INTERVIEW/Marco Magnetti, Magnetti Foods:WHEN IT comes to glamorous young business start-ups, Marco Magnetti is under no illusions: making and selling fresh pasta dishes is highly unlikely to become the stuff of movies.

"It's difficult for a modest food company like ours to shine when it's being compared with cutting- edge software firms whose days seem to be filled with everything from triangulated broadband to satellites to helicopter gunships," he says, laughing.

"It falls kind of flat when the best you can come up with is: myself and my brother Seán run an Italian food company."

Yet when you look beneath the bonnet of Magnetti Foods in business terms, here is a five-year- old Galway company which has just taken third place in Intertrade Ireland's Seedcorn competition for young businesses - and is already on its third full-blown expansion plan.

And in the midst of an economic downturn, how about this for a confident trading forecast: with turnover currently in the region of €750,000 and eight employees, it is expecting solid growth over the next three years to transform that into €3.8 million and 22 staff.

"We're still dealing with very little of the potential market," says Magnetti (32). "For instance, in Spar shops in Dublin alone, we turn over about €250,000 a year - but the fact is that those shops represent less than 3 per cent of the total market."

The Magnetti family has been in the food business in Galway since the late Eighties - and the name is synonymous with Italian food there. "My mum and dad, Mary and Sergio, met in a London hospital back in the Sixties," he recounts. "He was an engineer and she was a nurse . . .

"They eventually moved home to Galway and opened their first restaurant in Cross Street in 1989, before moving to Quay Street in 1994. It's full of restaurants now but it was mainly a residential street full of fishermen at the time."

It never looked as if Marco and Seán would follow in their parents' footsteps. On the contrary, both moved instead to San Francisco, Marco to work as a sound engineer and his brother to pursue his career as a marine biologist.

Yet back they came. In 2002, with their parents ready to retire, they bought out the Quay Street restaurant, Trattoria Magnetti, and set about building up a retail business whose customers now include supermarket chains such as Dunnes Stores, SuperValu, Londis and Spar.

"We had some business experience from working in the restaurant, but we knew it was limited, so we started off by concentrating very much on the handmade artisan quality of the food, which is its key selling point.

"One of the first things we did in 2003 was to set up an off-site kitchen in Clarinbridge which allowed us to scale up our production. But even then, I have to admit the market didn't really open up in front us us.

"We produced new products, fresh egg tagliatelle and fresh filled ravioli, for instance, but we found when we looked at deli counters that what customers really wanted was what they were used to - lasagne. So we started to produce a high-quality home- made-style lasagne and it was a big success."

Since then, says Magnetti, he and his brother have "skilled up a lot and learned some hard lessons".

Distribution was one of the biggest challenges.

"Business doesn't end when someone buys a product from you. You've got to get it from your back door to the supermarket. That stretch of road can be surprisingly difficult to bridge and, when you're selling to 180 outlets nationwide, you need an efficient, cost-effective solution."

He says the big supermarkets have been "not bad" to deal with.

"Taking on small, artisanal producers means the supermarkets have products that are unique to them. It's a very competitive business and they need that difference. So they need us too."

Name:Marco Magnetti

Company:Magnetti Foods

www.magnettifoods.com

Job: Founder and co-owner.

Age:32.

Background:A sound engineer, he went to work in San Francisco before moving back to Galway to take over the family restaurant with his brother, Seán. They started Magnetti Foods in 2003, supplying fresh pasta products to supermarket chains including Dunnes Stores, SuperValu, Spar and Londis.

Inspired by:His parents, Mary and Sergio, who met in London, moved back to Galway and opened Trattoria Magnetti, on which Magnetti Foods was built.

Challenges: Increasing the turnover of Magnetti Foods from the current €750,000 to €3.8 million and staff from eight to 22 over the next three years and expanding into the UK, starting with farm shops, delis and independent traders.