To say the truth, the title we use to begin the adventure of this blog is all but precise! 🙃

Our e-commerce was already launched last November, together with the Behashtag guys, who have been attending to our marketing for the last two years with important results…it’s our blog to start with a delay, so “our miss”, as we say here in Salento…not with a British accent though !!! 😅
But as everyone knows now, in pandemic times entrepreneurs are long time to think, so many more ideas pop up in their heads, though their execution is not always necessarily synchronized with their thinking. So we have resolved to unveil this second new adventure in a matter of months, with which we have closed a really hard 2020 for reasons everybody sadly nows, a year we managed to redeem and to ultimately crown with this important landmark.

Concerning synchrony, however, let us introduce ourselves. We are Mirko Serino and Francesco Panarese, i.e. the CEO and the chief confectioner of Dentoni. We represent the two families who have been leading this crafty company based in Torre dell’Orso for 40 years, born as a small venue overlooking Church Square and slowly but steadily grown until our move to our present location, at number 23 on Lungomare Matteotti, a premise 50 meters closer to the sea w.r.t. the historical base and beloved by everyone because of its magnificent view over the bay, enjoyable from our terrace, which we’d rather show than describe, for those readers who may have not visited us yet…

Incidentally, from now on and from time to time our signatures will be Mirek and Franz: I (Mirek) write and he (Franz) reviews and approves or disproves, because -as in every respectable Italian duo, we have precise and strictly redundant roles. As per our northern sounding nicknames, they have a precise origin too…!!! I have stayed affectionate to Poland, after spending three years of my life in Cracow, where Mirko=Mirek; as an aside, the name Miroslav, of which mine is short for mens “he who brings peace”, something about which my family and my secretary bitterly disagree, especially during the summer: but running a company is stressful and you need to vent! 😇 And so, after coming back home and entering our company, just to warm up my entrepreneurial muscles, I have quickly checked that there were no competitors on the market and kept this nickname, a bit out of melancholy, a bit as a joke!
Instead Franz has never been in Germany (and so far no German from my same generation has vowed claims upon our firm 😏) but as a by he had quite the opposite problem, i.e. there were way too many Francesco in his party, so just out of practical reasons he was made to barbar…sorry, to Germanize (I hope Ernest Kname never reads this blog, despite he is way too smart to take offense!). Anyway, that he is as picky as a German when he works is something known even to our walls. His artistic side often takes the best of his order instinct, but without it we would not be where we are now, so fair enough…after all me too -as they say- have too much humour to come across as a believable Pole.

Our panettoni, all over Italy !

Jokes aside, we know you all are in a hurry, because, on average, you have to read 13 blog posts ad 6435 social contents among Facebook posts, Instagram stories, TikTok videos and various tweets, so let’s cut to the chase:

in Franz’ passion for pure yeast and in his wife’s passion for artsy confectionery is the root of these two accolades which have accompanied our starting the Dentoni e-commerce, with shipping of our panettoni all over Italy and, upon request, also elsewhere in Europe. We are very proud and happy of the response you rewarded us with and we wish to show all our gratefulness, which we will reciprocate in a few months, offering to ship Easter eggs and doves. 😍

A future, all-round e-commerce ?

Many of you have asked us if we will ever ship our cornerstone products, such as pasticciotti, nun’s tits and, of course, our Torta di Crêpes®. This is a sensitive subject that we have intentionally set aside for the finishing part, so as to carefully explain the reasons still holding us back. We have built our success on our crafty calling since time immemorial. With respect to typical shipping times of ordinary couriers, the aforementioned products have much shorter deterioration times. The only viable solution to safely ship them all over Italy, as other companies do, keeping their quality at the same time, would be to use the negative temperature shipping chain, providing the final customer with an instruction set for ideal regaining of room/fridge temperature. The latter is easy, the former presents a double problem:

for one side, carrying chantilly cream of our Torta di Crêpes® and nun’s tits down to negative temperatures implies that the product, once brought back to ordinary temperature, features lumps not to be found in the ones we serve in our venue. So we are experimenting with variations of balancing fats and sugars so as to at least partly compensate, but it’s a delicate endeavour, beside being diluted among our main lines of work.

Another aspect is that shipping costs for negative temperature shipping services, which are at present super high, make it impossible the idea so sell this products to end retail customers. So we should find other confectioneries amenable to buy and re-sell our products, with a further price increase, not as high as in the first case, but certainly significant, in order to keep profit margins.

So, for the time being, we are considering shipping only Torta di Crêpes®, but we’ll keep you posted, because this will be a still long journey. For sure your requests are encouraging and motivational to keep this project alive.
Meanwhile, we take the opportunity to thank you again for your Christmas response and…see you for our next article or for next cake ! 🎂

Mirek e Franz