Espresso on the Run

The price of Italy's prosperous postwar industrialization becomes more evident every day. Gone is the old, leisurely, Mediterranean pace. Traffic makes a trip home for a long lunch practically impossible, and crowded restaurants and coffee bars are no place for a noontime siesta. Still, Italians must have their coffee. They consume 20 million cups a day, even though they now have to gulp it on the run. The man who has done the most to exploit this yearning is Carlo Ernesto Valente, 54, whose Faema espresso-coffee machines can spill out a fresh cup of potent brew in as little as ten seconds.

Valente got into the espresso business literally by accident. A school dropout at twelve, he worked at a variety of jobs until, at 18, an accident cost him three of his fingers. He collected $1,000 in insurance and invested the money in a Milanese workshop on a back street ironically named Via Progresso. Valente scratched out a living manufacturing everything from electric hot plates to railroad accessories, until a cafe owner, Achille Gaggia, came to him with an idea for an espresso machine. For ten years, Gaggia had been unable to interest any manufacturers in his process; Valente saw the potential immediately. It was 1947, and "I realized that busy people could no longer linger over cafe filtre," says he. "I knew Italians would always want their coffee, but they would want it in a hurry--in short, espresso."

Go for Broke. Valente's machine brings technology to the old, time-consuming Italian process. Whole coffee beans are electrically ground into a fine powder. Just enough for one cup is dropped into the filter of the machine where it is packed tight under pressure. Then boiling water is pumped downward through the grounds--and out flows the potent black brew.

By the end of 1948, the team of Valente and Gaggia had sold 90 of their machines. But the partners split up two years later when Gaggia's limited-production philosophy clashed with Valente's go-for-broke ideas. Gaggia went on to establish his own company, which has run a poor second to Valente's Faema. Last week at the Faema annual meeting in Milan, Valente proudly reported to shareholders (mostly family) that sales were $27.9 million in 1967 (up $6,500,000 from 1966). Faema coffee is now brewed in 54 countries; besides his Milan plant, Valente now has manufacturing operations in Barcelona, Paris, Frankfurt and Zurich.

Civilized Contribution. Most of the machines are built for bars and cafes, but in 1964 Faema began producing a coin-operated model for plants and offices that grinds the coffee beans and brews a cup in 20 seconds. This month Valente introduced his latest design, a fully automatic machine that has three buttons: one for "short," extra-strong coffee, another for "long," slightly weaker coffee, and a third for a continuous flow of coffee to fill a pot. Valente hopes that the variety of the new machine will help to lengthen what he calls the "espresso belt." It now runs through Portugal, Spain, France, Italy and parts of Austria and Germany. The U.S., Valente admits, has so far shown relatively little taste for coffee Italian style. But he is sure the habit is exportable on a larger scale. For as any espresso guzzler would attest, it represents one of the contributions Italy has made to the civilized amenities of the world.

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