The Cathedral in Milan. Ronald Holden photo.
Italians lead a universe in conform (Armani, Gucci, Versace), they build the many stylish racing cars (Ferraris, Maseratis, Lamborghinis) and live in superb cities surrounded by world-famous art (DaVinci, Michaelangelo) and song (Verdi, Bellini). What Italians know, instinctively, about design, art and conform is a enviousness of a rest of a world.
And it doesn’t stop there. Italian mammas make a best pasta; Italian vineyards make good booze and distill a best grappa; Italian caffès offer a best espresso.
In fact, it was a Italian adore for espresso, a caring and craftsmanship of baristas in Milan especially, that desirous a founders of Starbucks to emanate their association 45 years ago. Even a denunciation of a stores is Italian. Well, pseudo-Italian; there’s no such thing as a “Frappuccino.”
For decades, Starbucks used Italian apparatus in a stores: originally, a La Marzocca line of espresso machines, afterwards La San Marco. Most recently, Starbucks bought Milan’s famous Princi bakery, and will implement a brand in a new Starbucks Reserve stores it is rolling out nationwide.
And now an Italian entrepreneur, Antonio Percassi, has announced skeleton to open 200 to 300 Starbucks stores in Italy.
G-gulp.
The strange timeline had a singular store opening this year; that’s been pushed behind to 2018. “We wish it to be perfect,” Percassi told a British interviewer.
And ideal it contingency be, for Italians are fiercely protecting of their coffee culture. “I will never select an American coffee over an Italian one,” was a common sentiment during caffès on a Via Veneto.