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WoltItalian Street Food. Made for the world.
How a simple question became an international brand: from Italy via the UAE to our first stores in Mainz.
Italy has more to offer than pizza and pasta.
Sometimes a big idea starts with a very simple question.
Why does the whole world know pizza and pasta, but only a small part of the world knows all the other dishes that have been part of everyday life in Italy for generations?
Anyone who knows Italy beyond their holidays knows how big this culinary world really is. In Sicily, people stand at small bars eating arancini. In Apulia, you get warm panzerotti straight into your hand. Panini are part of daily life all over the country, and in Rome pizza al taglio is baked on large trays, cut and sold slice by slice.
These are not dishes for special occasions. This is food from the heart of Italian life: fast, uncomplicated, full of flavour and full of stories.
That is exactly how SPIZZICANDO was born. Davide Spiga did not want to create another Italian restaurant chain or the next pizzeria. His idea was different: to take the variety of Italian street food and turn it into a modern international brand. A brand with its roots in Italy that can work anywhere in the world.
Italian Street Food. Made for the world.
Italian originals become the world of SPIZZICANDO.
Our products tell this story too. At their heart are specialities that have existed in Italy for generations, yet outside Italy they are nowhere near as famous as pizza or pasta.
Sicilian arancini, filled rice specialities fried until crispy, became our SPIZZARANCI. The panzerotto, a tradition closely linked to Apulia, became our SPIZZEROTTI. The Italian panino, found at bars, in paninoteche and in countless places for a quick bite, is the basis of our SPIZZI PANINI. And the Roman tradition of pizza al taglio became our SPIZZA AL TAGLIO.
We do not want to hide these traditions. Quite the opposite: they are the reason SPIZZICANDO exists. Our job is to take them further, with our own recipes, our own product names and a system that turns regional Italian specialities into products for an international market.
An important part of our value creation stays where the story begins: in Italy. Our core products are made in Italy to our specifications. That is where a supply chain begins that is not designed for two or ten stores, but for an international network of company-owned and franchise stores. This is the point where a food idea becomes a company.
SPIZZICANDO was never meant to be just a restaurant.
When Davide Spiga developed SPIZZICANDO, the first question was not what a single beautiful store should look like. The decisive question was:
How must a system be built so that one day hundreds of stores can open in different countries without the brand losing its identity?
So alongside the products, we started building an infrastructure that guests hardly ever see, but that stands behind every SPIZZICANDO. At its centre is Spizzicando International Franchise Management FZCO in the United Arab Emirates. It is the international headquarters of SPIZZICANDO and belongs entirely to the YUNIQ International Group, which is also based in the United Arab Emirates.
This is where everything about the brand comes together. From here, the international strategy, the franchise system and the further development of the concept are managed. Product standards are defined here, and the production of our core products in Italy is organised from here. International wholesale and supply are also built up and coordinated centrally.
At the same time, this is where the brand's technology is created. An international restaurant system needs more than recipes and a logo. Central IT connects every SPIZZICANDO store: from tills and digital ordering to central product and price data and the applications that franchisees, stores and headquarters need every day.
Product development, production, supply, wholesale, technology, brand and standards are therefore not reinvented in every country. They come from one shared SPIZZICANDO world. That is the core of our idea: the international headquarters builds the system. Strong entrepreneurs use it to build their countries.
An international brand needs entrepreneurs on the ground.
In the long run, SPIZZICANDO is meant to be present in many countries. But we do not believe in managing countries down to the last detail from thousands of kilometres away. Every market is different. That is why SPIZZICANDO grows internationally through master licences.
For each country, we look for partners who know their market, think like entrepreneurs and are ready not just to manage SPIZZICANDO, but to build it. The international headquarters gives them the foundation: brand, products, supply, technology, standards, know-how and a system that is constantly being developed.
The master partner then takes responsibility for their country. They open stores, win franchisees, develop their organisation and make sure that an international concept becomes a working business on the ground. The first country where we want to prove that this model works is Germany.
Germany is where it starts.
For SPIZZICANDO, Germany is more than the first dot on a map. This is where the system's first master market is being built. This is where concepts have to become real stores, processes have to stand up to everyday life, and where we find out which products people love.
For this task, SPIZZICANDO needed an entrepreneur who knows how stores work in Germany: how to find locations, build teams, negotiate with partners and open up an entire country step by step. That is how Paolo Pennella became the man for Germany and one of the most important people in the story of SPIZZICANDO.
Davide Spiga and Paolo Pennella were colleagues in food retail for many years, a business in which success has to be earned anew every day: with staff, customers, goods, costs and enormous speed. Working together turned into trust, friendship and eventually a business partnership.
When the question came up of who would lead the first and most important growth market, the answer was clear: Paolo Pennella is the man for Germany. Not as the manager of a finished brand, but as an entrepreneur who turns the vision into a German network of company-owned and franchise stores.
