Pellegrini Brand Guidelines: Milan’s 1965 Canteen Company, Now a Historic Mark

From a bicycle maker’s canteen to a business of its own.

Pellegrini is a Milan catering and services company founded in 1965 by Ernesto Pellegrini. Italian Wikipedia says he qualified as an accountant, joined the bicycle maker Bianchi, rose to chief accountant and was then put in charge of its canteen service. Seeing that, in the years of Italy’s economic boom and of fast-changing eating habits, workplace catering was set to grow, he founded the Organizzazione Mense Pellegrini in 1965 — mense being canteens. In the same year, Italian Wikipedia says, he was among the promoters of the national association of canteen operators, the Associazione nazionale gestori mense, and became its first president.

The business became Pellegrini S.p.A. in 1975, according to both English and Italian Wikipedia. The company’s own timeline then adds a new line every few years: Pellegrini Catering Overseas in 1979, set up to follow clients abroad, in countries that Italian Wikipedia lists as Angola, the United Arab Emirates, Nigeria and Congo; Central Food, a food-supply business, in 1982; fresh-meat processing in 1984; meal vouchers in 1985; cleaning and integrated services in 1996; vending in 2000; and corporate welfare services in 2015.

The founder was also a public figure beyond catering. English Wikipedia records that he was president of the Milan football club Inter from 1984 to 1995, and that he was made a Cavaliere del Lavoro, Italy’s order of merit for labour, in 1990.

The company marked sixty years in 2025. Its chair’s letter on the website describes a business that “has in evolution its own reason for continuity,” and dates its mission — taking care of people’s wellbeing — back to 1965.

Canteens first, then everything around them.

Pellegrini describes itself today as a partner for companies, public bodies and institutions in running their “non-core” services. When Il Giorno, the Milan daily, reported on the company in August 2026, it listed four areas of activity: catering and vending, food supply, welfare solutions, and cleaning, sanitation and integrated services, with research and training run through the company’s Accademia Pellegrini.

Its size is given in slightly different ways. Il Giorno reported in December 2025 that the company had about 11,000 staff, spread across offices in Milan, Rome and Mendrisio in Switzerland and contracts in Italy and abroad, and the chair’s letter on the website also gives 11,000. The company’s figures page gives 9,110 staff in Italy and abroad, and 2,244 new hires in 2025.

Catering remains the core. The company’s catering page says its collective-catering service serves 45 million meals a year at 650 sites in companies, religious communities, health facilities and schools, and puts more than 200,000 people at the table each day. Behind it, the company says, sits Central Food, which it calls the “heart and engine” of its catering and where it selects its raw materials, and an own-label product line, Sceltissimi, developed for collective catering. The page also offers a team of architects and engineers to design or refit clients’ canteens and kitchens.

The catering business is still adding capacity. In May 2026 ANSA reported that Pellegrini had opened a new central kitchen at Peschiera Borromeo, outside Milan, producing 7,000 meals a day for schools, hospitals and companies and employing 50 people. It has also bought in new channels: in February 2021 Tech.eu reported that Pellegrini had acquired Mymenu, a food-delivery business run since 2013 by its three founders, and would let it operate independently under its umbrella.

Design and documentation.

Contract caterers sell a service that happens inside someone else’s building, so their brands have to work in two places at once: on the corporate pages where owners and clients read about them, and on the counters, menus and uniforms that guests see. Most of their public material shows food and venues rather than the company itself. Delaware North’s history page, for example, tells its story as a slide show of dated photographs, and Levy’s press room is a run of venue announcements.

Large groups split that work into sectors. Compass Group says it organises its business by market, a model it calls “sectorisation,” delivered through a portfolio of brands; its sectors include business and industry, healthcare and senior living, education, and sports and leisure. In that model a workplace canteen, a school kitchen and a stadium concourse can each carry a different name, even when one parent owns them all.

Some companies go the other way. In November 2014 Delaware North announced one global identity, dropped “Companies” and the DNC initials from its logo, and folded most of its operating units into a single name, keeping Sportservice as a named exception. Levy, owned by Compass since 2006, has instead added named units of its own, from E15 to Rank + Rally, each with its own launch year.

For a reader trying to understand these brands, the most useful sources are the companies’ own history and ownership pages, read alongside dated reporting. This guide gives founding dates, owners and contracts only as those sources state them, attributes each claim, and treats the visual identity described here as an unofficial interpretation rather than a reproduction of any company’s mark.

A family name on the register of historic marks.

The company is family-run. Its website says Valentina Pellegrini, the founder’s daughter, became vice-chair and managing director in 2014, founded the Accademia Pellegrini in 2016 as a centre for research, development and training, and has led the group as chair and chief executive since July 2025; its board lists Ivana Faglia as vice-chair. In December 2025 Il Giorno reported that the company had chosen to share half of its 2025 profits with all its staff, in proportion to length of service, and quoted Valentina Pellegrini describing it as a “Welfare Company.”

Its name now has official standing as a mark. On 31 August 2026 Il Giorno reported, and the company announced, that the Pellegrini mark had been entered in Italy’s Registro dei Marchi Storici di Interesse Nazionale, the register of historic marks of national interest set up by the Ministry of Enterprises and Made in Italy and run by the Italian Patent and Trademark Office for businesses at least fifty years old. The paper described the company as having “entirely Italian” capital and a presence abroad. The company also says it has held an EcoVadis platinum medal for its sustainability performance since 2023.

The family name also carries the company’s social work. Italian Wikipedia says the Fondazione Ernesto Pellegrini was set up in December 2013, and that its first activity was creating and running Ruben, a solidarity restaurant; the company’s timeline lists the foundation as a family initiative of 2013.

For a design guide, Pellegrini shows how a contract caterer can turn a founder’s surname into a long-lived service mark across canteens, vouchers and cleaning. Compare CIR food, the Reggio Emilia catering cooperative, and Compass Group, the British contract caterer. For this guide we use an ink blue, a saffron and a linen with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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