Food Bite Italy: Over 150 Key Players Gathered to Shape the Future of Agrifood

During the first day, Amparo de San José, Head of Network and Business Development in Region South, explained that at EIT Food, we work to make the food system more sustainable, healthy, and trusted. She emphasized the importance of collaborating with key industry players, startups, corporates, and research centers across Europe, highlighting Italy's key role in this sector. She also noted that the goal is to support and drive innovation and sustainability together.

"The future lies in bold entrepreneurs like Microbion or AlmaSerum, and in the investors and accelerators who believe in them, like Maia Ventures and Plug and Play. This meeting is dedicated to all of them, and to helping you all meet the exciting challenge of building a better food future,” she added.

The first day focused on the evolving landscape of startup investment and corporate partnerships within the food sector. It kicked off with a series of panel discussions featuring top executives from companies such as Deloitte, Nestlé, Angelini Ventures, and Unilever. Topics ranged from new collaboration models to strategic innovation, creating a space for high-level dialogue between corporates and stakeholders from the innovation ecosystem.

The day included an expert keynote by Antonio Davila (HEC) on “Open your innovation doors or die,” followed by corporate venturing business cases presented by Matteo Demartini (Deloitte). The panel on “Innovation by working with others: Best practices,” moderated by Antonio Davila, featured speakers such as Claudia Berti (Barilla), Tuba Gockan (EFES), and Fabio Beninati (Granarolo), among others.

Additionally, Paula Hafner, Partnership Manager from EIT Food South shared insights about the great advantages of joining the EIT Food Ecosystem, along with success stories achieved with partners.

The second day was dedicated to startups, investors, and accelerators. It featured 15 innovative startups pitching their solutions across categories like sustainable packaging, food waste reduction, traceability, and alternative proteins. Italy's top accelerators and enabling organizations, including Eatable Adventures, Grow It Up, and Plug and Play.

Several of the participating startups agreed that events like Food Bite Italy are essential—not only for giving the visibility they need, but also for discovering transformative and inspiring ideas that are reshaping the agrifood sector. During the round table "The Italian open Innocation agrifood ecosystem" the pannelists, including David Bassani (Maia Ventures), Marco Gaiani (Linfa Ventures), Michela Petronio (Barilla) and Fiammetta Mataloni (Nextalia) came to the conclusion that it is necessary for entrepreneurs and startups to create structures from zero that enable them to be attractive for international funds: they need to be fluent in english, adapt legal and financial documents and procedures... the Italian market is not enough and there's a "need to be ready to compete at an international level".

During the startup pitches, there were several interesting points made by the founders, like Francesco Farnetani, founder of Bottle-up, who marked that they "are not just building a business" but "shaping the future of the industry. We should make this journey a remarkable success", he added.