From September 2021, we are launching a unique collaboration project with the sheltered workshop Pasta Fidli. In our restaurants, we will offer high-quality fresh pasta, prepared by employees with disabilities.
Since 2014, Pasta Fidli has been handcrafting a wide range of fresh pasta according to its own recipe, without harmful additives and colorings, and from quality Italian ingredients. The small workshop in Mníšek pod Brdy has been adapted from the very beginning to employ people with disabilities.
The covid-19 pandemic hit Pasta Fidli hard. Overnight, the company lost 90% of its regular customers from top restaurants, as well as other clients across the Czech Republic. “We had to significantly reduce both the positions for disabled colleagues in production and for healthy employees in the positions of assistant for the disabled and driver,” describes the difficulties Helena Cyrnerová, the managing director of Pasta Fidli.
Aramark, a leading provider of corporate catering in the Czech Republic, responded to her call for help on social media. “We carefully tested the pasta, and their quality convinced us to prepare a range of dishes from fresh pasta and potato gnocchi. We believe that our guests will appreciate this unique concept,” says Aramark’s project coordinator Zdeněk Sýs.
Our top chef Lukáš Sedláček contributed to the development of the recipes. Among them are rigatoni with peas, pancetta, and mushrooms, casarecce with basil pesto, chicken, and peas, or rigatoni all’amatriciana. The dishes will be prepared right in front of the guests. In the first phase, we will offer them in seven ŠKODA AUTO restaurants. In the future, fresh pasta from Pasta Fidli could expand to other restaurants as well.
The mutual cooperation project has several levels. Besides the social aspect and a wider offer in restaurants, we also provided Pasta Fidli with know-how in the area of the highest hygiene standards in production, storage, and distribution. “We are confident that our guests will receive pasta of the highest possible quality and absolutely safe,” assures Aramark’s chief hygienist Ivana Rytinová.
“Behind every employee, there is a story. Sometimes sad, sometimes with a happy ending. We have already managed to return several of our workers to a full life, who have further established themselves in the job market,” adds Helena Cyrnerová, the managing director of Pasta Fidli.
