Giorgio Trombetta

Giorgio Trombetta

GROS: GRUPPO ROMANO SUPERMERCATI

We met Giorgio Trombetta, one of Rome’s greatest entrepreneurs, in his EUR office; his name immediately evokes the saga of a family linked to the image of a mythical coffee, which exudes exotic aromas but above all Roman essence.

However, on this occasion, we came to hear about another grand project that Trombetta has led, in which Manini Prefabbricati played an important role.

We are talking about GROS, the Roman Supermarkets Group, which is also closely tied to the pulsating life of the Eternal City.

Twenty years ago, he told us, twelve Roman families operating in the large-scale retail sector decided to unite in a single local purchasing group to defend themselves against the hegemony of Italian Large-Scale Distribution multinationals and face together the challenges of an increasingly difficult market.

The collaboration has grown steadily over the years, leading to the need to establish common warehouses for storing and shipping goods.

In this way, GROS has managed to obtain increasingly favorable purchasing conditions, promoting the development of the number of sales points and overall turnover.

Recently, the Group joined SUN (Supermercati Uniti Nazionali) participating together in the ESD purchasing center, which today is the leading Italian purchasing center.

All this has allowed supermarkets belonging to the Roman group to offer their customers a wide variety of products at extremely advantageous prices: the convenience of a hypermarket with the comfort of a sales point close to home and with the welcoming atmosphere and warmth of a ‘family’ store. This is indeed, according to Giorgio Trombetta, the first strength of GROS, being a group of ‘family’ businesses, where family units live and work in their own sales points, building customer loyalty and guaranteeing quality services.

The Gros supermarkets, which are concentrated in the capital and its hinterland, make ‘Romanness’ their characteristic trait, creating a sense of belonging for the customers who frequent them: this is evidenced by the brand itself, which features the quintessential symbols of the City, from the Colosseum to Castel Sant’Angelo.

The choices of GROS, of which our interviewee is President, have proven successful: Trombetta confessed to us that in recent years, when the sector has suffered greatly due to the crisis, the Group has grown on average by 10% per year, reaching a turnover of one billion three hundred million euros in 2014. A staggering figure.

In this beautiful success story, Manini Prefabbricati was chosen as the supplier for the construction of first the 42,000 square meter ‘Dry Goods Warehouse’ and subsequently the adjacent 16,000 square meter ‘Fresh Goods Warehouse’:

these are futuristic storage and goods handling centers, equipped with state-of-the-art robotized and computerized systems, which can manage the arrival of even more than a hundred loads per day.

When we asked the entrepreneur the reason for choosing Manini Prefabbricati as a supplier, he confessed that one of the fundamental reasons that guided him was the solidity and reliability of the company, which put him in the position to entrust them with such an important and complex project.

The fact that he then personally visited the Manini Company and the production plant in Bastia Umbra – he told us – only confirmed the idea he had formed previously, leaving him no doubts about the final decision, supported by a series of quality guarantees that then led to an absolutely serene and satisfactory collaboration process on both sides.

A great Roman family, then, that of the Trombettas, which has made the history of the city, which has accompanied with its aromas and tradition since the nineteenth century when it welcomed those arriving in the capital in the legendary bar next to Termini Station.

A great group of Roman families, those of GROS, who continue to make the entrepreneurial history of the capital city, always based on the values of tradition, family, and ‘Romanness’.