Nespresso was conceived in Rome
Italy is famous for its art of making coffee, which has been exported worldwide through the espresso, macchiato, and cappuccino drank in most cities around the planet. But that’s not all, even the Nespresso machine cleverly commercialised by food giant Nestlé to make the perfect coffee at home, was conceived in a small café in Rome.
I regularly go to that café and one day as I arrived early, the owner at the cashier was in an unusual chatty disposition. He immediately started a conversation when he saw that I was buying coffee beans. That’s how he can spot coffee lovers: they buy beans, not ground coffee. A discussion ensued on the superior flavour given by freshly ground beans as opposed to coffee powder. He agreed that drinking coffee starts with the intoxicating smell of fresh powder, that irresistible call to brew coffee and drink it to overdose point. In his view, most people had lost that incomparable pleasure because of the growth of industrially produced coffee sold in capsules. Inevitably, the conversation hit the Nespresso sore point, a great invention for some and a disastrous calamity for others who believe that it encapsulates the culinary sins of our times: excessive waste and artificial taste.
“Do you know it was invented here,” he said.
“Here in Italy?” I asked.
“ Here in this café”, he replied.
The café in question is no ordinary Roman café. We are talking about St Eustacchio, near the Pantheon, one of the most famous in Rome which attracts hundreds of visitors every day (even more so since the advent of Trip Advisor).
The owner, a slender man in his fifties, told me that when the Nestlé Executive behind the Nespresso invention visited his family café, he was so impressed with the thick layer of foam on top of the cup that he asked the bartender how he did it. The latter replied: “I just pressed a button”. That reply had a galvanising effect on the inventor who went back home to Switzerland repeating in his head (I just pressed a button, I just pressed a button, I just pressed a button…..). He started working on a user-friendly machine that would produce a similar result: a home-made espresso with the perfect foam just like in a café in Rome. That was back in the seventies, but it was only at the turn of the Millennium that Nespresso became commercially successful in the Western consumerist world, with its million of capsules thrown daily in the bin. Talking about a superfluous invention that has done nothing for the advancement of human knowledge (especially not about coffee) but just produced tons of waste for our narrow-minded comfort.
For Nestlé, on the contrary, it was a brilliant discovery. Adding to it an expensive marketing campaign, the food giant is able to sell coffee today at four times the retail market price, so about 80 euros a kilo compared to around 20/kg (25/kg for premium blend at St Eustacchio). That’s where the genius lies: make people spend money on packaging and waste; why not throw the cash directly into the bin?
