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exploring taste—santa margherita gruppo vinicolo heritage—vyta, from stations to the world

Nicolò Marzotto, President of Retail Food srl

Starting out in 2008 with the intention of offering travelers a fer available at stations, to provide sustainable food and wine
refreshment area that combined “beauty and taste” while re- choices, attention to detail and care for passengers that did not
maining accessible to everyone, VyTA now has six successful previously exist. Just think how much the concept of travel has
restaurants, highly recognizable with their different and care- changed in recent years, for both business and pleasure. We
fully studied formulas, in the main Italian train stations (Roma tried to adapt to the new course the Italian railway is under-
Termini, Milano Centrale, Torino Porta Nuova, Napoli Cen- taking, transofming stations into meeting points and attract-
trale, Venezia Santa Lucia, Bologna Centrale and Florence San- ing new customers, no longer exlusively composed of travel-
ta Maria Novella as mentioned above). Villa Borghese in Rome ers. VyTA was our response to this demand, with a formula
was the first prototype in a location that wasn’t a train stations, that combines beauty and taste.
which opened in December 2015 and paved the way for the
development of a business model that, according to Marzot- One example is the VyTA in the Florence Santa Maria No-
to, focuses on three main types of restaurants; those in Italian vella station. What does it mean to design a contemporary
train stations, those in European train stations, and finally, in- space in historical surroundings such as these?
dependent restaurants ones at tourist sites in major Italian and Florence was a real turning point for us. There, in fact, the basic
European cities. “I thought that offering a good glass of wine at concept was revolutionized to meet different specifications and
the station would be a nice way to share the excellent wine pro- was adapted to the special location in the Santa Maria Novella
duced by Santa Margherita Gruppo Vinicolo,” said Marzotto station. Protecting cultural heritage was a significant challenge
with conviction, sharing with us in this interview how and why for our architect (Daniela Colli); the idea was to offer customers
VyTA was born, the hopes of the entrepreneur who believes in a unique experience that best shared the identity of the place
the “beautiful and good” products made in Italy, as well as the and at the same time provide a completely different way of liv-
future ambitions of the brand. ing the station, opening up a dialogue with one of the last ex-
amples of Italian monumental architecture, which dates back
How did the VyTA project come about and what made to the ’30s.
you choose train stations?
VyTA was designed to meet the needs of a new type of traveler, Italy has changed a lot since start of the VyTA project seven
more attentive to quality of life. We wanted to change the of- years ago. How did the project evolve in this respect?

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