Autogrill: Designing the future of food on the move
About Autogrill
Autogrill is the world's leading provider of food and beverage services for travelers. The Group is present in 30 countries on 4 continents, operates in about 774 locations managing about 3,300 points of sale with about 46,000 employees and is present in 139 airports.
Tell us your challenge. We're here to help.
Contact usAutogrill is enabling its concessions from across Europe to work in a more collaborative and harmonious way by migrating to Google Cloud to standardize technologies and processes.
Google Cloud results
- Simplifies infrastructure management, enabling Autogrill to focus on its core business and to work more collaboratively across Europe
- Provides real-time data analysis capabilities and intuitive data visualization with a serverless, scalable enterprise data warehouse
- Enables Autogrill's digital transformation, thanks to a flexible, modern, and scalable infrastructure
- Improves the employee experience, connecting all European employees to the company's digital services
Empowers 500 stores with real-time data analysis
In 1947, a young Italian entrepreneur called Mario Pavesi had a groundbreaking idea: to open a small bar with tables and couches on the Milan-Turin motorway, at a time when more than half of Italians lived in rural areas and there was at most one car for every 100 people in the country. Fast-forward to today, Pavesi's vision has turned into Autogrill, a leading provider of food and beverage services for travelers.
Whether at an Italian petrol station or Brussels airport, travelers having a snack from well-known brands, such as Starbucks or KFC might not know it, but they're likely being served by an Autogrill-operated concession. The company runs concessions in airports, motorways, railway stations, petrol stations, and commercial centers across 30 countries.
To oversee its operations, Autogrill is organized in three major business units. One of them is Autogrill Europe, where Francesca Porta acts as CIO, overseeing the technology strategy for Italy, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Greece, and France. This amounts to roughly 650 stores, 13,000 people, 400 servers, and 120 apps.
"We have a lot of complexity to manage," says Porta. That's because Autogrill grew through acquisitions, so each company came with its own set of technology. Additionally, Autogrill's ICT strongly started the centralization of the services in 2021 only. Now, the company has set up policies to help standardize how it operates.
"From an IT perspective, we must keep track of everything from inventory and HR to reporting data for partners. To do that, we must harmonize and consolidate our infrastructure and applications all over Europe. As of 2021, that means using Google Cloud as both our IaaS and PaaS solution," Porta explains. "This helps us to work more closely and in a more coordinated way than before."
Designing the Autogrill of tomorrow on a cloud infrastructure
As a data-oriented company, all decisions at Autogrill must be backed by evidence, insights, and up-to-date information. To enable this, Autogrill tracks a range of figures across its restaurants, shops, and bars, monitoring every single coffee and beverage sold, hours worked, stock indicators from the supply chain inventory, waste, and variations in price.
With all these needs in mind, Autogrill decided in 2021 that it was time to modernize its infrastructure and applications by migrating completely to the cloud. "We call it our 'zero datacenter project'," says Porta. "It's exciting, we're almost done closing up our last on-premises data center and migrating everything to Google Cloud, so we no longer need to manage any legacy infrastructure. Furthermore, we're moving from a 20-year-old data warehouse to a new-generation cloud platform."
"Migrating fully to Google Cloud and using BigQuery as our data warehouse for Autogrill Europe means we can benefit from the best possible tech stack, and an infrastructure that is fast, scalable, and flexible, while staying focused on our core business."
—Francesca Porta, CIO, Autogrill EuropeOne important factor in Autogrill's choice was its commitment to sustainability. Looking to reduce its impact along the entire production process, the company is determined to work with partners that are also doing their part. "Moving to Google Cloud means we can cut our energy cost and operate on a platform that is carbon neutral," says Porta.
Innovating faster while maintaining strong cybersecurity practices were also key drivers of the migration. "We're a food and beverage player, not a technology company, and so it makes perfect sense to leverage the expertise of Google Cloud for technology instead of having to keep up with its pace of innovation and modernization by investing on-premises. Migrating fully to Google Cloud and using BigQuery as our data warehouse for Autogrill Europe means we can benefit from the best possible tech stack, and an infrastructure that is fast, scalable, and flexible, while staying focused on our core business," explains Porta.
Serving data to those who need it, faster
In 2022, Autogrill started developing applications on top of BigQuery, where all Autogrill data from across Europe is stored, to push information to the people who need it to make daily on-the-ground decisions.
"By consolidating our data from across Europe into BigQuery, we've moved from table-based numbers to intuitive data visualization that we can share more often. Store managers access infographics and business insights on tablets and mobile phones, which considerably improves their experience and ability to make informed decisions."
—Francesca Porta, CIO, Autogrill EuropeNow, most of the company's concessions data and KPI across Europe are available in BigQuery, for headquarters and stores to track their performance. Similarly, Autogrill's internal application helps managers keep track of performance and provides insights on how to improve. "By consolidating our data from across Europe into BigQuery, we've moved from table-based numbers to intuitive data visualization that we can share more often," explains Porta. "Store managers access infographics and business insights on tablets and mobile phones, which considerably improves their experience and ability to make informed decisions."
Bringing everyone on board the digital revolution
Being the first and largest Autogrill office has placed Autogrill Italy in the European spotlight when it comes to trying and testing technologies. As one of the early adopters of Google Workspace in Italy (2011), it played an important role in having the collaboration and productivity tools implemented in other countries. And in the summer of 2021, it went one step further by committing to give a corporate Gmail address to every single frontline Autogrill worker in Europe.
"This means every single bartender, dishwashing clerk, store manager, and everyone in between will have their own corporate email account," shares Porta. Giving workers a digital identity on Google Workspace will enable them to access digital services and opportunities, such as e-learning.
"Our chefs can record and share training with employees on the ground making sandwiches," says Porta. "People who might otherwise not have had the opportunity to interact and learn from one another can now communicate on Google Meet. We want to bring all our people on board this digital journey, no matter what their daily tasks are."
As a result, Autogrill is now able to create projects in Google Cloud, and share information using Google Workspace, faster than in its previous setup. "Everyone is excited to innovate and do new stuff, and many employees are reskilling and upskilling to make the most of the new solutions we're bringing on board. They feel empowered," says Porta. "At the same time that we want to encourage experimenting, cybersecurity is very important for us. So we're leveraging Google Workspace advanced phishing and malware protections to help people use the new tools without taking risks."
The journey does not stop here
Because Autogrill operates in a mix of countries and brands, achieving consistency when it comes to the customer experience has to do with the service model, rather than with the food it provides. "Our customers are travelers who expect fast services and convenience. Bringing Autogrill Europe together on Google Cloud helps us more quickly answer our colleagues' needs to meet these customer expectations," shares Porta.
Additionally, Porta is looking at continuing to adopt more Google Cloud capabilities, including ML and AI for predictive analysis.
"Our customers are travelers who expect fast services and convenience. Bringing Autogrill Europe together on Google Cloud helps us more quickly answer our colleagues' needs to meet these customer expectations."
—Francesca Porta, CIO, Autogrill Europe"A rainy weather forecast could indicate emptier motorways, and big events such as a football match also change how people move. These kinds of third-party data connected to our system, coupled with Google Cloud data analytics, could shine a new light into our operations," Porta concludes. "We look forward to more innovation."
Tell us your challenge. We're here to help.
Contact us
About Autogrill
Autogrill is the world's leading provider of food and beverage services for travelers. The Group is present in 30 countries on 4 continents, operates in about 774 locations managing about 3,300 points of sale with about 46,000 employees and is present in 139 airports.