OUR STORY

After 6 years of pop-up events driving around the North West, Fritto has a permanent roof above their heads finally! Fritto has been allocated a unit as part of a local regeneration scheme called £1 house/shops on Smithdown Road, Liverpool.

Fritto represents the latest vanguard in the extraordinary transformation of Smithdown Road.

Robin Brown / The Post

Starting life at the Granby Four Streets Community Market in Toxteth, Fritto over the last 6 years has brought an authentic taste of Italy to mobile street food, catering, pop-up events and community markets around Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds.

BEHIND FRITTO

Fritto is also an award-winning social enterprise on the mission to use food to enrich peoples’ lives, while tackling social issues through cooking workshops and mentoring activities. Fritto’s story began at Granby Fourstreets Community Market in the summer of 2015, when the organisers invited Luca to sample his Italian street food menu on the local community… and we’ve never looked back. Granby Street was the perfect place to begin the Fritto story, combining Luca’s two passions: food and social change.

Luca’s journey to opening a restaurant is hardly typical. Having come to Liverpool to study a Masters in criminology and crime prevention through environmental design, he’s uniquely placed to understand the benefits of innovative schemes such as the one the council has attempted here. “Restaurants can help the regeneration of an area because they can create a little community,” he says. “It feels like the independents down here made the area more desirable and there are more families now.”

Robin Brown / The Post

Just months after launching his social enterprise, Luca’s work has been recognised at the 2016 Liverpool Youth Awards for ‘improving wellbeing and resilience of young people’. As part of its ethos, Fritto uses food to facilitate positive change in the lives of unemployed people, young offenders and other disadvantaged groups by offering volunteering opportunities and work experience, along with cookery workshops and mentoring.

I believe in the joy and excitement that food can bring. With Fritto, I aim to improve people’s confidence and self-esteem through cooking, sharing and eating together. Food is a universal language and has the power to make a real difference in people’s lives, be it socially, in terms of skills and employment or improving health and wellbeing.

Luca Sanvittore