Qualitaly_120

DEC. JAN. 2021 I AT PAGE 1 The gift I would like This year I also wrote the letter to Santa Claus. It’s true, I’m too old to still be doing it, you’ll say. And yet, it is never too late to close your eyes and dream that some wish, or a hope, will come true. This time, I think my requests are not so difficult to understand. I want to share with you my biggest dream... “Dear Santa Claus, it has been almost a year since our first close encounter with this tiny being, this virus they later named Covid-19. At first, as you know, I was shocked, frightened and discouraged, unable to react and find a valid motivation to continue thinking positive. It was a really difficult year for me, for the Cooperative, for all our employees, for our customers and, above all, for those who then encountered the disease up close, having to fight it and not always coming out victorious. And yet, from this terrible experience we have all learned something, each one dealing with his or her own daily reality. We have had the opportunity to get to know each other better, but also to get to know the people around us better with their strengths and weaknesses, because it is desperation that lays bare. And, unfortunately, they have not always been good discoveries. There are those who have shown themselves to be stronger than we knew, those who are weaker, those who are smarter, those who are cowardly... we have probably been able to obtain lots of information, of truths that we would never have had the chance to discover in normal times. It is said that the Coronavirus has taken us a leap 10 years into the future. We got things that would have come much slower. Today perhaps even our activities have changed, renewed themselves to be more incisive towards our customers. However, they are the ones who paid the highest price, the restaurateurs and all the operators in the professional hospitality sector. So, here’s the biggest gift I’m asking you for, Santa Claus. Help us rebuild the strength of this sector and the strategic role it has played over the years. Give our customers the grit, the tenacity, the economic support to start again. And help us distributors, we, Cooperativa Italiana Catering, to understand the right way to rebuild our activities. In this issue of Qualitaly we have tried to imagine what the year that has just begun will be like. We have tried to project ourselves into the future by studying the past, trying to understand what mistakes have been made, what virtuous behaviour, what problems we will have to face in the restart phase. Because, Father Christmas, my biggest dream is to start again, for all of us, to start again together, to start again quickly, to start again with such AT PAGE 3 The last mile The final rush, the finishing straight, the last effort, the tape, the sight of the finish line, the chequered flag: the forest of metaphors that promise well-deserved relief to the athlete who has to cover ‘the last mile’ to arrive in first place, fully represents what we are living in this moment of struggle against the pandemic. The last mile in telephone connections is the connection from the network to the last user. It is in this last mile that the greatest noise is recorded: the noise gets louder, the signal gets worse, but the challenge of the ‘last mile’ must come to an end. It’s the same thing that happens in a sports race: minute after minute, kilometre after kilometre, bend after bend, you know exactly how far you can go, at which lap you will have to release the pressure in order not to consume all your energy immediately. You have to study your opponents, movements and tactics. Check the resources available and review some of the plans you had in mind: you need to reorganise the race. And here we are all in turmoil trying to understand how long it will take to MAGAZINE Traduzione a cura di Christopher Farley