PORTA™ launches as Ontario's first Italian meal delivery service

Renowned restaurateur Cosimo Mammoliti brings traditional restaurant-quality Italian food to Ontario kitchen tables, cooked in 15 minutes or less

TORONTO, Nov. 29, 2021 /CNW/ - From the same culinary team behind Terroni, Sud Forno and Spaccio, comes PORTA™ – Ontario's first Italian meal delivery service. Meaning 'door' or 'carry' in Italian, PORTA brings ready-to-cook traditional Italian food directly to the homes of millions province-wide.

For over 25 years, Cosimo Mammoliti and his family have shared their love of food through their twelve restaurants, bakeries and shops across North America, where they have presented their unique approach to Italian dining to millions of loyal customers. With a desire to get this quality of food into more homes, Cosimo is now taking the food he loves and sharing it more broadly as a ready-to-cook meal delivery business.

"While restaurants were closed during the pandemic, we learned a lot about our customers' desire to replicate parts of the dining out experience in their own homes," says Mammoliti, one of the founding partners of PORTA. "Even though they couldn't visit us in our eateries, they still wanted restaurant-quality Italian food made with real ingredients. So, I challenged our chefs to start thinking about how we could bring restaurant-quality Italian food to more tables across the country."

The result is a curated food subscription that brings the best of Italy to you, so everyone can feel like a chef and enjoy the kind of Italian food that makes a house feel like a home. To start, PORTA will offer eight different pasta dishes, eight different pizzas and four desserts. PORTA uses a unique, Roman-style pizza dough called Stirata, which results in a light and crispy dough even in the most unforgiving of home ovens.

"PORTA offers something that doesn't exist in the market today - an elevated dining experience that saves people time, effort and the dreaded clean up," explains Jason Cassidy, founding general manager of PORTA. "Italian food is one of the most popular cuisines in North America, has the ability to bring families together, and is highly habitual."

Each menu item is handmade fresh by chefs and then flash frozen to protect its rich flavours and make it easy to store at home. All you have to do is take it out of the freezer and cook it, which takes only 15 minutes or less, with little to no preparation or clean up required.

"It's truly never been easier to serve high-quality, traditional Italian food to your family and friends in your home at a great price," continues Cassidy.

PORTA's subscription service allows Ontarians to choose between three delivery frequency options: weekly, bi-weekly or monthly. Subscribers can always change their frequency or even skip a week, and they can cancel at any time. Pizzas are $11.99, pastas (2 servings) are $18.99 and the dessert pack (4 servings) is $13.99. Ontarians can visit EATPORTA.com today to place their order.

PORTA has partnered with BrandProject to provide seed funding and operational expertise to support the business. "We are thrilled to partner with Cosimo and his team to build the next great Italian food business," says Andrew Black, CEO of BrandProject and board member at PORTA. "There is a huge demand for a restaurant quality Italian food at home and PORTA is designed to meet that need.  We look forward to working with the PORTA team to deliver an exceptional customer experience."

About PORTA™:
From the same culinary team behind Terroni, Sud Forno and Spaccio, comes PORTA™, Ontario's first Italian meal delivery service. PORTA's restaurant-quality dishes are handmade with authentic Italian ingredients and time-honoured techniques, bringing the taste of Italy to your home with no prep and minimal clean up. Launching in over 50 cities across Ontario. To learn more, visit EATPORTA.com.

About Terroni
Terroni is rooted from traditional Italian cuisine, wine, and culture. We work tirelessly to give our customers a distinctly southern Italian experience. Our first location was opened in 1992, and is located in the heart of Queen Street West. After 22 years of history, the family expanded to six locations in Toronto and two in Los Angeles.

Terroni is as much an ideology as a restaurant. It's not just food for us, it's also the experience of eating food in the same way that it has been enjoyed for generations. We go to great lengths to source the best olive oil, the best tomatoes, and the freshest ingredients because we want to share our traditional recipes and offer our guests an authentic experience.

About BrandProject
BrandProject is an early stage venture capital firm focused on investing in next generation consumer product, service, and technology companies. BrandProject invests in differentiated businesses that are disrupting the categories they compete in. With its team of seasoned entrepreneurs based in New York City and Toronto, BrandProject takes a strategic approach to building businesses with Founders, and provides the financial and operational resources to set them up for success. For more information, visit www.brandproject.com.

SOURCE PORTA

Ally Smith, Citizen Relations, [email protected]