Italian food, without the long way round
Much of the Italian food sold in Britain takes the long way round. It leaves a small producer, joins a large importer, passes through a distributor or two and rests for a while on a warehouse shelf. It arrives with a price that has grown at every stop and a story nobody remembers. The salami is still Italian. It has simply lost its passport photo.
We started Deliciously Wholesale to take the short way.
How it began
Our founder, Luigi, was born in Rome and moved to London in 2012. He found plenty of Italian food here, but very little of the food he grew up with: salumi made by families rather than factories, cheeses and preserves from small producers, the things you only find if you know whom to ask. So in 2016 he started bringing them over himself, for restaurants and shops. We've been doing it ever since.
Luigi is also our Executive Chef. He chooses what we sell the way a chef would, by cooking with it first.
What makes us different
We know the people who make our food. Luigi personally knows every producer we import, takes part in their planning meetings and is in Italy every couple of weeks. Most are family businesses. Subissati, for example, has been curing pork in the hills of Maremma since 1963, and is now in its second generation.
Some of it you won't find anywhere else. Subissati, Maremma in Barattolo, Toro & Bottega, Egisto Grilli and Ugo Tartufi are represented and imported in the UK by us alone. If you've tasted them in Britain, they came through our door.
Fewer hands, better value. With no chain of middlemen between the producer and your kitchen, more of what you pay goes into the product itself.
From our kitchen
At our kitchen in New Covent Garden Market, Luigi leads the cooking with the same ingredients we import. For trade we make:
- Pesto, in counter formats and in small tubs ready to resell.
- Baked dishes: lasagne, cannelloni, baked pasta, gateau di patate, parmigiana and their relations.
- Fresh soups, hot and cold, in tubs ready to resell.
- Fresh condiments in large and small tubs, and fresh stock paste in small pots.
- Prepared and cooked vegetables, blast-frozen at their best.
A recipe's name is never unique. London has twenty kitchens making lasagne ai funghi. What makes a dish is the ingredients, the method and, above all, who makes it, so ours tastes like nobody else's. They're the dishes Italian kitchens make from scratch on a quiet day. Most kitchens no longer have quiet days.
The kitchen makes plenty more for our retail shop, our market stall and catering. Our private chefs will even cook it in a customer's home.
Find us at the market
On Saturdays we have a stall at Hoxton Street Market. We sell our products there, along with Poké Italiano: rice salads made with the ingredients we import and cook. It's also where we hear first what people love, which is the most honest market research we know.
What we do for your business
- Any size order. A single case or a single jar. You don't need a warehouse to buy well.
- Next-day delivery in London, Monday to Friday, when you order by 4pm. Local deliveries often arrive by cargo bike, which is quicker in London traffic and kinder to it.
- Rest of the UK by courier. Order Monday to Thursday by 4pm and it's with you in one to two days.
- Simple delivery charges. £10 under £200 ex VAT, free above.
- Ordering that keeps up with you. Order online at any hour, from your phone, between services. Pay by card; credit accounts are available by agreement.
Why choose us
- Genuine. We can tell you who made it, where and how, because we were there.
- Capable. We import, cook, prepare and deliver it ourselves.
- Reliable. You order by four and it arrives tomorrow.
- Good value. You pay for the food, not for the journey.
- Unique. Some of our producers work with nobody else in the UK, and our recipes taste of the hands that make them.
People who work for people
We're a small team at the Food Exchange, New Covent Garden Market: to name two, Louis in the kitchen and Thea in the office. When you call, you'll speak to someone who has tasted what you're ordering, and quite possibly cooked it. We love good food, we love the people who make it, and we've rather taken to the people who cook it.
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