We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Andrea Matteucci. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Andrea below.
Andrea, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?
I love Italy, my country, I have a passion for Italian food and wines and I wanted to invest in US to spread our culture and give my kids the opportunity to grow with both cultures, Italian and American. Loveria is a dialect word from my hometown Ravenna and means something irresistible to eat, something “yummy”.
After a long market research and after a few trips to Texas we decided to open in Colleyville, a wealthy City with lot of people used to travel to Europe and Italy. We wanted to open a neighborhood restaurant a small “trattoria” in an area where everyone is really friendly and supportive.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
My background is Architecture since I graduated at the University of Florence in Architecture and I worked as architect and as a builder for 15 years. I have a lot of passions and Italian cuisine and wines are two of the most relevant. I’ve been an entrepreneur for many years in Italy before moving to US and all the skills I have and everything I learned in my previous job helped me starting my new Italian Restaurant Loveria. To start a business in a different country you need to learn a lot and be a leader for your team. Being very kind with people, friendly and respectful is really important in my job. Leading all my team and letting them being part of our “family” is really important. Never give up has been my “motto” during the past challenging years.
Have you ever had to pivot?
In 2015 me and my family moved to US from Italy. Me and my wife and our 10 and 7 years old kids started a new “life” in a different country with our dream and goal to open an authentic Italian Restaurant and bring here our culture and passion.
Our kids have been troopers starting a new school after a few weeks from the move and without speaking English and without knowing anyone.
Me and my wife started meeting people and with the help of our realtor we started building our project. It’s been a pivot in both my career and life. For almost one year and half we worked hard to start our new business and in March 2017 after a lot of efforts and obstacles we opened Loveria to the public.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
During last pandemic, the whole world was shocked and everything was unpredictable. Before covid hit also US as Italian I was constantly following all dramatic news from Italy and Europe. I was completely aware everything who was happening in Italy would have happened also here in US.
I started planning our possible future for the restaurant, being ready to keep the business alive.
We ordered thousands of to go containers and lot of equipment so that our restaurant would have been ready for pick up and delivery orders. We adapted our menu and website and added one phone line. Once the pandemic hit US and businesses have been shut down we were ready.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.loveriacaffe.com
- Instagram: @loveriacaffe
- Facebook: @loveriacaffe
Image Credits
Stefania Bertozzi