Giada De Laurentiis Q&A

Giada De LaurentiisGiada De Laurentiis is a well known chef, writer, and television personality. She is the host of Food Network‘s Giada at Home. She is a winner of the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lifestyle Host and the Gracie Award for Best Television Host.

Giada De Laurentiis is the founder of the catering business GDL Foods and most recently an expanding restaurant empire. Hollywood aficionados recognize the family name from the career of her iconic grandfather Dino De Laurentiis. As a child, Giada often found herself in the family’s kitchen and spent a great deal of time at her grandfather’s restaurant, DDL Foodshow. She certainly wasn’t looking to rest on the laurels of her family name to build her career. De Laurentiis studied at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, with aspirations of becoming a pastry chef. After returning to the United States, she became a professional chef working in several Los Angeles restaurants, notably the Wolfgang Puck-owned Spago.

In July 2014, De Laurentiis opened her first restaurant, called GIADA, inside The Cromwell in Las VegasNevada. The restaurant offers seating in the dining room, lounge, or outdoor patio with views of the Bellagio fountains and Caesars Palace. Most recently she debuted a new Pronto by Giada in Caesars Palace Las Vegas that features her take on fast casual Italian fare. 

Total Food Service wanted to get Giada’s thoughts on the challenges of brand building in both the restaurant and TV arenas, and her next steps.

Who sparked your love of the food industry?

My great grandparents owned a pasta factory in Naples – so my grandfather and his 7 siblings would go door to door selling handmade pasta and sauces for their parents, all day long! It stuck with my grandfather, so when we moved to the United States, he opened up his own store: DDL Foodshow. It was an Italian specialty food store, and I spent a ton of time there as a kid. Between that, and the fact that food was the gathering point and love language of my entire family – there was a lot to be inspired by.

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Your Grandfather was a creative visionary.

My grandfather always had a vision that his empire would expand beyond just movies. He was probably one of the most influential Italian American movie producers, but he still always wanted to do more. That’s something I absolutely get from him. As proud as I am of my accomplishments so far, I know I’m not done. I have so much more to do!

What led you to the Cordon Bleu?

When I decided to really go for it and become a chef after college, it felt like the only path to take. My family did not love the idea of me cooking for a career, so I put myself through school. I’m going to be honest – it was brutal. The chefs threw pans and rolling pins, I had burns all up and down my arms, and it was intense, laborious work. The experience absolutely threw away any notion that this would be easy. I was one of very few women in the class, and going to Cordon Bleu taught me how to prove myself by not just talking the talk – but walking the walk.

What are your thoughts on how we train young people to come into the industry?

I think both culinary school and hands-on experience are very important. I’m a huge advocate of culinary school. If you work in a kitchen long enough, you’ll know the ins and outs of that particular kitchen, but culinary school offers a full breadth and foundation of knowledge. For example, if you make a lot of pizza dough in a kitchen, you’ll know that you need to add salt to the mixture last – but you might not realize it’s because it impedes the development of the yeast. Culinary school answers all of the “why” questions and teaches you techniques that you can take with you to any kitchen you work in. That said, anyone with the drive, passion and gumption to cook can excel in a restaurant kitchen, whether they have a formal education or not.

Your route to building a brand has been… well “backwards”.

I never thought of it like that! In terms of what I’ve done in the spotlight, I suppose it can seem backwards. To me though, it felt like a slow trudge to even get to TV: culinary school, working in restaurants, food styling for magazines, then eventually getting to do a show. Doing TV opened the doors for more possibilities for me – so once I got there, everything else I wanted to try could fall into place more easily. Not only that, but the more successful I became, the more I was able to create things on my own terms. For example, if I had never become a successful TV chef, I would never have been able to create a restaurant exactly how I wanted to, down to every detail. I would have never gotten the call from Caesars to even have the opportunity.

Giada De LaurentiisWhy even bother going into the restaurant business with all the success you have had?

Like I said earlier – it’s hard for me to feel “done”. I have a distinctive drive to keep accomplishing more, and I always hear my grandfather’s voice in the back of my head telling me to keep going. I will be honest, though – I did not want to have a restaurant for years! It just seemed like an overwhelming amount of work, and a huge gamble at that. Ironically, it was a gamble I made in Vegas, and one of the most ultimately rewarding ones I ever made.

Talk about what led to the original ‘Vegas restaurant in ‘14 and now the Pronto by Giada concept at Caesars Palace?

Caesars had been reaching out to me for quite some time – there weren’t any restaurants owned by women on the strip at the time, and they wanted to change that. I wasn’t interested until they showed me a particular location: a parking garage on the corner of the Vegas strip, across the street from Caesars, the Bellagio and Bally’s. I couldn’t turn down the opportunity to build a restaurant from the ground-up, 100% from my own vision, right on the Vegas strip. My closest chef friends told me I would be crazy to do it… but even crazier not to do it. It was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done in my life – maybe the most difficult – but I’m overwhelmingly proud of it now, and proud of my team who continues to make it work every day.

