Handmade fresh pasta restaurant in Bologna, Italy. Fourteen varieties rolled by hand daily. Seasonal Emilian cuisine, natural wines, and private dining. Book your table or order fresh pasta online.
Casa Radici — meaning House of Roots in Italian — is a concept premium artisan pasta restaurant headquartered in Bologna, Italy — the undisputed pasta capital of the world and home of tagliatelle al ragù, tortellini in brodo, and lasagne al forno. Founded by head chef and pasta maker Sofia Marchetti, whose family has been hand-rolling pasta in the Bolognese tradition since 1958.
The restaurant specialises exclusively in handmade fresh pasta — fourteen varieties, all rolled by hand in the open kitchen visible from every table — with a menu that changes seasonally based on what the Emilian countryside is producing. The pasta programme is complemented by a considered wine list of natural and biodynamic Emilian labels, a private dining room for ten, and a takeaway pasta laboratory where guests can purchase fresh pasta to cook at home.
Built a brand that earns the trust of Bologna’s most discerning local diners while attracting international food travellers, food press, and Michelin inspectors — then build the digital infrastructure to generate consistent reservations across two locations (Bologna and a new opening in Florence), a retail pasta laboratory, and an international mail-order pasta subscription.
Before — The Problem
Sofia had been running the original trattoria on Via dell’Indipendenza for nine years. The food was quietly extraordinary — reviewed once in a Bolognese food blog and mentioned in passing in a travel guide. Walk-ins only. A laminated A4 menu printed at the corner copy shop. No website. No Instagram. No reservation system. A handwritten notebook behind the counter for phone bookings.
The food press had not found her. The international food community had not found her. The Michelin Guide had not found her.
Three doors down, a restaurant with average pasta and a polished Instagram account had a six-week reservation waitlist and a Bib Gourmand. The food quality was not the differentiator. The visibility was.
After — The Outcome
A complete artisan pasta restaurant brand ecosystem — visual identity, menu design, packaging for the pasta laboratory, interior design direction, exterior branding, website, online reservation system, mobile app, social media strategy, Google Ads, full local and international SEO, email marketing, and a global pasta subscription service.
Within eleven months: featured in the Michelin Guide (Bib Gourmand), covered by four international food publications, the Florence location opened to a four-week advance reservation waitlist, the pasta subscription service reached 2,800 active global subscribers, and the Instagram account reached 112,000 followers — generating inbound press enquiries, wholesale requests, and reservation bookings from thirty-one countries.
The pasta hadn’t changed. The world’s ability to find it had.
Brand Concept — Rolled by Hand. Rooted in Bologna.
The positioning builds on one incontrovertible fact: genuinely handmade pasta from someone who has spent thirty years learning how to make it is one of the rarest and most valuable things in European food culture. In a world of industrialised fresh pasta sold in supermarket packets, Casa Radici is the real thing.
That authenticity — made visible through process photography, transparent kitchen design, and copy that explains why handmade pasta is different — is the brand’s primary trust and conversion mechanism.
Palette: deep Bolognese red, warm parchment ivory, aged olive green, and burnished copper. Typography: an elegant warm Italian serif for the brand name, a refined humanist sans-serif for menu copy and digital. The visual language references the warmth of an Emilian grandmother’s kitchen while being completely contemporary in its execution.
Digital Marketing Strategy — Restaurant
Google Search Ads: Four campaign structures: location brand campaigns for both restaurants, cuisine-specific campaigns (“handmade tagliatelle Bologna,” “tortellini restaurant Italy,” “fresh pasta Florence”), tourist intent campaigns (“best restaurant Bologna,” “where to eat in Bologna authentic”), and subscription campaigns (“fresh pasta delivery Europe,” “Italian pasta subscription box”). Monthly budget €3,200 across all campaigns producing 94 reservation and subscription conversions at €34 cost per conversion.
Meta Ads (Facebook and Instagram): Consumer targeting using life event signals (travel to Bologna, travel to Florence), interest targeting (Italian food, pasta, Michelin restaurants, culinary travel), and lookalike audiences built from the email subscriber list. Creative split between process video (highest engagement — the tagliatelle-rolling Reel reached 4.1M organic views), hero dish photography (highest conversion rate), and behind-the-scenes chef content (highest save rate). Monthly budget €1,800.
Email Marketing: Consumer sequence: welcome with brand story and 10% first subscription discount, Day 3 pasta process film link, Day 7 recipe using Casa Radici pasta, Day 14 chef interview feature, Day 21 seasonal menu preview and reservation invitation. Monthly newsletter: seasonal pasta feature, ingredient sourcing story, new wine pairing, subscription box contents for the coming month. Trade sequence for the pasta laboratory wholesale channel targeting restaurant groups, hotels, and specialty food retailers.
