How did Da Vittorio become an international brand? From family restaurant to a group worth hundreds of millions of euros

Two weeks ago, the Instagram page of the restaurant “Da Vittorio” published an unusual photo: the owners and chefs, all from the Cerea family, posing together with Bernard Arnault, his son Frédéric and Patek Philippe president Thierry Stern. This family-style picture featuring some of the richest men in the world wearing personalized bibs reading Oggi sono goloso signals not only the enormous fame achieved by the restaurant, but also its transformation into a true international mega-brand with a thousand employees and, according to rumors reported by Il Sole 24 Ore, a valuation that could approach 300 million euros.

Yet perhaps the greatest achievement of the multi-generational collective effort of the Cerea family is having created a dish, the legendary paccheri al pomodoro, that can rightly be considered part of the pop mythology of Italian cuisine alongside Cipriani’s carpaccio, Salvatore De Riso’s seven-veil cake and Roberto “Loly” Linguanotto’s tiramisù. Their success, in other words, cannot be measured only in terms of commercial expansion but also in terms of cultural penetration. How did a family-run restaurant from Bergamo manage to go this far?

The exponential growth of “Da Vittorio”

The eponymous Vittorio who gave the restaurant its name is Vittorio Cerea who, in 1966, together with his wife Bruna, opened the first restaurant on Viale Papa Giovanni XXIII in Bergamo. It had about thirty seats and specialized in fish. This was unusual because, at the time, in the heart of Lombardy a fish restaurant seemed almost exotic. The gamble paid off, also thanks to the couple’s obsession with quality in an era when the cold chain and fast transport did not yet exist.

The first Michelin star arrived twelve years later in 1978. The second came eighteen years after that, in 1996. The third would arrive in 2010. The real turning point, however, came in 2000 when the now-expanded Cerea family decided to aim for membership in the Relais & Châteaux association, a certification considered even higher than Michelin stars but which requires an attached hospitality structure. The restaurant therefore moved from Bergamo to Brusaporto, where it still stands today, becoming a true destination with overnight accommodation. In 2005 it finally joined Relais & Châteaux, but sadly founder Vittorio passed away.

After almost forty years, the restaurant passed to the second generation: Enrico “Chicco”, Roberto “Bobo”, Francesco, Rossella and Barbara. With this handover the metamorphosis into the structured company we know today began. The third star in 2010 marked the pinnacle and triggered the transformation. Its very success forced growth: after the third star the restaurant could no longer accept more bookings, and the family decided to expand.

The first step was catering: in 2012 Vicook Banqueting & Events was born and within a few years became Italy’s leading luxury catering company. One of its earliest high-profile jobs was the wedding of Chiara Ferragni and Fedez. The service quickly entered the circuit of galas, Formula 1 events and today, according to Il Sole 24 Ore, accounts for about 40% of the group’s revenue. At that point it became clear that the model was replicable and exportable. International expansion began.

In 2012 the first Da Vittorio outside Italy opened in St. Moritz inside the Carlton Hotel; it earned its first Michelin star within two years and the second in 2020. So far it was predictable: rooted in Bergamo and Lombardy, the Alps were practically visible from home. St. Moritz was the most natural progression, but its success led to a far bolder move: Da Vittorio Shanghai, opened in 2019 in partnership with Yunmi Group.

In 2016, for the 50th anniversary, Cerea Holding was created and Da Vittorio officially became a group. Growth then became explosive: the first pastry-bistrot Cavour 1880 in 2017, the acquisition of La Dimora di Astino in 2019, the opening of DaV Mare in Portofino and the beginning of the partnership with Belmond (and therefore LVMH) in 2021, the new DaV Milano in 2022.

At this point in 2023 a major corporate reorganization took place in which Enrico Cerea became the majority shareholder of the holding in order to prepare the group for further growth. The new phase began: the group started collaborating with LVMH, first opening the Louis Vuitton restaurant and café on Via Montenapoleone in Milan and then Da Vittorio Bodrum in Turkey. Last September another DaV opened in Brusaporto, this summer the Vittorio Cerea Academy will be launched and openings in Paris and London are planned for the future. Moreover, the family is officially looking for minority partners among whom rumors mention the Arnault family and Remo Ruffini. Nothing has been confirmed yet, however.

