Italians have rules about coffee.
Cappuccino, for instance, is a morning drink, so do not try ordering it for an
afternoon pick-me-up. In most cafes, coffee is consumed standing at the
counter, and variations are few, usually involving only the amount of water
and/or milk to be added.
اضافة اعلان
Still, Starbucks, which breaks all those
rules with its long menu of options that are served at any time of day, has
amassed an Italian following. On Wednesday, the company bet on Italy once more
with a combination of two ingredients at the heart of the country’s food
pyramid: coffee and olive oil.
The new beverages, branded Oleato, debuted
this week at an invitation-only dinner (co-hosted with the National Chamber of
Italian Fashion) at the Starbucks Reserve Roastery in Milan on Tuesday, the
first day of Fashion Week. Lizzo performed. Vogue’s top editor in America, Anna
Wintour, attended.
On Wednesday, Oleato, which can mean oiled,
oleate, or greaseproof in Italian (and which is now trademarked by Starbucks),
was introduced to the masses at the company’s flagship Italian venue in
downtown Milan. Five olive oil-infused beverages were on the menu, including
the golden foam espresso martini, which concluded the dinner.
He called it, glowingly, “a unique alchemy of two of nature’s most transcendent ingredients”.
In an online introduction, Howard Schultz,
the founder of Starbucks, promoted the new coffee line as a “transformational
idea” — his own — which came to him while he was traveling through Italy last
summer. He called it, glowingly, “a unique alchemy of two of nature’s most
transcendent ingredients”.
America’s brand in ItalySchultz has been right about Italy before.
Starbucks has opened more than 20 cafes there in just over four years, mostly
in the north and recently in Florence. “Italians have embraced Starbucks in a
way that many did not see coming,” Schultz said in his introduction.
Other American ventures have not turned out
well. Last year, Domino’s Pizza bowed out of the Italian market for good, seven
years after it bet that Italians would warm to having pineapple on their
pizzas.
Some olive oil producers are intrigued by the new horizons that could open from adding olive oil to coffee, “a very challenging innovation” that could relaunch olive oil’s image “especially among young people”.
The steady line of customers waiting to be
served at the Milan roastery on Tuesday suggested, at the very least, that
adding olive oil to coffee may have generated some buzz. To be fair, people
have been drinking coffee with butter for a while now.
Periodically, a server would float out the
front door bearing a tray with small paper cups filled with Oleato samples to
temper the wait, building expectations of the new delights inside. Whether the
potential customers actually liked the new beverages remained a mystery: In
reporting this article, I was barred from asking people their opinion.
“In-store interviews of our customers are also not permitted out of respect for
their privacy and Starbucks Experience,” the company said. It also refused to
say whether there were taste tests in Italy before the event. Or how the olive
oil company was selected.
Writing in La Stampa, the food critic
Lorenzo Cresci gave the “Oleato golden foam cold brew” a vote of 6.5 out of 10
and said that, “overall, it can be appreciated”. He rated the caffè latte a 7,
with “a strong flavor that leaves a pleasant taste in the mouth”. And he noted
an orange flavor that dominated the Oleato iced cortado, giving it a 6.5.
Because Oleato was released only Wednesday,
it is too soon to know how a more representative group of Italians will feel
about the oil-coffee combo.
Visibility of an essential stapleDenis Pantini, a food-sector specialist at
the think tank Nomisma, said he was curious about the product given that olive
oil was normally on the B-list, taken for granted by Italians even though
“every family has a bottle of olive oil in the kitchen”.
“On one hand, it’s good, because people are speaking about coffee. On the other, it takes away a slice of the market, because if you’re drinking that product, you’re not drinking espresso.”
From a cultural point of view, olive oil,
like wine and pasta, is “an ambassador of ‘made in Italy’”, he said, and
associating with “a colossus like Starbucks” could improve the visibility of
Italian olive oil producers.
Some olive oil producers are intrigued by
the new horizons that could open from adding olive oil to coffee, “a very
challenging innovation” that could relaunch olive oil’s image “especially among
young people”, Anna Cane, president of the olive oil group of the Italian
Association of the Edible Oil Industry, said in an email. That said, the
association, known as Assitol, noted that olive oil had already migrated from
the salad bowl to more innovative uses, including panettone, the Italian
Christmas cake, and cocktails like “drinkable pizza”, concocted for Assitol
based on olive and tomato. “Oil dream”, a cocktail using grapefruit and olive
oil, is expected to be presented this year.
Detracting from espresso’s heritage?
But not everyone is enthusiastic about the
new products.
“On one hand, it’s good, because people are
speaking about coffee. On the other, it takes away a slice of the market,
because if you’re drinking that product, you’re not drinking espresso,” said
Giorgio Caballini di Sassoferrato, the founder and president of a consortium
that is trying to persuade UNESCO to recognize espresso as part of the
Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
Traditional Italian espresso is not just
any coffee, they claim. “It’s a culture, a ritual, a social tradition,” he
said. “It’s not a product, it’s a system,” in which class and financial status
do not count. For the most part, “rich or poor, people drink espresso in bars”.
It typically costs between around one euro or just above; Starbucks is
considerably pricier.
Coffee with olive oil, on the other hand,
left Caballini di Sassoferrato “a bit perplexed”, he said.
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