the center of the city and now houses the Academia Barilla, a culinary center set up a decade ago to promote and safeguard Italian cuisine in all its guises. The new factory is out of town, next to the head office and employs around 500 people, making it the largest pasta factory in the world. It is an awe-inspiring sight full of robots, people on bicycles, huge ovens and the wonderful smell of pasta.
Paolo explained to me that, in his view, businesses exist ‘not because you want them to, but because others want you to exist’. His philosophy turns the image of the all-powerful CEO on its head and exposes the short-term thinking that plagues so many businesses that are driven by quarterly results. He believes that it is his role, and the role of all who work at Barilla, to be caretakers for the future.
There is an important episode in Barilla's history that clearly shaped much of Paolo’s thinking. He was ten years old when his father was forced to sell the business. Italy was a complex place in the 1970s, as a left wing paramilitary organization called the Red Brigade were assassinating and kidnapping key figures during a period known as ‘The Years of Lead’. Paolo’s uncle wanted to leave all this behind and move to Switzerland; this, combined with financial pressures within the business due to the creation of a new factory, meant the brothers were forced to sell in 1971. During this period Paolo recalled that his father, Pietro Barilla, was constantly in a bad mood and never satisfied. He believed his father felt guilty that he hadn’t evolved the business he had inherited; merely selling it instead. Thankfully, Pietro managed to buy the business back in 1979 and went on to lay the foundations for the Barilla that exists today.