This is a special message from Barilla.

No doubt about it: Americans love food on demand. Now even pasta can be ready to roll when they are.

When hunger strikes, they tote home Italian classics like Pasta Primavera and Penne Vodka in family-feeding meal packages. Or they follow Twitter feeds to track down mobile food trucks offering everything from gourmet mac n’ cheese to Farfalle Pollo.

Operators versed in takeout say that correctly prepared pasta travels as well as standbys like pizza, chicken wings and sandwiches and has a higher profit margin to boot. In addition, some have found selling pasta to go is a great way to create notoriety about a restaurant and attract new customers, as well as build sales.

For Bellini’s Italian Eatery, an upscale Italian restaurant in Albany, N.Y., in the four-unit Marrello Restaurant Concepts group, a promotion called Dinner Table Tuesdays has turned a formerly slow day into the third busiest of the week after Friday and Saturday. The busiest location has approached 300 takeout orders on a Tuesday.

Customers phone to reserve a pickup time for a freshly prepared meal for four priced at $22.95. It consists of a half-platter of pasta, a half-platter of salad and a loaf of fresh Italian bread. Typical offerings are Pasta Primavera with fresh vegetables in creamy garlic sauce and Penne Vodka with chicken and broccoli.

Bellini’s takes pains so that its pasta arrives at the home table just as firm and delicious as it does at the restaurant table. “You undercook your pasta a little,” said director of culinary operations Jim Kavanaugh. “You put plenty of sauce on the pasta because it absorbs some. You make sure the ingredients are combined well so everything is coated with sauce.”

For takeout, Bellini’s prefers pasta shapes like penne, rigatoni, shells and farfalle because they hold the sauce better than long strands like spaghetti, Kavanaugh said. Barilla penne rigate and rigatoni in particular have ridges that help sauce cling.

Actually, Bellini’s switched to Barilla from another brand of pasta after discovering that takeout dishes made with the former had superior holding ability. “I tried Barilla in a series of dishes and it just held up better,” said Kavanaugh.

In the final analysis, Dinner Table Tuesdays means much more to Bellini’s than just higher takeout sales. “We’re also getting advertising without paying $10,000 for a billboard or $5,000 for a radio spot,” Kavanaugh said.

In Chicago, three days of serving signature pasta dishes as the guest chef on a gourmet food truck allowed Mark Steuer to preview his culinary style and build some buzz prior to opening the Bedford, a new Midwestern cuisine restaurant where he is executive chef.

Steuer worked on The Southern Mac & Cheese Truck, a rolling extension of a popular local eatery, serving dishes like Pasta Carbonara and Pasta Stroganoff made with Barilla elbow pasta. Because Chicago ordinances prohibit cooking on trucks, he prepared the pasta and packaged individual orders at The Southern just prior to hitting the street.

He cooked the elbows about three-quarters of the way, too firm to eat immediately. But after traveling in the truck’s hot box for 40 minutes, they were a perfect al dente texture for lunchtime service.

In addition to selling about 90 takeout orders per day priced at $9 apiece, Steuer handed out his business card and talked up the soon-to-open eatery. He credits the truck campaign with helping him gather more than 1,000 Twitter followers for the Bedford prior to its debut in late April. “We pulled a nice little client base,” he said.

Thirteen years ago, long before food trucks were trendy, The Pasta Bowl truck was serving Chicagoans packaged portions of the signature pastas they enjoyed at the bricks-and-mortar restaurant of the same name.

Owner Greg Staeck’s vehicle, essentially a pickup truck equipped with a holding oven and cooler, remains a lunchtime fixture in downtown Chicago. On average, it serves 70 to 90 orders of specialties like Farfalle Pollo, Penne Puttanesca and Spaghetti Pomodoro, each made with Barilla pasta. The most popular dish off the truck is the same as at the restaurant, Farfalle Pollo, a medley of bowtie pasta and sliced chicken in cream sauce laced with sundried tomatoes, mushrooms and plum tomatoes.

“Our loyal customers don’t even look at the menu, they just walk right up and order,” said Staeck.

Staeck attributed his success and longevity in truck-borne pasta to using the same quality ingredients as he does in the restaurant.

“Barilla pasta has great holding ability,” Staeck said. “It stands up really well and is consistent every time.”