Content Marketing: Monthly long-form blog post on Italian pasta culture, technique, and ingredient sourcing. These rank organically for long-tail pasta education queries and attract food-educated audiences at the early research stage of a Bologna travel decision. A YouTube series “The Sfoglia Chronicles” — 8-minute episodes following a single pasta variety from field to plate — generates the highest-quality inbound enquiries and press coverage of any content format.
Our Digital Marketing Services — For Restaurants Globally
Everything built for Casa Radici is available to any restaurant, hospitality group, or food brand operating in Europe, the USA, the UAE, or globally. Here is exactly what we deliver:
Brand and Identity: Logo design and brand system, menu design (print and digital), packaging design for retail and takeaway, interior signage direction, exterior branding and signage, photography direction and art direction.
Website and Digital Infrastructure: Custom restaurant website design and development, online reservation system integration (TheFork, OpenTable, Resy, SevenRooms), online ordering and takeaway platform, subscription e-commerce, mobile app design and development (iOS and Android), GDPR and international compliance.
Search Marketing: Local SEO for single and multi-location restaurants, international SEO for global markets (English, Italian, French, Arabic, German), GEO optimisation for AI search visibility (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews), Google Business Profile management and optimisation, Google Search and Display Ads, Google Shopping for retail food products.
Social Media and Content: Instagram strategy and content calendar, Reels and TikTok production direction, LinkedIn for trade and B2B hospitality, Facebook advertising and community management, UGC strategy and influencer partnership management, monthly analytics reporting.
Email Marketing: Consumer nurture sequences, trade B2B sequences, monthly newsletter design and management, subscription management, automated behaviour-triggered campaigns.
Analytics and Reporting: GA4 setup and custom event tracking, reservation attribution by channel, subscription cohort analysis, monthly performance reporting, quarterly strategy reviews.
Results Summary
| Metric | Before | After (11 Months) |
|---|---|---|
| Google ranking “handmade pasta Bologna” | Not ranked | Position 1 |
| Online reservations per month | 0 | 2,140 |
| Instagram followers | 412 | 112,000 |
| Pasta subscription subscribers | 0 | 2,800 global |
| App downloads | 0 | 18,400 |
| Press features | 1 local blog | Michelin Bib Gourmand + 4 international |
| Average covers per night increase | Baseline | +34% |
| Countries generating reservations | 1 (Italy) | 31 |
| Monthly subscription revenue | 0 | €94,000 |
The most extraordinary thing about the Casa Radici transformation is the simplest: the pasta was always this good. Sofia was always this skilled. The food culture behind every dish was always this deep. What the brand and digital infrastructure did was make all of that visible — to the food press, to the Michelin Guide, to the pasta lover in London who found the tagliatelle video at 11pm on a Tuesday and booked a Bologna flight for the following weekend. That is what brand and digital infrastructure does for a restaurant. It doesn’t change the food. It ensures the food is found.
Ready to Build Your Restaurant’s Brand and Digital Presence?
If your restaurant has food worth finding and a digital presence that doesn’t reflect it — or none at all — that gap is the only thing standing between your kitchen and the audience it deserves.
We build complete restaurant brand and digital marketing ecosystems for restaurants, hospitality groups, and food brands across Europe, the USA, the UAE, and globally — brand identity, menu design, website, online reservation and ordering integration, mobile app, Google Ads, Instagram and social media strategy, email marketing, local SEO, international SEO, and GEO optimisation for AI search visibility.
We have worked with pasta restaurants, pizza restaurants, seafood fine dining, casual dining groups, hotel restaurants, private members clubs, and artisan food manufacturers. Every project begins with the same question: what is genuinely extraordinary about what you make — and what is stopping the world from finding it?
What Working With Us Looks Like
✅ Week 1–2: Brand strategy, competitor audit, location and international keyword research, ICP definition ✅ Week 3–4: Logo, brand system, menu design, packaging, and interior signage direction ✅ Week 5–6: Website, reservation integration, SEO setup, schema, and Google Business Profile ✅ Week 7–8: App design, Google Ads, social media content calendar, email sequences launch ✅ Month 3+: Monthly reporting, content production, ad optimisation, press and influencer outreach
We work with restaurants in Italy, France, Spain, the UK, Germany, Switzerland, the USA (New York, LA, Miami, Chicago), the UAE (Dubai, Abu Dhabi), Singapore, Australia, and any market where extraordinary food deserves to be found.
Most restaurants we work with see measurable reservation growth within 45 days of launch.
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