Pronto seemed like a natural next step, and a way to offer food that was a bit more casual and every-day… basically, more in tune with how I eat on a regular basis, as opposed to special occasion food like GIADA has. Everything I do has a story, and I wanted to start building this potentially new franchise that takes what I love about my culture and introduce it to the world.

Walk our readers through what has made Pronto a success.

I can see a big shift in the way people like to eat, and it’s gearing toward a much healthier lifestyle, even in somewhere as indulgent as Las Vegas! If both GIADA and Pronto reflected different parts of my life, GIADA would be the Sunday suppers my family would host every week, and Pronto is my every day. We offer fresh and healthy options at Pronto, and everything can be taken to-go. We take a lot of care in the experience from morning until night – so whenever you need to stop by for a healthy bite, a decadent treat or a glass of wine and charcuterie, we want to offer this community that reflects my culture. It’s a very casual, comfortable space that I think can be a great reprieve from hustle and bustle of other places.

Is healthy a fad or is it here to stay?

The cultural change and interest in being healthier has been so huge, I can’t see it going backwards. People want to know where their food is coming from, how certain things are affecting their bodies and minds, and I couldn’t be more supportive of it. I believe the very first thing you can do for yourself is eat healthy and balanced, and everything else will fall into place. One of my goals in life is to make sure I’m doing the best I can to take part in creating healthier lives for future generations, and you need to start with yourself – and in my case, with my daughter Jade, too!

Pronto also features dessert. What role does dessert play on a restaurant menu with the move towards healthier cuisine?

I love sweets. Seriously love. I don’t live a life where I heavily restrict any one food – I just strive for a healthy balance. For my own personal happiness, that includes dessert. Gelato and pastries are also just a big part of Italian culture, but it’s all in moderation. Dessert has a different culture in the United States, but I like to bring my own personal take on it. If you’re eating healthy food most of the time, there’s certainly nothing wrong with indulging in some gelato or freshly baked pastries here and there.

What does the beverage menu look like at Pronto?

The beverage menu at Pronto is my love letter to Italy and California. As much as healthy food options are part of the Pronto identity, our wine bar is a very big part as well. My goal with the curated wines is to make guests feel transported to a trattoria, and to make it an easy and comfortable journey to get there. If you look at our wine menu, it’s not just sectioned by varieties, but by flavors as well, and each wine is described by its flavor profile. Unless you’re a sommelier or happen to recognize a certain brand of wine on a menu, it’s mostly guesswork, and we try to make it a more personal experience than that. I wanted it to be accessible to everyone, and a totally unintimidating experience. Along with our wines, we offer signature cocktails: classic Italian ones like an Aperol Spritz or Negroni, to creative takes on familiar flavors like our Bellissimo or Citrus Mistress. Ultimately, the cocktail menu is a blend of classic Italy and carefree California.

What are your goals for a national rollout of Pronto?

Our goal with Pronto is the franchise model. We’ve identified the top 50 media markets as our goal for eventual locations, as we want to be strategic with our growth through franchising. We ultimately want to create a community out of Pronto – one that reflects a healthy lifestyle.

What’s your approach to building a management team at Pronto?

In all things I do, I’ve learned to be able to give up some control to people I trust. You simply can’t be in every room all the time, and through everything I do – my shows, my books, my website Giadzy – I’ve had to build small teams of people I trust who share my vision. It’s no different with Pronto! I can’t be there every day, so I’ve built staff who I trust. A lot can be trained in a person for a job, but some things are infinitely more valuable: for me, it’s so important to find the right personality and someone who genuinely cares about the business, product and brand. I will always take someone who’s less experienced but more passionate about the job – you can give experience, but teaching someone to have the right attitude is much harder.

In this world of technology, delivery has become huge.

Delivery has become so much more than it ever was, and it’s getting easier and easier for people every day. To really create the community of a healthy lifestyle, being able to have food delivered makes it that much more convenient for people to get on board. To better create the community and brand we want, our goal is to build a mobile ordering app that we’ll partner on with a third party. It ensures that we’re able to get our product out there, and be able to tell our story to more and more people.

What are your goals for Pronto for 2019 and beyond?

We have our sights set on the top 50 media markets, so our goal is to further expand and continue to create and develop a healthy lifestyle brand. New York is number one on that list, so it’s definitely on our radar. New York is so unique in that it’s so small, but so dense with restaurants and places to eat. Standing out in a place like that will be undeniably hard, but I have faith in this brand – and in my team of people. Building a national community that reflects the importance of healthy living, and to make it as easy as possible for so many people, is the ultimate goal – and that means expanding.


To learn more about Giada De Laurentiis and all of her projects, visit her website.

  • T&S Brass Eversteel Pre-Rinse Units
  • Red Gold Sacramento
  • BelGioioso Burrata
  • McKee Foodservice
  • DAVO Sales Tax
  • Texas Pete
  • Inline Plastics Safe-T-Chef
  • Day & Nite
  • Simplot Frozen Avocado
  • AyrKing Mixstir
  • RATIONAL USA
  • Atosa USA
  • Imperial Dade
  • RAK Porcelain

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