How do you turn a restaurant into a mega-brand?

The most fascinating aspect of the entire rise of “Da Vittorio” and the Cerea family is its organic nature. The success of “Da Vittorio” was neither sudden nor one of those stories that, forgive the expression, are endlessly hyped by the media (think of the restaurants of celebrity chefs who judge MasterChef). It grew through word-of-mouth from those who tasted their catering or the legend of their much-copied paccheri. A commercially sustainable approach that never took steps longer than its legs, yet whose success cannot be reduced to mere diversification and scalability.

The X factor in the whole “Da Vittorio” business story seems to lie in the extraordinary foresight with which, for over twenty years, the Cerea family has invested in the combination of gastronomy and hospitality, originally born from the desire to join Relais & Châteaux. This drive naturally turned the restaurant into a brand from the earliest stages of expansion. That very combination has remained constant in the group’s business growth: the first overseas restaurant opened inside the Carlton Hotel and years later the Belmond partnership led to today’s synergy with LVMH.

Predicting the future

The idea of making the restaurant an exportable brand anticipated by decades the opposite intuition of luxury groups that a brand could become a restaurant. The boom in collaborations between luxury and fine dining only started in 2010 with Bvlgari and Niko Romito, or LVMH acquiring Cova. It took until 2014 for Prada to buy Marchesi and 2018 for Remo Ruffini to start investing in restaurants like Langosteria and Concettina ai Tre Santi, for Gucci to open the first of many Osterie with Bottura and for that flourishing of partnerships that would lead brands like Saint Laurent to open a sushi restaurant or Maison Margiela to open a café.

When the phenomenon finally exploded with all its business volume, Da Vittorio was already a brand well-known among insiders in an organic way (the restaurant works a lot with Brunello Cucinelli, for example) without ever becoming explicitly pop or commercial like, say, Flavio Briatore’s Crazy Pizza. A bit like Hermès, Da Vittorio managed to reach its current heights (according to Camilla Baresani it has the highest turnover in all of Italian fine dining) through total commitment to quality. Another central element seems to be the sense of family warmth that permeates the restaurant’s public narrative: the Cerea are almost always portrayed together, smiles are radiant, brigade photos abound. Their Instagram not only looks like a family album but even carries, after the restaurant name, the wording “Famiglia Cerea”.

Enrico and Roberto Cerea, despite being among the very few Italian executive chefs with three active Michelin stars at the same time, have chosen to stay far from any form of celebrity-chef attitude both in industry interviews and in mainstream media. Among chefs they are stars, but they are not star-chefs. It is precisely the union of extremely high technique and disarming humanity (they are so friendly that even Bernard Arnault let himself be photographed wearing a bib) that makes the brand so strong. After all, what could be better than a temple of haute cuisine still run like the little family restaurant it once was?

Takeaways

- Da Vittorio has grown from a small fish trattoria opened in Bergamo in 1966 to an international group with over €100 million in revenue and 9 Michelin stars, while always remaining family-owned.

- Vicook catering, launched in 2012, now accounts for around 40% of revenue and has enabled the Cerea family to finance expansion without taking on debt.

- Growth has been organic and selective: first St. Moritz (2012), then Shanghai (2019), Portofino, Bodrum, and now the partnership with LVMH in Milan, with Paris and London in the pipeline.

- In 2023-2024 a corporate restructuring took place that made Enrico “Chicco” Cerea the relative majority shareholder, preparing the ground for the entry of a minority financial partner (estimated valuation around €300 million).

- The real “secret” to success is not just starred quality, but the ability to remain a welcoming and authentic family: the Paccheri alla Vittorio have become a pop-culture myth, and even Bernard Arnault gets photographed wearing the “Oggi sono goloso” bib.