Fabio Rossi and Paolo Ciucci are residents of San Leo and members of the community cooperative. Another member is 70-year-old Gilberto Mascella, a restorer with a workshop on the town square: “I believe in the value of cooperatives – he says – and I want to do my part for our town. I have always lived here and over the years I saw the town losing services, inhabitants, life”. Gilberto helped with the carpentry work inside the bakery: he made the moulds used for bread leavening, designed together with baker Emanuele.

Besides the two restaurants, San Leo’s Albergo Diffuso (scattered hotel) too offers its customers the bakery’s products for breakfast. The owners, Marco Martini and Francesca Berardi, are both members of the community cooperative.

Cooperation, however, also branches out into other spheres and sometimes even crosses regional borders: empty flour sacks, for instance, are not disposed of as waste, but are converted into bread bags and rucksacks by social enterprise Terra di Tutti, based in Capannori (Lucca); at Easter 2022, the users of day centre centro diurno Il Nodo of the La Fraternità cooperative, based in the municipality of San Leo, hand-made the labels for the Pagnotte; moreover, organic eggs are collected by young people with disabilities from religious foundation San Paolo of Novafeltria, which is also a member of the cooperative.

In 2021, Fer-Menti Leontine had a turnover of around €205,000. The bakery permanently employs 6 people: three work in the workshop, one behind the counter, one is in charge of deliveries, and Rita coordinates activities. During the summer, a seventh person is in charge of retail sales. Whenever possible, interns and trainees are also welcomed.

“I believe that, over time, the bakery will be able to provide the cooperative with the financial resources needed to invest in new activities. It would be important – and it’s already happening, to a certain extent – for the most active members to be paid for the time they devote to the cooperative. This would also further boost the energy invested into growing the business. The bakery can be a flywheel”, explains Samuele, who is now looking forward to organising cultural and tourist activities. “I would like to rediscover the Romagna dialect, using it to write short stories revolving around bread”, he says. When the bakery reopened, the message he chose to post on Instagram was “Ai sém!” – Here we are!