How does one become a taralli king? With hard work, a certain nerve and the ability to see where others do not see. This is the story of Giuseppe Fiore, a 70-year-old entrepreneur at the helm of Fiore di Puglia, a leading company in the taralli sector. Starting from the family bakery, he has succeeded in bringing one of the most famous baked products - today - of the heel of Italy to tables all over the world.
Three simple ingredients. Oil, wine and flour, symbols of a land rich in food and wine qualities. However, at the beginning of the 1970s, the tarallo was unknown in Italy and in Apulia it was mainly baked during the holidays: at Easter with fennel seeds, at Christmas with pepper and sweet, with a sugar glaze. In 1971, after completing his military service, Giuseppe Fiore realised that the time was right to make the tarallo known to Italians. He returned to Andria, where his family ran a bakery, and asked to carve out a small space in the shop to start making them, and added anchovies, olives and local onions to the classic ingredients. He took them to lavish Apulian wedding parties and they were immediately snapped up: it was time to take the plunge. Milan and Turin in those years were swarming with immigrants from the south and were the right hook to bring the tarallo to the gastronomies of northern Italy. The first is the Milanese Il Salumaio, in Via Montenapoleone. The very young Giuseppe began to tour the trade fairs. «The first was in Parma,» he recounts, 'and I saw nothing but breadsticks. I wondered why taralli, so simple, genuine and tasty, did not have the same luck'. The winning choice was to decline the tarallo with the flavours of the land where they would then end up on the shelves. In Genoa he enriched them with pesto, in Tuscany he packed them with a little salt, in Veneto he used amarone.
Demands are increasing and the small bakery is no longer enough. He broke away from his parents« business and moved from Andria to Corato, to an establishment in the suburbs. It is 1990 and Fiore continues to churn out taralli with ever new flavours: cheese, mushroom and vegetable. To test them he offers them for free to the employees of a nearby distribution centre. In the meantime the volume of business increases, turnover grows and the taralli are sold all over the world. In 1993, Fiore di Puglia was born, preserving those three simple ingredients in the brand name: the olive tree, the ear of wheat and the bunch of grapes. »On the first label I added the original, because I have always believed in the potential of this product« By 1997, the modest workshop had become a company with a turnover of 10 billion a year. Large agri-food companies began to appear at the Apulian entrepreneur's door and offers poured in, but Fiore did not sell, so attached was he to his creature. “I was summoned by Barilla to their headquarters,” he says, fishing through his memories, »and when they put the contract in front of me to sign I said: "I have to go and move the car", even though I had no car to move. It meant that I would leave without signing and since then, every time I recite this phrase, those with me know that I want to cut it short'.
It was in the 1990s that another great intuition arrived. Taralli were sold in half-kilo transparent plastic bags. Fiore reduced the weight and turned them into snacks that were easy to carry and eat, like crisps. A format that would become very popular, especially in the autogrilles where Fiore entered thanks to a stratagem. «I managed to convince Autogrill buyers to buy a quintal of taralli to be distributed in four service areas here in Puglia. I sent friends to buy all the packages, so I secured several supplies while waiting for the product to conquer the public». Today, Fiore di Puglia is present on the entire motorway network, churns out 200 quintals of taralli daily, has three production units all in Corato, and in 2022 closed with a turnover of 13 million. Giuseppe Fiore, who was awarded an honorary degree in business sciences in 2005 and became Master of Commerce in 2023, is 70 years old and has passed the baton to his four sons, each with specific tasks. Every day he is there in the office, as in love with his work as he was 50 years ago. «To be successful you must have three things: passion, willpower and humility. My parents taught me this». Three like the simple ingredients that started his great challenge: to make tarallo known to the whole world.
