MODENA — Progeo Molini has announced that its Tre Grazie flours will supply Refettorio Modena, the community kitchen run by Massimo Bottura and Lara Gilmore’s non profit Food for Soul, under a rolling supply agreement.
The flour is milled at Ganaceto, a few kilometres from the refettorio (refectory, a communal dining hall), the only one of Food for Soul’s 12 kitchens that the charity runs itself. The program was founded by Massimo Bottura the Italian chef and restaurateur from Modena, best known for Osteria Francescana, one of the world’s most celebrated restaurants. “This collaboration has a meaning that goes beyond simply supplying a product,” said Roberto Sassoni, director general of Progeo.
Bread gold
Flour is not a neutral gift in this kitchen. Bottura called his 2017 recipe collection Bread Is Gold, after a dessert made from breadcrumbs, milk, and sugar. “With nothing you have to create everything,” he said when the Modena refettorio reopened in 2024, “and bread becomes gold, something that helps feed people.”
The room is a former chapel beside the Ghirlandina tower, minutes from the Duomo and Bottura’s Osteria Francescana, its entrance wall covered by a mural from the Modenese artists Zamoc and Luca Lattuga. Chef Matteo Reggiani cooks there with volunteers for roughly 80 guests an evening, using surplus from the supermarket Conad and Banco Alimentare.
No excuses
The template was set in Milan in 2015, when an abandoned 1930s theatre in piazza Greco became Refettorio Ambrosiano, fitted with a terracotta door by Mimmo Paladino and a neon sign by Maurizio Nannucci reading No More Excuses. Bottura told the 60 starred chefs who passed through not to bring their recipes.
Modena has grown quickly. It served 4,529 meals over 72 evenings in its first year, and Progeo’s release records 7,422 meals for 774 guests in 2025, with 362 volunteers and five tonnes of surplus food recovered. The kitchen is currently operating three evenings a week.
Enrico Montorsi, coordinator of Refettorio Modena, values the deal for the supply chain behind it rather than for the sacks themselves, calling it rooted in the area and attentive to social impact.
Progeo is a Reggio Emilia farming cooperative with more than 13,400 members and consolidated revenue approaching 400 million euro. It mills 500,000 tonnes of animal feed a year against 70,000 tonnes of flour, so the refectory’s order barely registers. The interest lies in what a short supply chain looks like when its last stop is a dining room rather than a shelf.