Paolo Pennella and the mission in Germany.
To do this, Spizzicando Germany GmbH was founded as the master company for Germany. The majority of 51 percent is held by the YUNIQ Group of founder Davide Spiga, Paolo Pennella holds 49 percent and plays a central role in developing the German market.
His job starts with expansion and goes far beyond it. Together with the team, new regions are opened up and new sites developed. At the same time, a franchise network is growing with independent entrepreneurs who bring SPIZZICANDO to their cities.
With every new store, the organisation behind the stores grows too. Franchisees are selected, trained and supported over the long term. Standards should not only exist on paper, but be lived every day. As the network grows, a field team is being built under German leadership to support franchise partners and regularly check quality and standards in the stores.
Paolo's job is not to run individual restaurants. His job is an entire country: making SPIZZICANDO big all over Germany.
If you want to build a franchise system, you have to run stores yourself.
One principle mattered to us from day one: we do not want to explain anything to our franchise partners that we have not experienced ourselves in daily operations.
That is why, alongside the master company, there is Spizzicando Stores GmbH. It runs our company-owned stores in Germany. Its majority shareholder is Paolo Pennella with 75.1 percent, the YUNIQ Group holds 24.9 percent.
This is where our teams face our guests every day. This is where we see immediately whether a new process works. This is where we test products, technology and processes. This is where we experience rush hours, delivery and all the little problems that never show up in a presentation. And this is where we learn.
Spizzicando Stores GmbH is therefore the operational spearhead of the German system. As an entrepreneur, Paolo connects both worlds: he holds the majority of the Stores GmbH and 49 percent of the Germany GmbH, through which he builds expansion and the German franchise network. Knowledge from our own stores flows into the franchise system, and the experience from Germany flows back to the international headquarters.
Store by store. City by city. Country by country.
And then the door opened for the first time.
In 2026, all these ideas became real. On 22 July 2026, the first SPIZZICANDO store opened in the centre of Mainz. What had been product development, calculations, technology, supply chains, design and countless decisions suddenly stood in front of real guests.
On 19 August 2026, the next store followed, inside the REWE supermarket at Zollhafen Mainz: the first SPIZZICANDO in a supermarket. Mainz did not simply become the place of our first stores. Mainz became the starting point of our international story.
Germany is our first master market and at the same time our proof that authentic Italian street food can be combined with a highly standardised, technology-driven system. The goal is ambitious: 100 stores within the first 36 months are part of our vision for Germany. But even 100 stores would not be the end for us. They would be the proof that the beginning works.
- 2018The ideaDavide Spiga comes up with the idea for SPIZZICANDO.
- Early 2026SPIZZICANDO InternationalThe headquarters is founded in the UAE, with an office and team in Dubai.
- June 2026Spizzicando Germany GmbHThe master company for Germany, with Paolo Pennella.
- 22 July 2026Mainz city centreThe first SPIZZICANDO store opens at Stadthausstraße 13.
- 19 August 2026REWE ZollhafenThe first SPIZZICANDO inside a supermarket.
- Goal100 storesin the first 36 months in Germany.
From Italy via Germany to the world.
Our products have their roots in Italy. Our international headquarters is in the United Arab Emirates. Our first master market is Germany. These three places tell you pretty much exactly what SPIZZICANDO is meant to be.
Italy gives us our soul. That is where our products have their roots, and where a large part of what we serve in our stores is made. The international headquarters builds the system. It connects brand, product development, production, supply, wholesale, technology, franchising and expansion. Germany proves that a market can grow from it, with Paolo Pennella in a central role, our own stores as a base and a franchise system growing step by step.
If this model works, the same story begins again in other countries: with new master partners and new stores, but with the same brand, the same standards and the same infrastructure.
Our vision is bigger than restaurants.
We do not simply want to open lots of restaurants. And we do not want to become the next international pizza chain. Our vision starts with an observation that has been with us since day one:
The world knows only a small part of what Italian street food can be.
We want to change that. We want people to one day know, as a matter of course, what arancini and panzerotti are. We want SPIZZARANCI and SPIZZEROTTI to be ordered as naturally as the products that have shaped international quick-service restaurants for decades. And we want guests to walk into a SPIZZICANDO store, in whatever country, and experience the same brand, the same products and the same standards.
To do this, we are building structures today that are much bigger than our first stores: an international headquarters, our own production and supply, central wholesale, shared technology, master companies in individual countries, company-owned stores where we put our system to the test every day, and franchise partners who are entrepreneurs themselves.
We know this path is ambitious. It is meant to be. The first stores are open. The first market is being built. The international system is at the start of its expansion. And one day we want to look back on these first days in Mainz and say:
This is where it all began.