Advertisement

Adelaide roaster celebrates 50 years in coffee

Sep 22, 2014
Fulvio Pagani with his classic 1953 Faema coffee machine. Photo: Nat Rogers/InDaily

Fulvio Pagani with his classic 1953 Faema coffee machine. Photo: Nat Rogers/InDaily

Rio Coffee owner Fulvio Pagani is the oldest coffee roaster in Adelaide and considered to be the man responsible for our thriving coffee culture.

He is 82 this year and celebrating 50 years in the business.

But coffee wasn’t on Pagani’s mind in 1955. He was 21 and had just stepped off the boat from northern Italy. He was one of the nation’s million post-war immigrants and one of 300,000 Europeans to spend time at the Bonegilla Migrant Reception and Training Centre in Victoria awaiting work and relocation.

Pagani had learned from a newspaper advertisement that Australia was inviting qualified weavers to migrate here to boost the quality of the textile industries. He hoped his skill and experience as a loom turner in a cotonificio (cotton mill) would bring adventure and fortune in an unknown land.

Within 12 months, he had settled in Adelaide, where he says the coffee culture was virtually non-existent except for the Mocha Bar on the corner of Morphett and Hindley streets, which catered to the small migrant community. In those days about 90 per cent of the coffee sold here was percolated – another word for stewed, he says. Now the reverse is true.

Mocha Bar owner Mick Papparella is famous for being one of the founders of the Juventus soccer club (now Adelaide City), as well as being the first person to make a cappuccino in Adelaide. Pagani remembers that Papparella used a Faema machine; he has one just like it taking pride of place in the Rio Coffee showroom – a restored 1953 model which he bought 20 years ago.

Pagani met and married his wife, Mary, whose parents also came from northern Italy. He began working at his trade with Australian Cotton Textile Industries (Actil). But it wasn’t what he could do with his hands that opened doors for Pagani, it was due to the strength of his popularity and skill as a soccer player that a business opportunity came his way.

Rio Coffee 05

Fulvio Pagani pushes English soccer star Sir Stanley Matthews out of the way in a 1958 game.

“I was playing soccer for Juventus and Renzo Commazzeto, the club president, imported foods from Italy,” recalls Pagani. “At that time I was the only Italian playing soccer for Australia. Renzo offered to help set up a coffee roasting business. I could see it was a good opportunity and thought I’d give it a go.”

In 1964, Rio Coffee began operating from a small shed in Trinity Gardens.

“I started slowly, roasting raw coffee from Melbourne – Brazillian beans mostly,” says Pagani. “I taught myself using a small roasting machine, but the merchant I bought the beans from – Ernest Singer – was a great mentor. He taught me a lot of secrets.”

Pagani’s blue and white Volkswagen delivery van was a common sight around Adelaide during the 1960s and ’70s as he personally delivered around 30 kilograms of his hand-roasted specialty coffee to customers each week. Pagani also began to sell coffee machines, biscuits, pasta, chocolates and other continental foods, becoming an importing agency of note.

“There was always competition,” he says. But after playing 13 games of soccer for Australia, Pagani was no stranger to that.

Rio Coffee 06

Rio Coffee’s iconic Volkswagen delivery van.

In a few years, Rio Coffee outgrew its Trinity Gardens location and in 1968 it moved to larger premises on Norwood Parade. For many Adelaideans, the aroma of roasting coffee triggers memories of Norwood in the 1970s and ’80s, and of dodging forklifts in the dim warehouse that was fitted with floor-to-ceiling industrial shelving stacked with exotic goodies.

Pagani says it was during this time that “Australians really started getting into coffee as they began travelling overseas and experiencing espresso coffee in Europe, so they came to understand and appreciate the difference from instant coffee”.

As the café culture here developed, so did the availability, quality and variety of beans available. Blending became a point of difference for cafes and Rio led the way, producing exclusive blends for clients. In 2003, it moved to new 2500sqm, state-of-the-art premises in Stepney.

Rio is still operated by Pagani and his wife Mary, but production has increased from 30 kilograms of coffee to 5 tonnes per week and the business employs 45 people, including two of their three daughters.

Rio Coffee-7933

The Rio Coffee showroom at Stepney.

The Volkswagen has been replaced by a fleet of seven Renault delivery and service vans. The bright and modern showroom is a retail outlet for 14 varieties of blended, single-origin, organic and Fair Trade coffee, as well as hundreds of lines of continental foods and gifts. Behind the showroom is the factory floor, which houses two enormous roasters that roast 300 kilograms of coffee per hour, and an auger to transport the roasted beans for bagging.

A container-load of coffee cups sits in the docking area waiting to be unloaded. An open shed door reveals some of the 130 containers of San Pellegrino mineral water that Rio imports from Italy each year; it’s the company’s second biggest seller after its coffee. Another shed is devoted to coffee machine repairs, with modern and classic examples of these over-worked appliances stacked in shelves which reach to the rafters. The Rio Coffee barista school is located on the mezzanine level above the factory floor.

“Adelaide is one of the leading places to drink coffee in Australia,” says Pagani.

“Australians understand coffee now; they are prepared to learn about it and they put passion into it.”

 

Local News Matters
Advertisement
Copyright © 2024 InDaily.
All rights reserved.