Originally written by Timothy Adler on Small Business
Alessandro Savelli founded Pasta Evangelists, a home delivery service for fresh Italian pasta dishes in 2017, because he felt that pasta in Britain was still relegated to hard, mass-produced spaghetti on supermarket shelves and jars of pesto.
Based in Hoxton, East London, Pasta Evangelists employs around 25 full-time staff in its office and another 60 or so in production, preparing and packaging the pasta boxes. The start-up has an outlet in the world-famous Harrods food hall and a concession in M&S in Southampton.
Since the coronavirus pandemic took hold, Pasta Evangelists has seen demand for its home-cook pasta boxes more than quadruple and currently the business is shipping out around 12,000 orders a week.
24th February
It’s a rainy Monday morning in late February. I’m at home feeding my son Daniele his breakfast when my phone rings.
“You need to think about increasing your production – fast,” says the voice on the line.
It is my father calling from his mountain village in the Aosta Valley. Italy has just seen its first major surge in coronavirus cases and the Italian government has declared much of the north a “red zone”, locking down 11 towns across Lombardy

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