Comenda Brand Guidelines: The 1963 Milan Dishwasher Maker That Started Ali Group

A small warewashing company and an investor.

Comenda began in Milan in 1963. In a 2013 interview with Foodservice Consultant, the magazine of the foodservice consultants’ society FCSI, Luciano Berti, then chairman and chief executive of Ali Group, was asked about the year “when Comenda, the first company in the Ali Group, was incorporated in Milan,” and said that he had wanted it to become one of the world’s best makers of commercial dishwashing machines. The trade magazine Foodservice Equipment Reports gave the earlier step in 2021: Berti invested in 1962 in a small Milanese company making automated warewashing equipment, and soon afterwards founded ALI Comenda, the origin of the group.

Comenda is the company from which the larger group grew. Ali Group’s own history page makes the same point, calling Comenda “our first company” and setting its founding against the rise of new restaurants in Italy in the early 1960s. Comenda’s website quotes Berti describing “a great adventure started in 1963,” when commercial warewashing was in its early days.

According to Ali Group, Comenda sold more than 70 percent of its machines abroad during the 1970s. In 1972 it opened a marketing headquarters in Paris, and the group adopted the acronym ALI, for Apparecchiature Lavaggio Industriale, Italian for industrial washing equipment.

Racks, hoods and belts.

Comenda’s website lists only warewashing equipment, organised by machine type. For smaller kitchens and bars it offers cycle machines — glasswashers, undercounter dishwashers and hood-type units — in four ranges it calls Infinity, Hi Line, Prime Line and Equilybra, built around standard baskets of 400 by 400 and 500 by 500 millimetres, with some hood-type models taking a 600 by 500 millimetre rack. It says the Infinity machines can be controlled from a smartphone, tablet or computer.

For larger kitchens there are rack conveyor machines in the ACR1, ACR2 and ACR3 series, in straight and corner layouts, which the company rates at up to 350 racks an hour, and flight-type machines in the NE1, NE2 and NE3 series, which carry crockery on a belt and which Comenda describes as built for large canteens, hospitals, hotels and inflight catering. On the NE machines the buyer chooses between two clearances under the hood, 620 or 840 millimetres, and the company says it adapts the belt and its pegs to the items being washed. A control panel it calls C-Smart shows the machine’s main settings and its use of water and energy, and is meant to help plan servicing. It also makes pot and utensil washers, including machines that clean with granules, crate and tray washers, racks and water-treatment units.

Its list of customers runs from hotels, restaurants, pubs and bistros to pastry shops, central kitchens, ships, school and corporate canteens, hospitals and nursing homes, airline caterers and supermarkets. Comenda says it designs complete washing systems as well as single machines, sized around a kitchen’s space, hours and staff.

On its awards page the company lists a Trophée de l’Innovation for the Infinity range at the 2023 Rest’Hotel fair in Caen, a 2019 Smart Label innovation award for its C-Smart control interface, a Good Design award for the Infinity range and a nomination in the UX Design Awards. It also names ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 certificates and membership of the VdF, the German association of commercial-kitchen planners.

Washing up, industrialised.

Commercial dishwasher makers sell to professional kitchens rather than households. Their catalogues are sorted by how the ware moves: undercounter machines and glasswashers that sit beneath a bar or counter, hood-type or door-type machines that wash one rack at a time, rack conveyors for bigger runs of baskets, and flight-type machines that carry plates on a continuous belt. Hobart and Comenda both organise their ranges in this way on their websites.

The customer lists read like a map of institutional eating. Hobart names restaurants, hotels, hospitals, long-term care, schools and grocery retailers; Comenda adds pastry shops, ships, central kitchens and airline caterers, and says its flight-type machines are built for large canteens, hospitals and inflight catering. The baskets themselves come in standard sizes: Comenda quotes racks of 400 by 400 and 500 by 500 millimetres.

The trade meets at fairs rather than in shops. INTERNORGA, held every year in Hamburg, describes itself as a platform for hospitality and foodservice, with a hall area for kitchen technology and equipment, and plans its 100th edition for March 2027. In Milan, HostMilano is another fixed date; the American trade magazine Foodservice Equipment Reports keeps photo galleries from its 2023 and 2025 editions. Comenda’s own awards page lists an innovation prize from the Rest’Hotel fair in Caen.

Ownership in this sector often runs through large groups. Hobart is a brand of Illinois Tool Works’ food-equipment group; Comenda was the first company of Italy’s Ali Group, which has since gathered further warewashing names. This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand and marks what rests on the company’s own word.

The first company of a foodservice group.

From Comenda, the group spread outwards. Ali Group’s history page dates its move into the United States to 1980, when it bought Champion Industries, an American warewasher brand; Berti, in the 2013 interview, dated the Champion purchase to 1979 and said it doubled the group’s sales volume. In 1989 the group moved beyond dishwashers with Carpigiani, the ice-cream machine maker, and the cooking brands Lainox and Ambach. The same year it added Moyer Diebel, a Canadian warewashing maker, and in 1994 it formed Alicontract, a division selling complete kitchen installations; Berti said in 2013 that its customers included hotel chains such as Four Seasons and Marriott. Two other Italian warewashing names joined later, Ali Group says: Hoonved in 1996 and DIHR in 2004.

Ali Group says it now has 115 companies. Foodservice Equipment Reports described it in 2021 as a multinational with 79 brands and about 10,000 employees in 30 countries, led by Filippo Berti as chairman and chief executive. The group gives its headquarters as Cernusco sul Naviglio, in the province of Milan. Asked in 2013 whether the group might become too big, Berti answered that its size and its reach across the world market had taken 50 years to build.

Comenda itself now trades as Comenda Ali Group Srl, and its website gives its seat as Cassina de’ Pecchi in the province of Milan. Through the group it sits beside the warewashing brands its own founder later collected, while keeping its own name, ranges and website.

For a design guide, Comenda shows how a single-product company can become the seed of a much larger group while staying a specialist. Compare Hoonved and DIHR, two Italian dishwasher makers in the same group. For this guide we use a deep teal, a rinse blue and a warm stone with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Comenda’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.