Hypenotic

Servers at Ter­roni won’t sprin­kle cheese on your Spaghetti Canna a Mare (with Seafood), and that’s a good thing.

Stances like this one, and oth­ers (no cut­ting pizza, no but­ter on bread) stir up a lot of con­tro­versy. But Ter­roni takes a posi­tion on their brand, and they fer­vently pro­tect it.

Copy­blog­ger writer Brian Clark believes you must have courage to be a leader:

You need the courage to alien­ate the wrong peo­ple in order to res­onate with the right peo­ple. You need to stick to your con­vic­tions when peo­ple tell you you’re wrong sim­ply because your knowl­edge doesn’t mesh with their opinions.

The idea of “pro­tect­ing your brand” may con­jure up images of peo­ple sit­ting around board rooms dis­cussing the minu­tia of whether a par­tic­u­lar shade of red is con­sis­tent with the brand “iden­tity”. This is not what I’m talk­ing about. And this is not what I imag­ine Ter­roni does.

Brands that stand for some­thing, like Ter­roni, oper­ate from a gut level. Terroni’s mis­sion in life is to use, make and share authen­tic South­ern Ital­ian food. Authen­tic­ity is baked into every­thing they do. Just like you know which cloth­ing styles suit you and which don’t, good brands just know what ‘fits’ with who they are and what they believe in.

So, when a rel­a­tive of Terroni’s owner came back from Italy with a brightly pat­terned, highly tex­tured bag made by Ital­ian women inmates , they got in touch and started car­ry­ing Made In Carcere (Made in Prison) bags printed with the Ter­roni moniker. The bags and acces­sories are proudly dis­played at Ter­roni restau­rants right along­side the olive oil and tomato sauce.

The bags are recy­cled so they simul­ta­ne­ously give a “sec­ond chance” to the fab­ric they’re made from and the women who man­u­fac­ture them. The acces­sories all come from scraps left behind by high end Ital­ian fash­ion houses such as Cos­tume National.

Terroni’s co-owner Vince describes the look as “very Ital­ian” which for him prob­a­bly means “South­ern Ital­ian.” The South has the Mediter­ranean sea where one can imag­ine the per­fect beach-side set­ting for a lovely yel­low and white polka dot bag. It just fits with olives, capers, anchovies and all of the afford­able, fab­u­lous ingre­di­ents that define South­ern Ital­ian cooking.

If I’m wax­ing a bit poetic it’s because that’s the effect that Terroni’s sim­ple, South­ern Ital­ian Food has on me.

In fact, it’s not just Terroni’s food. I’m always happy to eat at Ter­roni, and I can’t say that about many places (espe­cially not ‘chains’)

Besides the food, I often look long­ingly at all the prod­ucts that line their shelves. Their hot pep­pers in oil kick some ass. As a prod­uct exten­tion, the In Carcene bags and acces­sories really round out the South­ern Ital­ian feel.

Fact is, a brand well exe­cuted con­jures feel­ings and cre­ates a story–even if it’s a story or a feel­ing about some­place you’ve never been. Like I’ve never been to an Ital­ian prison, but man, this head­band makes me feel like Anna Mag­nani in Nella città l’inferno. It car­ries a mys­tique that it just wouldn’t have if I bought it at Lul­ule­mon.

You can tell Ter­roni gets it because they deliver these feel­ings with every plate of pizza and pasta and with my brand new head­band. So, let the whin­ers keep whin­ing and call Terroni’s care­ful choices “unjus­ti­fi­able pre­ten­tious­ness.” I call it being on a mis­sion and main­tain­ing focus and love for the brand and avoid­ing distractions.

By the way, spe­cial props to my dad for tak­ing the pic­tures. Great job dad!