Strategic and operational consulting for food businesses
AC Retail Advisory works with owners, CEOs and management of food manufacturers and of organized foodservice and retail networks.
We decide with management.
We build the model.
We stay until it lands.
ACRA does not stop at defining a strategy, and does not come in to replace the people running the company. It works alongside owners and management on the decisions that affect growth, margin, organization and execution, turning them into an operating model the company can govern and replicate.
The sectors we work with
AC Retail Advisory works with owners and senior leadership: chief executives, general managers, chairs and vice-chairs of the board. And with the investors backing their growth: venture capital and private equity funds, alongside the management teams of their portfolio companies.
Food manufacturing
Manufacturing and processing companies supplying modern grocery retail, the Ho.Re.Ca. channel and traditional trade, including established startups that want to grow and get organized.
Food retail and organized foodservice
Organized commercial foodservice and food retail chains, franchising included, and food formats in a scaling phase.
Our principles
One principle runs through every engagement: no conclusion without economic proof. The five criteria below say how it is applied.
Entrepreneurial thinking
Every decision is weighed in terms of value, risk, capital and economic sustainability.
Managerial responsibility
Recommendations have to be turnable into decisions, organization and results.
Numbers before opinions
Every material choice is supported by data, economic assumptions and scenarios.
Execution
We do not build plans that stay on paper. We work until the decision can actually be applied.
Peer to peer
We work with owners and management in the language and with the responsibility of someone who has already run companies, people and numbers: twenty years leading food businesses.
The perimeter
What AC Retail Advisory does not do defines an engagement as much as what it does.
- We do not replace management.
- We do not take on continuing operational roles.
- We are not a software company and we do not sell tools.
- We do not do recruitment and selection.
We come in when there is a decision to face, a model to build, a performance problem to solve, or an organization to prepare for a phase of growth. We work with management and leave the company method, numbers, tools and the capacity to execute.
How we work
Every engagement starts from the problem to be addressed, is sized on the competences it requires, and runs through to delivery and to landing it.
«Let me have the best solution worked out. Don’t argue the matter: the difficulties will argue for themselves.»
Winston Churchill
Minute to Lord Mountbatten, 30 May 1942
Andrea Calistri
Founder
Twenty years running food companies, with full responsibility for the P&L. He took a network from zero to ninety-five outlets in three years, and led a food group across three countries to Financial Times FT 1000 recognition.
That experience is now at the service of the people who run food companies, from the decision through to execution.
Our CEO on the vision
and the method behind ACRA.
Andrea Calistri, CEO and Founder of AC Retail Advisory, on how we work alongside the people who run food companies: strategy, operations, controlling and business development, with one constant principle — no conclusion without economic proof.
