Two families, three generations and a great passion for quality coffee. Filicori Zecchini, 100 years strong, continues to look towards a future of powerful tradition and necessary innovation, treasuring the processing of its black gold and training baristas who choose the brand.
The merit of being 100-years old—and even a bit more—is undoubtedly having a story to tell and pass on over time. Filicori Zecchini’s history is rich in experience and people, who for three generations have worked to ensure the quality in the chain that goes from the plantations to the bar counter. Today Filicori Zecchini is recognized as Italian coffee excellence. It is a company from the city of Bologna, in Emilia Romagna, that has continuously managed to perfect its mission for making its espresso aroma excellent and recognizable, stretching ever further beyond national and European borders.
There is family and entrepreneurship in the production of Filicori Zecchini: the first is in the passion that has united fathers and sons, starting from the coffee shop of Aldo Filicori and Luigi Zecchini, the second is in the vision that over time has evolved and that, thanks to the courage of Giovanni Filicori, has accompanied this entrepreneurial story towards its transformation into a real industry, led today by the brothers Luca and Costanza Filicori and Luigi Zecchini.
Being centenarians means continuity and innovation—the values that have allowed the company to keep the two families together in a managerial history that for 100 years has recorded positive balance sheets and merit for competence while managing to keep up with the times. The final product’s high standard has remained the same, with the company consistently and scrupulously investing in machinery innovation, as well as customer training.
The care is essential to ensure the best possible quality, a philosophy that Filicori Zecchini applies on several levels, starting from the careful selection of coffee beans, chosen by a group of trustworthy suppliers consolidated over the years.
Furthermore, it is always the good principle of discerning attention that guides the roasting process: for years, the company has created a separate roasting for each single-origin coffee, so as to ensure compliance with the optimal cooking point that characterizes each type of coffee. The latter ensures the best aroma for each bean and distiguishes Filicori Zecchini with the brand “Certified Italian Espresso,” a symbol of guaranteed quality. Maintaining high standards means carefully following the way in which coffee is treated once outside the company, ensuring that the taste is intact when it reaches the consumer at the bar counter.
This is why there is constant exchange between the roasting company and the baristas—the daily coffee
ambassadors—a formative dialogue that was made official in 2001 with the Espresso Laboratory of Filicori Zecchini, designed to promote the culture of excellent coffee in the world, sharing the knowledge and professionalism that has accompanied the Bolognese company for a century. The Espresso Laboratory teaches how each coffee must be attained from a mixture of roasted beans of different origins, ground by the barista directly at the time of preparation and treated in the machine in such a way that the drink retains precise organoleptic properties.
Every year, the Filicori Zecchini coffee academy trains around 1,300 baristas with courses in Bologna, Milan and New York, but also with its customers who request it, in all 43 countries where the brand is present.
Only by sharing does it ensure the quality coffee so dear to the brand, the one that is intense even from the scent, with notes of flowers, fruit, toast and chocolate, with a velvety and balanced flavor.
The internal training school offers coffee courses, tailored to the needs of the professional, providing the best coffee trainers to build a personalized path.
The offer ranges from the basic course—which allows you to learn the technique to serve the perfect espresso and cappuccino – to the latte art; from the creative cafeteria—to create unique recipes based on coffee, balancing between tradition and contemporary methods of the cafeteria— up to the brewing workshops dedicated to the discovery of methods of coffee extraction other than espresso, or the brand new course of Italian Espresso Tasting, for professionals and enthusiasts. 
Passion and the centenary experience are encapsulated in this 100-year experience. Attention to the protection of a legacy that has been handed down according to the principles of quality and respect, which goes from the raw material to the customer, the one who sipping the coffee will say: “che buono!”
Margherita Pituano