Today we’d like to introduce you to Francesca Montillo.
Francesca, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I was born in a small town in Southern Italy and from the beginning, I was surrounded by delicious food and eating organic produce before it was even considered cool to do so! The fondest memories I have of my upbringing are around food and family meals. My dad was a green grocer so we always had healthy and delicious food in the house. We also had a small plot of land in which we grew olive trees, we would pick the olives, by hand, and bring them to the olive oil mill for pressing. The entire town would smell of olive oil during this time of year! After our move to Boston, we traveled back just about every summer and though we lived in the States, we kept our Italian traditions alive as much as possible, even though we started buying our olive oil!
As time passed, I was frequently asked for advice on Italian food as well as tips for traveling to Italy. I frequently brought friends back to Italy or planned their vacations and built their itineraries. I was also frequently asked to cook or bake for office parties or to share my recipes. Although I enjoyed doing this, all this combined was very time consuming! As such, I decided to blend the cooking/food and travel into a business, as I was already doing much of this!
Today, my business now offers private cooking classes in my home or that of my host. I keep the groups small as that works best for learning and I teach easy and simple dishes for the “everyday” cook. I believe that home cooking is something that should be done every day and not just on special occasions, so one way to do that is to keep the recipes simple, yet delicious, sometimes even lazy, hence the name of my business. In addition to the private classes, I also lead culinary trips to Italy. The trips offer a very authentic experience. This is far more than a vacation but we take cooking classes with locals, visit wineries, get a lesson on olive oil making, if the season permits we hunt for truffles, and take a walking tour of the city we visit and stop at all the specialty food shops and sample their specialties. It really is a transformational experience. The fact that I am an actual native of this great land and understand not only the language, which can be learned relatively easily, but the culture, adds to the authenticity of the experience.
Has it been a smooth road?
I don’t think starting any business is a smooth road and there are always challenges and unexpected obstacles that you don’t think of when the idea first comes to you. The biggest struggle is marketing and getting in front of the right clients. There is a lot of “noise” out there on the web and clients for any business now have a lot of options, so it’s important to offer a differentiating factor. We are still small, so we can offer our clients the full attention that they deserve.
When it comes to marketing and getting the word out, I have been fortunate that I have received some local attention and The Boston Globe did a nice feature on my business and I have been on several local television shows. I am also a Food & Lifestyle Columnist for Italia Living and Food and Travel Contributing Editor of the Italian Sons and Daughters of America, these are wonderful opportunities that allow my business to be seen by a very large audience.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Lazy Italian Culinary Adventures story. Tell us more about the business.
Today, my focus is on cooking classes and marketing the travel component of my business. The classes sell well and are very well received by my clients. I teach private classes in my home as well as public classes in the local adult education centers. Students enjoy my laid back approach to cooking and that I teach recipes that are simple, yet delicious, and can be prepared every day. I don’t teach elaborate dishes because I want my students to be able to prepare the dishes for their families and do so with ease. If they are new to cooking, I don’t want to overwhelm them or save a recipe for a “special occasion.” Every day can be a special occasion when eating dinner with your family. I think that’s why I have so many repeat students, they know my philosophy and welcome the idea of learning something simple but that they had not thought of.
My other main focus is also very much on the culinary tours to Italy. These are harder to market because it’s obviously a larger financial investment for the clients. I have great plans for 2018 to lead tours to lesser known regions of Italy, such as Calabria and Puglia. These regions are yet undiscovered but really offer the feel of authenticity that some of the other regions are unfortunately starting to lose due to mass tourism. Even when we do travel to the larger cities, I now have many connections that permit me to find vendors that clients would not find on their own.
I think what sets me apart is my authenticity. I am able to offer clients a true authentic experience because I know the Italian culture that can only be obtained by being born there and living in Italy. Anyone can learn Italian, but understanding the locals is a different story. Clients have specifically told me that they booked a trip with me because of me, not because of my itinerary that I have planned, so that’s always the best compliment I can receive. For my in-home cooking classes, students end up having dinner on my dining room table, for a true Italian experience, not many businesses can offer that.
I have reached many milestones with Lazy Italian that I am very proud of. I believe in celebrating every small win while building this business so I get excited even when a get a new sign-up for my newsletter! If I had to pick just a few major wins, I would say that receiving a nice feature on The Boston Globe was one. One week I had over 30,000 new visitors to my website thanks to a blog post that was a hit. I also filmed a cooking show with Boston University, which aired on their television station. I have been asked to be on several podcasts and local television shows. All of these are accomplishments that I am extremely proud of and I am confident that there are many more to come.
How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
I’m really optimistic of where the food and travel business are headed. I think as we learn more about the benefits of home cooking, people will want to cook at home more and have control of what goes in their bodies. That said, time is always a limited commodity so cooking at home is at times avoided because of the time it takes to prepare a meal. Statistics show that the average home cook only has 30 minutes to spend on cooking so we need to maximize those 30 minutes as much as we can.
When it comes to traveling to Italy, I am optimistic that a country that receives close to 50 million visitors every year and is the 5th most visited country in the world is not slowing down any time soon! That said, I think clients will want more authentic experiences in the future. That’s where my role as tour leader comes in. Some of the lesser known regions are not so easy to navigate on your own so I do expect my clients will want to avoid the “been there, done that” stops and really experience life like a local, if only for a week.
Contact Info:
- Address: Medford, MA
- Website: www.thelazyitalian.com
- Phone: 617-281-3117
- Email: francesca@thelazyitalian.com
- Instagram: @lazyitalianculinaryadventures
- Facebook: @lazyitalian
- Twitter: @thelazyitalian
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