QUALITALY_125

OCT. NOV. 2021 VI creativity, altruism, courage and enterprise, aimed at growing in anticipation of a revolutionary future. WHERE DID PIZZAUT COME FROM? I am the father of an autistic child and, one night, thinking about how to give an opportunity to older children who are already of working age, I thought about what could be useful and proactive. In Italy there are about 600,000 autistic people and very few are in the world of work or have a professional career. I remember that I woke up my wife and told her that I wanted to open a restaurant. The idea took shape also from the fact that at home, with the help of my son, we often cooked pizza, because going out to eat with a child with autism, in some cases could cause a little annoyance to the restaurateur and other customers. In addition, I had noticed that the child really liked this specific manual skill. So why not give it a try? If a kid could make a dough, why not also try with the older ones? Once the decision was made, I started asking the parents for their availability for this new adventure and this is where we started. ONCE THE DECISION WAS MADE, HOW DID THE PROJECT EVOLVE? I immediately got busy organising the first courses, looking for the most suitable theme for the different ‘nuances’ of autism. The courses began for dining room attendant, to be a waiter, to be a pizza maker, obviously in a very informal way; then I asked some restaurateurs if they were willing to accept the brigade of PizzAut in their premises. WHAT WERE THE REACTIONS? There were some no’s but there was also satisfaction. For example, among the first experiences, I remember a restaurant with a capacity of 150 people... Well, there were 600 reservations for that occasion! In other cases, we had availability but only on closure day and it was nice to see that, even in unusual conditions, the restaurant was always full. Then, at a certain point, having ascertained the success of the initiative, the situation was reversed and it was the restaurateurs themselves who called us, aware of the value of what we were doing, giving a concrete example of how the restaurant industry could really do a lot to support the project and raise awareness of the public opinion inattentive to the issue of autism. MAGAZINE