Buitoni faced declining shelf presence and purchase consideration in North American grocery channels despite strong brand heritage. The brand struggled to stand out in crowded refrigerated pasta sections and needed to revitalize in-store impact within existing packaging constraints and limited promotional budgets.
Vivaldi led shopper research, competitive shelf analysis, and developed an enhanced in-store brand expression and merchandising strategy. The work included shelf layout optimization recommendations, point-of-purchase materials, and retailer engagement tools designed to maximize visual impact without full packaging redesign.
Buitoni implemented a refreshed in-store presence that improved shelf visibility and brand recognition. The merchandising strategy provided retailers with clear implementation guidance and a commercial rationale, generating stronger retailer support and establishing a foundation for improved sales performance in key accounts.
Buitoni partnered with Vivaldi to recover shelf presence and purchase consideration in North American grocery refrigerated pasta sections without the time and budget required for a full packaging redesign. Vivaldi ran shopper research and competitive shelf analysis, then built an enhanced in-store expression, shelf layout recommendations, and retailer engagement tools that improved visibility, generated stronger retailer support, and laid the foundation for sales recovery in key accounts.
Buitoni is an Italian heritage food brand with origins dating back to 1827 in Tuscany. The brand, known for premium pasta and Italian meal products, is distributed globally and is part of the Nestlé portfolio in many markets. Buitoni is positioned in specialty and refrigerated pasta segments across North American and European grocery channels.
Vivaldi produced an in-store refresh that improved Buitoni’s shelf visibility and brand recognition in refrigerated pasta sections, plus a merchandising playbook that retailers could actually implement. The work also gave Buitoni’s commercial team a stronger rationale for retailer conversations, which is what translated the visibility improvement into account-level support.
The shopper research mapped how decisions actually happen in the refrigerated pasta aisle, which is fast, low-attention, and cued by category-level visual signals more than by individual SKU detail. Vivaldi then optimized shelf layout, point-of-purchase materials, and adjacency logic against those signals, which is how the work generated visibility gains without touching the pack itself.
Refrigerated pasta sits in a chilled set that shoppers scan quickly and where premium brands compete on cues like color block, badge legibility, and shelf adjacency rather than on the brand story. A premium brand that loses the visual fight at the chiller loses the transaction regardless of how strong its underlying equity is, which is why merchandising is the highest-leverage marketing dollar in the category.
The transferable lesson is that the shelf is usually fixable faster and cheaper than the pack. When budget or speed rule out a redesign, shopper research plus disciplined merchandising and retailer tooling can recover most of the visibility lost to category clutter, and the work doubles as a sharper argument for the buyer conversations that determine facings.
