Business Entertaining in Italy

Before embarking on any important business project, Italians feel the need to really know the people they are going to do business with on a personal level.

The importance placed upon inter-personal relationships obviously leads to a great weight being placed upon business entertaining.

Whoever invites usually settles the bill — although a visiting female business manager may find they have to argue very strongly if they are going to convince their male Italian guests to allow a woman to pay.

Do not be over eager to introduce business topics into the mealtime discussions. Talk may come around to business but is more likely to be about non-commercial issues. Favoured topics of conversation might be food, wine, the regions of Italy (and their specialities) and football.

The main meal of the day tends to be lunch and you are much more likely to be invited out for lunch than dinner. (Dinner often starts very late by the standards of many other cultures — as late as 10pm or 11pm.) Lunch can often be a long and elaborate meal with many courses — a starter, followed by soup, a pasta or rice dish, the main meat or fish dish, and then desert or cheese. The meal will be finished off with a small cup of strong black coffee. Wine will probably be served with the meal although you should not drink too much as inebriation is frowned upon.

Although a service charge of 15% is invariably added to the bill, it is customary to add an extra tip as well — 10%

Author

This country-specific business culture profile was written by Keith Warburton who is the founder of the cultural awareness training consultancy Global Business Culture. 

Global Business culture is a leading training provider in the fields of cross-cultural communication and global virtual team working.  We provide training to global corporations in live classroom-based formats, through webinars and also through our cultural awareness digital learning hub, Global Business Compass.

This World Business Culture profile is designed as an introduction to business culture in Italy only and a more detailed understanding needs a more in-depth exploration which we can provide through our training and consultancy services.