An Interview with La Cafferia

Espresso coffee is an Italian cliché: we’re not able to give up our beloved coffee at breakfast, in the middle of the morning or the one after lunch. But coffee is such a little pleasure that the only fundamental rule is that it has to be a quality one. For this reason we choose La Cafferia brand for PepeGusto and we interviewed for you Gianluca Gilardi, Marketing and Quality Control Manager for La Cafferia.

Gianluca, please help us to deepen the philosophy of your company.

Our roastery has been operating in the coffee sector since the 1970s with the same goal: selecting quality raw materials to produce espresso coffee blends. We pursue this goal on a daily basis, combining craftsmanship and innovation. The human part of our work is still very important at all stages of the production chain, from quality control to receiving green coffee to roasting. In the last two years we have renewed all our equipment, increasing quality controls in all the steps of the production process. Technology has provided us with important tools that allow us to guarantee high and constant quality standards.

How do your coffee differ from the others on the market?

Our focus has always been the production of espresso mixes for bars, restaurants and hotels. Over the years we have introduced coffee for moka to ensure that the consumer can also have a quality artisanal product at home. We have also chosen not to follow the market segment of capsules and fast consumption but to pursue a "slow" consumption with products destined for moka. So we have introduced a line of gourmet coffees made for extraction in moka, 7 carefully selected single origin coffees from Ethiopia, Guatemala, India, Indonesia, Jamaica and Brazil. Moka is a traditional Italian ritual and we want to support it through the development of innovative products that stand out from the classic moka ground coffee tile that we have always found on the market.

What is the relationship between La Cafferia and its territory of origin?

The company is closely linked to the territory of Luino and the Province of Varese. First of all, our founder, Ferruccio Rizzi, from the very beginning wanted to combine a roastery with a coffee shop where he could offer his blends and also make communication and culture about the coffee world. Over the years we have maintained this model by opening two venues in Varese that serve both as a bar and a coffee shop. People can choose between different blends and single origin coffee, buy the quantity they want from coffee beans and have it grinded according to their needs. We want to maintain and build a relationship with consumers that only the shops of the past had, through advice, suggestions for using our products and daily relationships. Furthermore, in October we will be inaugurating a training room that we would also like to use for events and seminars, where to invite people who are not from the sector to tell and explain what is our supply chain, from coffee plantations in tropical regions until the roasting process. We believe it is important to create culture and information on coffee, which is unfortunately often a trivialized product.

Please suggest us a recipe with your coffee.

A simple and tasty recipe, that we make in our bars but it’s easily achievable even at home, is the CANNELLINO COFFEE. In a cup we dispense a cup of coffee, espresso or moka, add hot chocolate, milk froth made with a french press and finally garnish with cinnamon. It’s certainly a tasty and simple recipe, which satisfies the eye as well as the taste!