Founded in April 2020, the startup Itinerant market was born in 2019 from an idea of Andrea Scalogno, a mechatronic engineer and Eman Saffo, an expert in currency exchange. Despite initial skepticism and resistance, the traders of the Porta Palazzo market, still anchored to traditional sales mechanics, were convinced by the need to respond to the needs dictated by the pandemic. The project now involves 30 vendors and it is growing. The service already reaches all areas of Turin, including the hillsides area.
The operation is very simple: customers choose the products on the website, soon on the app, indicate a time for delivery and whether to pay online or upon arrival of the goods. You can choose everything, just like during a morning walk through the market stalls: which vendor to go to, compare prices, choose more or less ripe items, how to have them wrapped, the seasoning of the cheese or the cut of the meat. It is the same founder to deliver the shopping at home, with the use of two cargo bikes, helped by ethical companies specialized in delivery in the times of greatest demand.
This choice regarding deliveries wants to pursue the vision of circular economy which is at the basis of the whole project, excluding multinational companies from the process and ensuring sustainability, authenticity and enhancement of the territory. Mercato Itinerante wants to keep at the core the relationship between customer and seller, reconstructing "in digital" the mutual trust, the reassuring sensation of addressing a person who knows the needs of the buyer, his tastes, his preferences.
Product care is another central aspect: the most perishable products are picked up last, just before delivery, and stored in refrigerated containers. Foods of different nature are kept strictly separated from each other to avoid any kind of contamination and it is the customer himself to open the delivery box to pick up the order, the employee has no contact with the delivered goods.
One of the two founders, Andrea Scalogna, said in an interview with Corriere della Sera: "As a startup we want to work personally on every phase of the project, from the packaging of the products to the digitalization of the businesses and the training of the merchants. The Porta Palazzo market is characterized by the infinite competence and professionalism of the merchants: each of them has been master of their work for generations. They are true masters. We want to help them in this technological leap so that this experience is not lost: many of them did not even have an email address. In the long term, we are following the trend of food delivery, which today basically concerns ready-to-eat food, but is also opening up to the fresh food market. We want to replicate the format in all the markets in Turin. Afterwards, we will present the model of Mercato Itinerante in other Italian cities".
