Marco Amatti FCSI can get very enthusiastic very quickly when discussing his favorite topics. His son’s basketball prowess; the prospects of the Brazilian national football team; the vibrant and varied cuisine of his native Sao Paulo; his new role as an ambassador for the Fispal Food Service and Food & Hospitality LATAM trade shows; and FCSI’s role in elevating global foodservice, are all discussed with an edifying, contagious passion.
Amatti, owner of the Sao Paulo headquartered consultancy MAPA Assessoria, is great company, whatever the subject. In truth, the foodservice sector is lucky to have Amatti, but it was never a foregone conclusion he would join it. Having been a soldier, a champion black belt judoka whose Olympic dreams were shattered by a serious shoulder injury, and a student in philosophy (at Universidade de São Paulo) with a postgraduate degree in chemistry (from Oswaldo Cruz Colleges), Amatti’s natural enthusiasm, intelligence and people skills could have taken him anywhere.
But foodservice has played a part in his life from a young age. His grandparents owned a small store in eastern Sao Paulo when he was young. “It was in the poor part of San Paolo. I grew up seeing and smelling food and retail,” says Amatti.
A job as a waiter while at university gave him a further passion for food. “After a few months, I was leading the team of waiters. The two partners in the restaurant fell out with each other and one of them said to me, ‘Do you want to be my partner, instead? And the manager?’ After two years, I learned a lot,” he laughs.
Starting up; starting again
Amatti ended up buying the restaurant from his partner and expanding to another three locations in Sao Paulo between 1986-96. “For 10 years I was an operator. But it became too busy and I wanted just one location,” he says. The strategy backfired when the owner of that restaurant’s real estate sold the property from underneath him. “I lost a lot of money. I went back to zero again. But we must learn from our mistakes.”
Undeterred, he became a technician at Mundial Química do Brasil (World Chemistry of Brazil) between 1999-2000. “I had graduated in chemistry and studied food safety, which means a lot for our business, so my first role specialized in food safety,” says Amatti, who enthuses that his studies in philosophy, chemistry, physics, maths, and sociology have all played a huge part in his later career as a management advisory services (MAS) consultant. “It all helps with thinking about different points of view and finding different methods for different solutions. The human/social sciences and natural sciences give us different languages and different tools to use. They have all helped me to deal with my clients better. Certainly, studying philosophy taught me a lot about ethics. Behaving honestly with clients and following proper procedures meant that when I first encountered FCSI in 2007, joining the Society was a natural fit for me. I thought, ‘Here’s something that shares the same beliefs that I have’.”
Prior to that, between 20012004, Amatti was a partner at PPG Empreendimentos Gastronômicos, a Brazilian advisory and consultancy company for food companies, and a technical advisor for Abrasel SP (2002-2011), becoming an executive director in 2016. His own consultancy MAPA Assessoria was formed in 2004. Amatti is proud to mark 20 years of running his own business, but even prouder that he has operated by always being fair and honest with his clients. “I wanted to be different to some of the other – non-FCSI-member – consultants in Brazil and how they were working in our market,” he says.
Food safety focus
His other point of difference, was to focus on food safety. “We go to the ‘stomach’ of a client’s business: providing solutions, training and analysis. We focus on management services. We don’t do gastronomy, but we do concepts,” he says, noting how FCSI’s motto of ‘Sharing, supporting and inspiring’ has led to MAPA collaborating with a number of fellow FCSI members in projects in South America. “We believe in the collaboration model. It’s a real thing: an honest relationship. We do a lot of that today.”
MAPA’s clients include restaurateurs that boast more than 60 years of operation to “tiny, new restaurants” that just need food safety management advice. Amatti’s wife Adriana, a dietician who also works in the company, recently deduced that MAPA has worked with close to 400 clients in the past 20 years. Those clients are mostly restaurants and hotels. “We have some hotel clients in the northeast part of Brazil and 14 or so in Sao Paulo. Otherwise, we have worked with big chains such as Taco Bell and Applebee’s,” says Amatti. “We do a lot of new business also. I love that. I just really like to fix things for clients and find solutions for them.”
Sometimes, he says, the best thing consultants can do for clients is to advise them to not proceed with a planned project, even if that means missing out on future income. “A group of investors came to me once. They had $4m in reserves to put into an operation. They asked me to study their plans. It was a really big project. But I advised them not to do it. A guy at their construction firm got so angry when he heard this. But when I met these clients later at a show in Brazil they told me I had saved them from losing an awful lot of money. In the past, many big chain restaurant brands have come to Brazil thinking they will make a fortune, and quickly lost their money. That will happen if you don’t do your studies to see what the perception of the food, the product and the service will be in this part of the world. That’s where we come into our own.”
Local knowledge
Amatti is enormously proud of his Brazilian roots. “We have very exotic people here. We are the only guys who speak Portuguese in South America, but here, on the same plate, we have African, European, Asian, and American flavors,” he says. According to Amatti, Taco Bell is a good example of a brand “going great” in Brazil because it has shown the flexibility to adapt to its new location. It listened to the local market and understood it needed to alter its offering. “It’s not Mexican food. It’s almost Mexican. They adapted,” he says.
Amatti’s ability to really understand the nuance of different regional markets in Brazil so that clients can flex their model and strategy for a local consumer-base, is a real strength. But for him, it’s just “doing the homework.”
Humility is crucial in this game, he says. “Be humble, first of all. I’m a foodservice consultant, but sometimes I feel like a sort of taxi driver. I take pride in serving my customers every day. That is the engine that drives me – and the passenger travels first class, of course, because it’s our client. The destination is the goal to them being successful. And the road us taxi drivers – or consultants – must pick has to be the clear and honest one for them. We must always find the best, cheapest way to get to that destiny.”
Ultimately, says Amatti, this role is all about integrity. “You must believe in your projects. If you don’t believe in them, don’t work on them. That’s the best lesson that I learned from my 24 years in consultancy: you must believe in the process and believe in the operation.”
Away from all the business Amatti enjoys reading, watching sci-fi movies, listening to music, spending time with his wife, supporting his beloved soccer team Palmeiras (“I am so excited about our young talented players!” he enthuses) and watching his 14-year-old son Jorge play basketball, also for Palmeiras. “He’s 1.92m tall – a giant! He was vice champion of this state last year,” beams Amatti. “We’re so proud of him.”
Amatti’s natural enthusiasm and zest for life and learning remains undimmed, whatever the subject.
Bigger and better together: Marco Amatti on the role of FCSI and industry shows
Amatti was a Latin American trustee for FCSI The Americas between 2016-2019. “It was amazing to see inside the Society, to understand how it works and to learn why we are bigger together than alone. I was this guy from Brazil, born into a poor Italian neighborhood. I went to this American society, whose members work everywhere in the world, but I saw that they believed in the same things as me. I’ve made so many friendships, and learned a lot. FCSI is a second professional home, where I feel very comfortable. Those colleagues understand me, and I understand them.”
Amatti has represented FCSI, the profession and his consultancy at countless international shows over the years, becoming an ambassador for the Fispal Food Service and Food & Hospitality LATAM shows recently. He feels it helps him give back to an industry that has given him so much over the years. “These are both great shows and growing bigger and better all the time. It is my pleasure to help them to grow,” he says.
Michael Jones
Photography: Brian Bunn – FUZE
