PODcast #52 : Espresso Pods News

Welcome to The PODcast, PodMerchant's newsletter of espresso pod news, education, tips and deals. Back issues of The PODcast are available online.

Finally, back to some new content. My apologies for running previously published articles in the last two issues, but the time is not always available, especially around the holiday and tax seasons (the Season to be Merry and the Season to be Sad...)

Tales of the Torrefattore

Torrefazione Amigos

Continuing our Tales of the Torrefattore series, this month we highlight Torrefazione Amigos. (Torrefattore (tohr~ray-faht~toh-ray) is Italian for "roaster." Torrefazione (tohr~ray-fahts-yo-nay) means "roasting", e.g., "Amigos Roasting".)

Before PodMerchant opened its virtual doors, I was searching for Italian roasters producing pods that I could sell. Amigos Caffé was one of the first that I lined up and we've been happily carrying their products since the beginning. Amigos is a family owned and operated business, providing the benefits that one often finds in such a situation — commitment to quality and responsiveness to customers.

Amigos is owned by the Mingardi family — the founder, Severino, and his wife, Maria. Fortunately for me (and U.S. Amigos fans), Arianna Mingardi's English skills are very good. As I do not speak Italian, this is of great benefit to me. This association has helped me greatly in getting PodMerchant off the ground.
 

Torrefazione Amigos is located in Trieste, a city famous for coffee. Trieste is Italy's largest green coffee bean port, and hosted the World Barista Championship 2004. As Italy is famous for being shaped like a boot, to locate Trieste you would look for tip of the cuff, nearer to Slovenia actually than mainland Italy. Through the magic of Google Maps, you can check out a satellite view of Amigos' facilities.

Amigos started in 1980 — the first location was a small 40 square-meter space in the outskirts of Trieste — actually, in the garden of Sig. Mingardi and his parents-in-law. At that time all the work was carried out with the sole help of family members. Work started early in the morning and ended late in the evening, including Sundays.

Today, the new locations are more spacious and offer modern and updated machinery and equipment. In the satellite view you can see that there are two buildings. The front building is for roasting, packing whole bean coffee, packaging and storage operations. The building just to the south is geared towards vacuum and pod packing operations.

Severino Mingardi and his family still go to work in the company on a daily basis so that current and future customers can always find the expertise, accuracy and courtesy they deserve.

Amigos continues to grow, despite its limited dimensions, being a family-managed company that has been operating in the international market since 1980. It is a company in which the partners, moved by a spirit of open cooperation, interact with their workers and create an atmosphere of strong friendship and esteem, as well as a relaxed workplace.

Amigos organizes the roasting and the packaging of coffee in a series of chain operations, which have a direct influence on the quality of the final product. Operations are carried out in a controlled mode, in order to comply to contractual specifications.

Left: Interior view in the main building. Right: "L'Art del buon Caffe'" (The art of good coffee) Amigos delivery trucks

Left: Roasting machines able to roast 240 kg. of green coffee every 14 minutes. They are enclosed to protect the roasted coffee from insects or other foreign matter during the cooling phase. Center: A green (unroasted) coffee silo. This silo has 8 divisions and can contain 40 tons of green coffee. This silo allows selection the green coffee according the origin. Right: Packaging ground Amigos ground coffee

I will let Sig. Mingardi speak in his own words about the founding and history of Amigos:

"I have been asked to tell the story of this constantly growing company, a company that I strongly wanted and to which I dedicated all my energies, my positive and negative moments. A company in which I have involved and I am still involving all my family... including my nieces.

The company was formally created as an individual enterprise in the form of a family owned and operated business in 1980, but the idea wasn't... it is older.

With a friend of mine, who is still working in the same sector, I chose the name: it had to be a name with reminiscences of coffee growing counties, a name inspiring a liking, warmth and it had to be easy to remember... Amigos!

Shortly after the name came the idea of the logo: simple and amusing. The first time I saw the sombrero I had no doubts; that would be the logo representing the blends I wanted to create.

And then... then time flies. The positive performance of the company, which has been and is rewarding me and my family's entrepreneurship, has lead us to change location twice as we were lacking space and couldn't face demand from foreign markets, European and not.

Honestly, I can say that in these 26 years there have been easy moments and less easy ones, but my family and I never gave up ... we continued with humility and devotion to take care of the company and its customers, who still believe in us and in our product."
 

PodMerchant News

We are pleased to announce that PodMerchant is moving to a newer, more aptly suited facility. It's just down the road from our current offices. In fact, I can see it out my window. Part of this is cost savings — the recession has hurt us less than some, but that's not to say not at all. The move will happen at the end of February, starting operations from the new location on March 1st. With luck, shipping will be uninterrupted.

We've placed a new order for coffee from Italy. This means that absent Lucaffe and Compagnia dell'Arabica products will be back on our shelves, but not until April.

We are not pleased to announce that we no longer be carrying Gioia products. We've had just way too much trouble getting inventory from the U.S. distributor and, so far, the roaster in Italy will not sell directly to us due to agreements with the distributor. If we can persuade Gioia to sell directly to us, we will once again sell Gioia. Meanwhile, Gioia fans will find the Espressione line to be a very close match, although at a slightly higher price.

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That's all for this issue of the PODcast.


Kevin Garrett, The PodMerchant.