Coffee Mayhem

In the town of Parabiago, Italy, Rancilio is a longstanding family business. Roberto Rancilio opened his first espresso machine factory in what was not much more than a shed, in Parabiago where he started building a few machines each month. Prior to the Second World War, the business was humble, small, and personal: primarily Roberto working on the machines, developing a few new looks and designs, and keeping everything extremely hands on.

After the war, Rancilio started to really grow as a company. The factory expanded and expanded on its original location near the centre of the sleepy town, until finally business became so big it was time to move and build a new factory: a factory ready for what the future held.

The new Rancilio factory was built just outside of Parabiago, and it is quite big. Big enough that it composes three large buildings: the main factory itself, the administration and showroom offices, and a large social centre / training facility / mega cafe and restaurant for all the Rancilio staff. This is no small operation any longer.

But it is still very much a family run business, and a business were every employee is treated like members of the family. One example is lunch - the workers all have access to some amazing food in the Rancilio cafeteria. I know because we ate there one day, and the food offerings were fantastic - and all for the price of one euro. There is a soccer pitch. There are frequent company benefits, parties, celebrations. Every worker we saw there seemed to really enjoy their work.

As for the factory itself, it is pretty much state of the art when it comes to the manufacturing of espresso machines, yet is still very much hands on. These are definitely hand-built machines (no robots here, save for the ones that control the stock of parts). There is a research and development lab with 10 employees. There is a genuine assembly line with machines on rollers / conveyors. There are countless testing stations along the way for checking and rechecking everything from leaks to electrical problems. There is a torture chamber for machines that we saw in action, where a random machine off the assembly line is made to do things no ordinary machine in a caffe will have to do in 10 lifetimes. There is a great sense of order and flow in the factory that shows Rancilio makes a quality product. The factory can also work quickly - their record day is 112 machines (commercial only) built, which is a phenomenal number when you consider all the work involved and the handbuilt nature.

In our walking tour of the factory, we saw just about everything, and Rancilio's representative, Vittorio Bonissi (our guide and Rancilio's Methods & Standards manager) was extremely open about everything. Nothing was off the record or too sensitive to photograph.

I was also surprised at the number of machines Rancilio builds. They manufactured around 17,000 commercial machines last year, and a mind-blowing 22,000 Rancilio Silvias (counted outside of their commercial production). Those are both extremely huge numbers: think about this - the average commercial machine price is in the $7,500-$9,000 range, and they made 17,000+ of them!

I came away from the tour extremely impressed with how this company started 3 generations ago with Roberto Rancilio and still run today by the Rancilio family, manages to build nearly 40,000 commercial and domestic espresso machines each year.

Anyone in the business of coffee can arrange a visit to the Rancilio Factory. Even competitors, including La Marzocco people have visited in the past. If you would like to arrange a visit, visit their contact page fill out some details and the company should get back to you.

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