3 minuti
Andrea
Instinct, ambition and the search for contamination are the immovable engines in the path of chef Lorenzo Cogo, class of 1985 and 1 Michelin star. We went to the Garibaldi in Vicenza to ask him how his relationship with social media is, how a dynamic and distinct identity like that of his cuisine is communicated, and what his plans are for the future.
As an agency we understand design as a tool that can solve problems and turn them into communication. When you approach something new – a dish, an experience or something else – what is your design path? Do you have a set one? Is there a conception and testing phase?
Something first has to excite me – be it the passion for the product itself or even the human connection with the producer. Then it becomes a personal challenge. There is a phase of exploring the product and learning the ingredients, from these pushes then you arrive at the dish. But there is no logical thread. There is no set path. Each dish has its own story, its own reason for being, its own time. It is the reason why I throw ideas up in the air and then, months later perhaps, I take them up again.
From your debut in Marano Vicentino to the opening of Garibaldi in Piazza dei Signori, what have been your communication tools and how have they changed in these ten years?
I have always followed everything from the beginning. I’ve never had press offices. I’ve never had people to take care of relations for me. And this direct way of telling my story has also been my good fortune because people, unless you are already unreachable and therefore expect there to be a filter, are looking for you. And if people are looking for you it means you have something to say. That’s always been my way – even on social media. Then when I got here things changed. But when you move you have to change, don’t you? Here I started from scratch. I moved away from the choices I had made and in the face of new media popularity I preferred to be a constant drop rather than a waterfall. I decided to remove myself, to stop attending so many events, to become selective in my collaborations, keeping only those that made logical sense in my path. I wanted people to come here because they believed in the value of my project. In this new space I have tried to build a more mature identity. My cuisine has become more balanced and simpler, the ambience has become more personal, the menu is now exclusively tasting – no longer à la carte. And also on a communicative level I want to convey a serious entrepreneurial project. I talk about culture, design, beauty starting from an idea that is increasingly important today. That of transmitting an identity.
Sustainability in the broadest sense is a choice of products, a relationship with people and a relationship with the territory. What is your relationship with sustainability and how does it relate to the search for identity?
It is a somewhat heavy and tiring subject. But when you go to extremes and don’t seek a balance, everything becomes like that. Today we tell ourselves that plastic is the enemy. I don’t know, I think first we need to find common sense. Then of course it is important to be sensitive, to try to improve yourself and to respect the people you work with. Personally, I always try to promote places, I always use local raw materials, I try to enhance their characteristics and I don’t compromise on quality. As a team, we have also started an internal project to reduce food waste to a minimum.
Earlier you mentioned social media as a tool to communicate your journey. When you create a dish do you ever think about the fact that it will be photographed by someone?
In the kitchen I have learnt that the most important part is the functional part, i.e. the dish has to be eaten. I don’t like perfection, I like the naturalness of things. And this represents my approach to cooking: instinctive. Just as a product for me does not have to be perfect, a dish does not have to convey a feeling of perfection, but of authenticity. Of course – aesthetics has its value, but it is important to remember that the dish must be designed to convey your message clearly, regardless of who will eat it and how they will eat it.
When recruiting staff, do you look at the social aspect of candidates?
Yes, Serena does. She looks at who they are, what they do and tries to get as much information as possible before hiring a person. It’s important to understand who you are looking at, and since on social media people talk about their daily lives you can get an idea. From this point of view, social media simplifies the process, otherwise you would spend your days interviewing.
How risky is it to focus on the chef instead of the restaurant?
It is a time bomb, as well as being wrong on an entrepreneurial level. Because the restaurant should run almost on its own. But it is not always easy. In my case, for example, people come for the chef, so it’s normal that with my media power I have always worked on who I am and my personality. It’s my brand. We often reason about which way is right and it is difficult to find a balance, unless the business has little personality and then your presence doesn’t make much of a difference. But I put my signature here and I am here every day. When I am here, people come more willingly and consider the restaurant as a place of quality. But if tomorrow I wanted to stay at home for three days that would be a problem.
On a national-popular level there is a tendency to point at the chef as if he wants to put his face everywhere. But you tell us that it is actually a risk factor. How does it work?
The problem is that the value is you. You’re not creating it as a company or as a product so that it can have a life of its own and you can then break away. Here if they don’t see me today I can go, but if I start missing more days what happens? My presence here counts.
How do you relate to the world of influencers? Have you ever thought of exploiting it in relation to your business?
Basically, I have always believed in the value of collaborations but not of ‘branding’. I do something when both I and the company believe in the value of the project. For example, I collaborate with Barilla because it is a company that supports me in certain areas and asks me for help: it is a genuine synergy. I do collaborations mainly for my person, not so much for my business. At the Garibaldi we use social media to tell what we do, while in my profiles I try to communicate how I am and what my passions are by recounting my everyday life without having a built in feed. That is, if I’m an idiot I let social tell the story. Many times the risk of entrusting someone with your image is that the story is not really yours. And that makes a lot of difference because people decide to follow you for exactly what you are. Even at the Garibaldi we have never spent money on social media, except for staff recruitment, and we have never bought likes. We may not be perfect but we communicate in our own way, unlike other venues that rely on communication agencies and it happens that on social media we end up looking like all the other venues followed by those agencies.
Infusion It is a project that you are communicating with your own channels for now, but thinking about the guests who come do you manage an archive that keeps their history?
Today we have the Instagram profile @infusion_by where we have narrated Infusion 1, 2 and 3 through videos, photos and stories the dishes we created and the path to make them. Infusion started in 2015 and continued between 2016 and 2017, then from 2019 it became a real project also with a time cadence. Now the idea would be to make 10 events and tell them in a book or a film: in something that tells the story of the project and its progress.
So Infusion, beyond the meeting and dissemination aspect, is a real communication project?
Yes. And I hope it will become bigger and bigger. Now that we have started collaborating with San Pellegrino, for example, we have a real press office. For every organisation we collaborate with, we try to involve their press offices precisely to exploit their media power and create synergies in which everyone puts their own spin on the project and give it an increasingly international scope. Last year we moved 270,000 contacts and reached millions and millions of users.
