The Man Behind Illycaffé Says Americans Are Getting Better at Making Coffee

Andrea Illy, chairman of Illycaffé, the world-famous Italian coffee brand founded by his grandfather.

How many coffees do you drink a day?
Well, I have an average of four per day. Sometimes three, sometimes five, depending on how much I sleep and how my day is.

When is the last one, usually?
Usually the last is around this time [4 p.m.]. After the interview I will have my last one.

How do you drink it?
Black espresso is the quintessence of coffee—the biggest spectrum of aroma you can imagine, with over 1,000 aromas. It’s a velvet-in-the-mouth feel, balanced in taste with a sweet aftertaste. It’s fantastic, just pure espresso.

The quality of coffee at home, at least here in the States, has gone up markedly. The same for the quality of coffee in cafes. But one place that seems to lag is the workplace. Where do you see that market headed?
This gourmet coffee boom started in hospitality and restaurants. Then there has been the boom of coffee shops. And then eventually, gourmet coffee entered the home. For some reason, it’s still not so developed in offices. It’s kind of a strange market. Most of the time it’s a complimentary product: The management is done by the so-called office coffee service. But I predict that there will be more and more high-quality coffee in offices as well, because, for instance, of our partners Keurig.

What about at home?
I see basically two trends. People are looking for consistent high quality with a convenient preparation system, which is about capsules. Then you have the coffee aficionado willing to spend time in the ritual of finding the best coffee, grinding, and then brewing at home, and maybe spending 15 minutes for a coffee.

Is there more growth among the ritual drinkers or the capsule drinkers?
Capsules.

What about trends in cafes?
Creativity is around. There’s a Copernican explosion of new recipes and preparations. It’s natural selection. Try new ideas, then taste, and if they do well, they become a standard in the market. Sometimes you have ideas which people love. Like now, it’s a trend for cold brew, which I never would have expected a few years ago. OK, that’s fine. Let’s go with cold brew.

But nothing for you has beat the classic hot espresso shot?
I like cold coffee more than in the past. I like to maybe brew my shot of espresso and add some ice cubes, and this is even in wintertime. I’m also drinking more of our filter coffee. So I’m less a kind of, as you say, single-minded coffee drinker. But I still don’t use a lot of milk, because I love the taste of coffee. And I hope that the American consumer will do the same. I believe that they still put a lot of milk because they still didn’t have the chance to discover the real pleasure of the super-high-quality coffee.

Illy has moved more into the direct-to-consumer market in recent years. How’s that going?
We have three formats: cafes, shops, and e-shops. In the U.S. we have 20 places. We are trying to create the model by directly operating six or seven cafes in San Francisco. We are going to open a few more, quite big, by the end of the year. So we are in the learning curve. Managing cafes—wow, this is not easy at all. But they are excellent brand builders. If you have one person who discovers the Illy brand in a cafe, then they know that they like the quality, and then they go to Whole Foods and buy one can.

Now you’re off to your last espresso of the day. Where will it be?
I go down to the Galleria Illy [in Trieste, Italy]. We have an iconic bar with a magnificent counter. In the middle you have the barista. She’s a god of coffee. This is a fantastic experience.

Edited and compressed for space

Andrea’s Fave Things
* Favorite type of coffee: Espresso, a term he once tried to have regulators limit exclusively to Italian producers
* Favorite way to drink it: Black
* First cup of coffee: At age 4