LUMINOR

Alessandro Caporale

Five openings, from empty shell to first service

Every venue below was taken from an empty room to a working operation: equipment and fit-out, menu and price list, food and labour cost, recruitment, training, service standards — then run afterwards, which is the part that tells you whether the opening was done properly. Four of the five were opened with my own capital.

5venues opened
and operated
1,300+seats
in total
20years in Italian
restaurants
2countries —
Italy and Egypt

2025 — 2026

Terrazza Italia

Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt  ·  Italian restaurant, international ownership

  • Opened from zero
  • Pre-opening mandate
  • Delivered on schedule

An Italian restaurant built for owners who were not restaurateurs, in a market where almost nothing about the Italian supply chain can be taken for granted. Kitchen equipment, furniture and dining room fit-out selected from scratch; menu and price list written against what could actually be sourced locally, not against what would have worked in Milan.

Delivered: the full team recruited and trained, kitchen and front-of-house workflow defined, service standards set, and the venue handed over to steady-state operation with written procedures. It is still open today under different management.

2019 — 2023

Bellavista

Ripamonti Residence & Hotel — Pieve Emanuele, Milan  ·  F&B concession

  • 916 hotel units
  • 600+ covers
  • Restaurant, pizzeria, bar
  • Banqueting and conferences

The whole food and beverage operation of a hotel property that describes itself as the largest in Italy. Breakfast, lunch and dinner for house guests and external diners at the same time, buffet and à la carte across every daypart, with conferences, conventions and private events running alongside continuous restaurant service.

Delivered: a multicultural kitchen and front-of-house brigade built and trained to hold one standard across three very different formats and two very different kinds of guest, at volumes where a bad service cannot be recovered later in the evening.

Bellavista — the banqueting room laid up Bellavista — the pizzeria and lounge bar Bellavista — a dish from the restaurant service

2017 — 2025

Antica Posta

Corsico, Milan  ·  Italian restaurant, owner-operator

  • 300 covers indoors
  • 150 in the garden
  • €1.3M annual revenue
  • Teams up to 40

A former coaching inn converted into a restaurant and built from launch into the reference Italian dining destination for its area. Complete responsibility for the P&L throughout: menu development, supplier negotiation, cost control, pricing, positioning and guest experience — with margins held through inflation, supply disruption and the post-pandemic years.

Delivered: €1.3M in annual revenue in the final year of ownership, from a building that had never been a restaurant.

Antica Posta — the dining room in the former coaching inn Antica Posta — the terrace at dusk Antica Posta — the courtyard

2017 — 2025

Acquaseltz

Basiglio, Milan  ·  Lakeside restaurant and lounge bar, owner-operator

  • 70 covers indoors
  • 180 in the garden
  • Two service identities
  • Opened from zero

A restaurant and a late lounge bar on the same lake, sharing one kitchen and one P&L — two operations with different rhythms, different margins and different staff profiles, which is the hardest kind of venue to price correctly and the easiest to lose money on.

Delivered: a dining service and a bar service that fed each other instead of competing, with a garden that carried the season.

Acquaseltz — the venue on the lake seen from above Acquaseltz — the terrace at dusk over the water Acquaseltz — a table laid for service

2008 — 2013

Laghetto Santa Maria

Buccinasco, Milan  ·  Multi-revenue leisure complex

  • Restaurant and bar
  • Pool club
  • Sports facilities
  • Full events calendar

Food, beverage and leisure under a single P&L: a restaurant, a bar, a pool club, sports grounds and a season of weddings, corporate functions and private hire. Revenue that arrives in violent peaks and disappears out of season, which is a different discipline from running a restaurant with a steady week.

Delivered: an operation where the events calendar and the daily service shared the same kitchen, the same staff and the same margin, without either one damaging the other.

Figures are the venues' own: covers as laid, and revenue as reported in the final year of ownership. Photographs are of the venues as operated. Bellavista and Antica Posta are still trading under different ownership, and Terrazza Italia under different management.