Make your salumi purchase a comprehensive experience

With a main webpage featuring an exuberant meat display that brings to mind the vivid food paintings by 16th-century Renaissance, Puopolo Smallgoods was founded in 1978. A new arm of the business under the name Puopolo Artisan Salumi continues to honour family traditions and caters for ‘Melbourne’s best restaurants and delicatessens.

The family-owned company that produces and distributes Australia-wide was the brainchild of Vitangelo Puopolo who emigrated in the 1960s to Australia and brought with him centuries-old recipes unique to southern Italy and the art of traditional food making’. In 1978, Vitangelo’s son Nick Puopolo founded the company in Geelong, with his brother Chris later joining the business. Back then it was only a small retail butcher shop selling fresh meat and hand-made smallgoods made by the brothers. They worked tirelessly to create a successful business by focusing on smallgoods for the Victoria’s foodservice industry. After Nick’s retirement, it was his sons, Vito and Michael, that have taken the reins of the company. They both share the same passion for creating traditional Italian gluten free salumi using time-honoured recipes and artisan methods, the way they were created centuries ago. Because of this, they have expanded their business with their Puopolo Artisan Salumi label, which produces artisanal salami, dry cured meats, and cooked products like Mortadella and Prosciutto Cotto.

Vito and Michael Puopolo proudly emphasise that they support the local economy thanks to a strict purchase policy that gives exclusive priority to Australian farmers and producers raising the quality of the produced product better than market leaders products.

As a key point within their marketing strategy there is this idea to provide information and knowledge to both consumers and trade operators. Training retailers, for example, and educating them about the difference between industrial and handmade products is a pivotal action to allow them in assisting their customer with conscious and healthy choices. The transparency and the plainness of information included on the labels help the consumer in understanding better the characteristics of products they might not be familiar with and the recipes, suggestions, hints about origins and history of the products available on the website can allow them to upgrade from having a simple meal to enjoy a comprehensive experience.

Giving the right information, producing healthy and high-quality products, teaching people about the differences in ingredients selection or natural aging methods compared to heat-treated products, making available recipes and consumption suggestions, all these are the real points of difference of Puopolo Artisan Salumi.

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Regional Italian Cuisine on Channel 31

As an additional effort to enhance the legacy of their Italian heritage linked to an incredible knowledge about the endless variety of Italian salumi, Vito and Michael have contributed to Channel 31 with a series of episodes from the Regional Italian Cuisine show in which we will be describing the history and the origins of our most renowned products.