BITE: our new Innovation Center where the future of food takes shape
19 December 2025
How much future can you fit into two soccer pitches? It may sound like a strange question, but there’s a good reason we’re asking. Right next to our mill, our pasta factory and our offices in Parma, we’ve created a space exactly that size: two soccer pitches side by side. And inside it, our vision for tomorrow is already coming to life.
We’ve called it BITE – Barilla Innovation & Technology Experience: our new Research and Development Center. It’s a place designed to nurture a simple yet extraordinary idea: elevating the excellence of our gastronomic tradition while honoring its history and soul. Here, our pasta, sauces, and baked goods will be explored and refined so they continue to delight the senses, spark emotion and accompany people in their experiences of flavor, sharing, and discovery.
Covering almost 14,000 square meters of research and creativity, it rises in the very place where our story began in 1877. It’s a space we deeply wanted, one that marks a significant step forward in our journey of food innovation. Because we believe the future of food is built this way: by bringing together what we do best, what has always made us who we are, with everything we have yet to imagine.
BITE: WHERE THE FUTURE OF FOOD TAKES SHAPE
BITE is made up of spaces that are more than just square meters, they are possibilities.
Of these, 4,800 square meters are devoted to the Innovation Center, with Design Thinking areas where we search for answers to the questions that have already led, and will continue to lead, to the development of new products. There are also spaces for tastings and sensory research, two cutting-edge kitchens (one dedicated to pasta and one to baked goods), and an auditorium where we can share the results we achieve and the challenges that lie ahead.
Right next door, another 9,000 square meters host the pilot plants: experimental production lines where we test ideas, create prototypes and fine-tune them. This is where we imagine the future of our products, designing more sustainable packaging and developing systems that ensure quality and food safety. Here you’ll also find tools and technologies that truly open the doors to the future: 3D food-printing systems, innovations built on more sustainable ingredients, and advanced sensory analysis.
There’s even an electronic nose that can map the aromatic fingerprint of basil, creating a genuine “olfactory identity card”. And then there’s artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things, helping us better understand raw materials, optimize complex processes like pasta drying and, ultimately, refine every step of production with the greatest precision. We even use holographic design systems that let us “touch” a new biscuit before it exists, modeling it in 3D, printing it, and sending it to the pilot lines to understand how to make it in the real world.
None of this replaces our experience, of course. It amplifies it. Because BITE is where we’ll continue doing what we’ve done for nearly 150 years, only now with ever more innovative tools and technologies.
OUR PEOPLE AT THE HEART OF EVERY INNOVATION
Naturally, everything we’ve described goes hand in hand with BITE’s other great driving force: our people. Innovation is powered by technology, yes, but above all, it’s powered by dreams, intuition, and shared ideas. That’s why the human factor remains irreplaceable for us, and why our Sensory Food Experts play such a central role. Selected for their exceptional perceptive abilities, they are trained to become true “precision tools”.
Each year, our Sensory Food Experts will analyze more than a thousand samples of pasta, sauces, and baked goods, turning sensations into data, aromas into aromatic maps, and textures into parameters that help us understand what makes a cracker irresistibly crumbly or a snack perfectly balanced. Working alongside them is a panel of expert tasters chosen according to scientific criteria, and who we will continue to train over time. Because tasting, for us, can’t be an improvised act, it must be a discipline that ensures every product keeps its goodness and quality while meeting the needs of people today and tomorrow.
And then there are all the other professionals, more than 200 of them, who will help to make BITE a living ecosystem: food technologists, agronomists, researchers, chemists, biologists, chefs, data analysts, food designers, process engineers, each with different expertise, each with a unique and irreplaceable role. Together, these people transform BITE from a simple research center into a vibrant ecosystem, a place where our craft of making good, safe and sustainable food continues to evolve without losing what makes it unique: passion, sensitivity and a meticulous attention to detail.
A JOURNEY TO TAKE TOGETHER
At BITE, we certainly don’t intend to work in isolation. For us, innovation is a collective endeavor, born from dialogue, from the cross-pollination of ideas, and from encounters with people who see food from perspectives different from our own. That’s why, over the years, we’ve worked to build a broad and dynamic network of universities, research centers, start-ups and young talents who help us look beyond our own horizons.
84 active partnerships with Italian and European universities – from Parma to Wageningen, Naples to Bolzano, Milan to Maastricht – enable us to explore new scientific, nutritional, and technological solutions. And alongside them is the world of agrifood and tech start-ups: small but fast-growing companies capable of imagining alternative ways of shaping the future. Through the Good Food Makers program, since 2019 we have received hundreds of applications from around the world and launched concrete projects ranging from regenerative agriculture to raw-material traceability and AI-supported logistics.
And then, there are young people. Every year, BITE will welcome around thirty new talents (students, recent graduates, PhD candidates and researchers), each bringing a different background, from engineering to food design, from food technology to gastronomy. They arrive with new questions, fresh energy and new ways of looking at our products. It’s no coincidence that many of them choose to stay with us once their internships ends: a sign of our commitment, and clear proof of how essential an inclusive, international and experimentation-friendly environment is for shaping the professionals of tomorrow.
SUSTAINABILITY AND INCLUSION: THE VALUES THAT DRIVE THE NEW BITE
The new BITE has also given us the chance to translate the values we believe in directly into architecture. From the earliest design phases, we chose sustainability and inclusion as the foundation of the center. The building incorporates renewable sources that improve efficiency and reduce environmental impact, while the outdoor areas are designed to host research activities focused on regenerative agriculture.
Inside, with the support of Dynamo Academy, we’ve created an environment that truly welcomes everyone, with tactile and visual accessibility paths, flexible furnishings and elevators in every stairwell. A place designed to be lived in, moved through and interpreted by people with diverse needs, respecting their ways of experiencing and navigating the world.
“At Barilla, we’ve always been passionate about food. With BITE, we’re renewing our pact with the people who appreciate our products in Italy and in over 100 countries. Our goal is to keep offering them foods that continually improve in quality, taste, nutrition, sustainability, and safety, from field to fork,” says Guido Barilla, Chairman of our Group.“Here, the best Italian and international minds will work side by side to discuss gastronomy, design, sustainability, inclusion, and access to food, so we can better understand and anticipate the tastes and needs of consumers today and tomorrow”.
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