Business: Espresso on the Run

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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 café 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 café 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.