Illy Espresso

illycaffè: a company, a family and a city

When Francesco Illy first arrived in Trieste as a Hungarian serviceman during World War I, he thought it the ideal place to start a coffee business:  a multilingual border city offering a port with warehouses, insurance companies and skilled machinery constructors, a city teeming with historical cafés-the intersection of society and culture, a perfect place to transform a raw material from far-off lands into a product which then travels the world.

In 1933, Francesco Illy founded his company of coffee production and sales in Trieste.
As a result, Trieste is become the only city in the world housing the complete coffee production process and is internationally recognized as the locus of the most important coffee research and test laboratories. 

Since its founding, illycaffè has remained a family run company with Ernesto, Francesco's son, who was President for 42 years and his son, Andrea, who is the current President and CEO. Andrea has guided the company towards internationalization, process innovations, the endless pursuit of quality and spreading the culture of coffee.