SAY Chooses Riesco for Corporate Catering: A Concrete Commitment to Inclusion and Sustainability

SAY renews its commitment to fostering an inclusive, sustainable, and people-centered work environment through its partnership with Riesco, a social cooperative active in the catering sector and in the employment of people with disabilities.

Founded in 2005 and celebrating its twentieth anniversary this year, Riesco operates with a clear mission: to provide high-quality catering services with a positive social impact by promoting the professional inclusion of people with disabilities. Over the years, the cooperative has evolved to meet a growing demand from companies—not just for healthy and delicious food, but for a desire to transform the company canteen into a space for connection, inclusion, and awareness. Today, the social enterprise serves thousands of meals across the Veneto region and employs 170 people; within Riesco, thanks to the support of more than one hundred partner companies who share its values, 70 people with disabilities have found a place for social and professional inclusion.

For SAY, confirming Riesco as its catering partner is a choice aligned with the philosophy guiding the agency’s work: placing people at the center, generating positive impact within the community, and promoting a corporate culture grounded in equity, inclusion, and social responsibility.

“Our collaboration with Riesco is not just a technical partnership—it’s a choice that speaks the language of our values,” explains Alberto Baracco, Managing Partner and HR Manager at SAY. “In a context where companies are called to do their part to build a more inclusive future, we’ve chosen to rely on an organization that has long been integrating quality, dignity, and opportunity into its mission. Bringing meals prepared by Riesco into our workplace every day means supporting a model in which work becomes a tool for participation and social redemption. And it’s our most concrete way of telling the people who are part of SAY that we care about them, consistently, every single day.”

“The virtuous collaboration between for-profit companies like SAY and non-profits like Riesco,” adds Marco Chinello, President of the cooperative, “allows inclusion to grow. Over the years, these partnerships have enabled us to develop the Habile program, through which we now bring our expertise in disability-inclusive employment into companies. We don’t hide the difficulty of the challenge—inclusion is hard. As social enterprises, we help make it possible, but it takes openness, energy, and a genuine willingness to welcome diversity into organizations to generate value, opportunity, and impact. That’s why we are so pleased with SAY’s decision to begin this journey with us.”

Sharing a meal at work is more than a daily routine: it’s a moment of connection, exchange, and community. SAY has always considered mealtime as an essential component of employee well-being. Choosing a partner like Riesco means enhancing this moment even further by enriching it with new meaning: building networks with the local community, supporting protected employment, and contributing to the growth of a local social economy. The meals served by Riesco are prepared with local ingredients, selected according to quality and seasonal criteria, but above all, they are made with the active contribution of workers with disabilities who, through dedicated training and support programs, find in this cooperative a meaningful opportunity for personal growth and social redemption.