Fine food exquisitely illuminated: Fiorital, Padua

ERCO lighting tools illuminate an exclusive delicatessen store with restaurant: Premium seafood distributor Fiorital recently opened an exclusive establishment in a prime location at the heart of Italy’s northern city of Padua, offering fresh and frozen fish and fine food from around the world in an elaborately designed space of 400m2. The appetising array of carefully selected foods and products is presented in cabinets and shelving, on tables and counters, effectively illuminated with crystal clear ERCO LED light.

The Italian company Fiorital is a global player in the gourmet food market. Fish and seafood products from across the world are processed and packaged at its headquarters in Venice, after which they are shipped to catering establishments and traders throughout Italy and Europe. As well as fresh and frozen food, the assortment includes choice delicacies without preservatives, such as fish carpaccio, octopus salad or salmon tartare. Since 2015 the quality products, once sold primarily to LDO’s and wholesalers for catering outlets, has been available directly to consumers: in Italy’s first Fiorital shop, an exclusive delicatessen supermarket with integrated restaurant in the centre of Padua. The store is open Mondays to Saturdays, selling fresh and frozen fish and seafood products, as well as pasta, sauces, spices, wine, tea and coffee, and serving delicious fish and seafood dishes freshly prepared in the dining section. The integrated restaurant offers a daily changing menu for both lunch and dinner guests, along with sushi, sandwiches and salad.

Using light to guide customers: Flexible lighting concept with ERCO LED lighting tools
Milan architect Lorenzo Viola made the most of the 400m2 creating various different sections for product presentations, sales space and dining: Fresh food in cooling cabinets and refrigerators lining the sides to the right of the entrance surrounds the sales area, tables and product shelving, whilst the bar is to the left, and the restaurant with open kitchen at the back of the store for undisturbed dining. A separate glass encased DEEPFROZEN® section offers fresh produce preserved using Fiorital’s exclusive, patented freezing technology. In this challenging setting with its diverse and highly sophisticated design, the ERCO LED lighting tools installed throughout the establishment demonstrate once more their mastery of meeting the lighting requirements of a store as superbly as in a restaurant context – combining uniform, glare-free ambient lighting with precise accent lighting for the products and dishes on offer.

The flexible lighting concept devised for the store rests largely on two separate ranges of ERCO luminaires that combine perfectly with each other, offering absolutely identical light distributions and light colours. Hierarchies of perception guide the customer quite naturally through the broad but select range of premium products: Ceiling-mounted Parscan spots on track in the restaurant and salesroom illuminate the tables with 12W wide flood, the bar with 12W oval light distribution. Displaying a minimalist design, the black spotlights integrate unobtrusively into the existing ceiling structure, focused on accentuating with flawless precision the variety of textures and materials of products packaged elaborately in glasses, tins and paper. The open preparation areas are effectively illuminated by Pollux spotlights with 6W oval flood distribution, while Quintessence double-focus downlights positioned above the large table centred in the restaurant section ensure efficient ambient lighting with optimal energy efficiency and visual comfort, as the luminaires themselves are designed to recede elegantly into the background. Compact lens wallwashers in 12W, meanwhile, illuminate the wall surfaces in this section with exceptional uniformity.

Subtle play with light colours: Cool seafood rivals warm and inviting ambience
The products and dishes in the sales section and restaurant of the exclusive delicatessen are illuminated with ERCO LED lighting tools in warm white (3000K), reproducing their colours faithfully in a pleasant atmosphere. By contrast, Fiorital’s patented DEEPFROZEN® technology in a separate glass case section of the store is illuminated with the crisp cool light of neutral white ERCO LEDs (4000K), thereby underlining the freshness of the products as effectively as the unique and innovative technology that keeps it fresh. The crystal clear LED light reflects the cool origins of the seafood products. Ceiling-integrated IP65 (4000K) downlights provide efficient ambient lighting for the horizontal work surfaces, whilst Compact IP65 wallwashers (4000K) illuminate the wall surfaces with exceptional uniformity, giving the relatively narrow frozen food section a wider and more spacious feel. The IP65 rated lighting tools meet the stringent requirements of outdoor luminaires to account for the chilly temperatures and relative humidity in the highly professional and imposing fully glazed room.
The lighting technology installed in the new Fiorital store in Padua demonstrates once more the flexibility of the modular ERCO solutions to efficiently maximise the appeal of high-quality food whether it be presented in the store or the restaurant – with low-key lighting tools in a stylish design that allow for easy combination with each other.