By Jimena Bali Orona Flores, University of Connecticut | ISI Florence Spring 2026

Living in the U.S., I became used to an endless variety of food options from drive-throughs to wellness meals. The system was founded on mass consumption and convenience, an ideal world filled with any cuisine or craving.
Before studying abroad, I often heard students joke about eating “pizza and pasta” every day in Italy and somehow feeling healthier than ever. Sounding contradictory, I prepared myself to live off bread, curious and concerned about what food I would survive off of and what actual daily eating would look like.
On my second day in Florence, I met friends at a location called Shake Café. I pictured cornettos and affogatos. Instead, I walked into a space filled with build-your-own smoothie bowls and protein plates. It felt like something you would find in the United States. I assumed they were based in the U.S and had a location in Italy. In reality, they were founded in Florence, and it is a hotspot and meeting point for many students studying abroad.
Yet Shake Café is neither a traditional Italian café nor an American chain with global locations. After speaking with Fanny, one of the co-founders, I began to understand that the contrast between Italy and the United States goes beyond the cuisine itself. The real difference is in the food system, how their food is sourced, managed, and distributed. Shake Café is a revelation in the Italian food system: although not a conventional Italian café, it still embodies the same values embedded in Italy’s food culture, with added elements.

Supply chain

Shake Café’s contemporary café design was crafted by its founders, a married couple: Cristiano and Fanny, fitting in with the Italian ideal of “family-owned”. Cristiano grew up in an Italian household and understood the country’s cultural norms. Fanny, from Sweden, brought a different mindset, influenced by early wellness trends. Fourteen years ago, when avocado toast and smoothie bowls were not a common meal in Florence, she saw an opportunity to fill a gap in the market.
In the United States, food businesses rely on large distribution networks and multiple suppliers to keep their menus stocked year-round. It is designed to scale rapidly, improving efficiency, but it can feel distant from the origins of these ingredients.
Italy operates differently, working with smaller, relationship-based supply chains. Businesses often know their suppliers personally and adapt to seasonal availability. In addition, most businesses in Italy are family-owned, such as Shake Café, forging those community ties.
Shake Café falls somewhere in between these two food systems. Its menu reflects American wellness culture, but its operations follow Italian norms. The Café has strong, close relationships with its suppliers, relying on whatever produce they have each season. Because of their smaller scale model, growth depends not only on demand but also on the strength of these relationships.

Fresh Preparation

One of the core values Fanny stated as representing Shake Café is freshness. Unlike many American food businesses that offer pre-packaged meals, most items are prepared in-house and assembled to order. Their menu changes throughout the year depending on the season and crop availability.
Some popular ingredients, such as açaí, bananas, and avocados, are not native to Italy. Sourcing these tropical products requires careful supplier selection and involves higher costs. Still, the effort to do so responsibly goes further than marketing. Over time, Fanny explained, sustainability became more important than simply labeling products as organic. Their focus put more emphasis on responsible sourcing and relationships, showing how sustainability is considered in everyday decisions, not just as something to advertise.

Low Waste

Diving into their food waste, it is minimized both culturally and operationally. Because the café works with fresh ingredients rather than processed products, there is naturally less waste. In addition, Italian culinary tradition emphasizes using every part of an ingredient. Fanny mentioned that cooks often know how to repurpose ingredients in the kitchen before they become waste. Not necessarily because they were formally trained to do so, but because it is a habit passed down through experience.
Fanny connected this mindset to Italy’s history. Many older generations in Italy lived through, or were raised by, those who experienced food scarcity during World War II. Avoiding waste became a practical necessity and a cultural value, a habit passed down. In Italy, sustainability exists in habit rather than in data. Unlike in the United States, where waste may be tracked through corporate systems and analytics, Shake Café manages sustainability through daily practice and intuition.

Business Culture

Running a business in Florence means operating within Italian norms. Shake Café, like many other businesses, wanted to initially expand with an American mindset. They believed that opening new locations would contribute to their success. However, they became aware that expansion in Italy functions differently.
Many commercial spaces are often controlled by a limited number of property owners. In Italy, these include wealthy families. Because of this, Italy places a high value on land and imposes restrictions on land and on rental leases. Small businesses dominate, facing fewer obstructions as stability is often valued more than rapid scaling. While any attempt to scale might be shut down based on the depth of your connections. Business deals such as rental agreements are highly relationship-driven, and trust and familiarity play a major role.
Fanny, coming from a Swedish background, shaped by more structured corporate systems, spoke of having to adjust to the Italian way of doing business. By making systems less corporate and more personal, Shake Café embraced this smaller-scale model. Growth became less about multiplying locations and more about looking for new ways to expand that embrace Italian culture.

Hybrid Space

Because of its location in Florence, Shake Café attracts both tourists and Italians, two different consumer segments with differing values and expectations. For study abroad students and tourists, the café offers a reminder of home. For locals, it is a place to try something new.
Before coming to Italy, I believed the stereotype that living off of pizza and pasta somehow led to better health. What I have come to understand is that the difference is not simply what Italians eat, but how they eat based on their food system. Through Shake Café, I saw how sourcing, seasonality, relationships, and cultural habits shape daily food choices. This shows that health is not just about the ingredients but also about the systems and values behind food.