Hesburger opens its first Italian restaurant in Matera
The Finnish chain's debut in Italy lands in Matera on 23 October, funded by an honorary consul who left the city for Finland thirty years ago.
Hesburger, Finland's largest fast-food chain, opens its first Italian restaurant in Matera on 23 October, half a century after it started selling burgers in Turku.
The restaurant takes a corner of Piazza Mulino, in the Basilicata city built into limestone caves. A banner over the construction site has read "Prossima apertura" — opening soon — for weeks, drawing curiosity in a town more used to trattorias than drive-through counters.
The push came from Venanzia Rizzi, Italy's honorary consul in Oulu, who left Matera on an Erasmus exchange in the 1990s and never moved back. She and two Finnish partners have put in close to €1m, and the restaurant will employ 20 people when it opens.
An act of giving back to my land, after thirty years away.
Rizzi told the regional paper Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno the project was an act of giving back to her land. She has spent three decades building a career in Finland around the same chain she is now bringing home.
Rizzi has represented Italian interests in Oulu, a city of around 110,000 on Finland's Bothnian coast, since taking on the honorary consul role alongside her hospitality career. The Matera restaurant is her first investment in Italian food service.
A homecoming measured in burgers
Hesburger was founded in 1966 by the Salovaara family and still runs as a private company, with more than 300 restaurants across Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Germany. Matera is its first stop in Italy, a country that already counts McDonald's in roughly 650 locations and Burger King in more than 170.
The chain built its reputation on a menu that stays close to its Nordic roots — reindeer burgers have appeared on limited seasonal runs — alongside the beef, chicken and plant-based options sold at its other European outposts.
What exactly lands on the Matera menu has not been detailed publicly. Hesburger's press office did not respond to questions about any localised dishes before publication.
McDonald's arrives the same month
Hesburger's opening is not happening in isolation. McDonald's is opening a restaurant in Matera Sud in the same period, according to Gambero Rosso, turning a city of 60,000 people into an unlikely test case for two chains at once.
Matera has drawn steadily rising visitor numbers since its turn as European Capital of Culture in 2019, and fast food has followed the tourists in. Whether a Finnish newcomer finds room next to an established American rival will say more about the city's appetite than any press release.
