The sweet taste of Italy

VENCHI, the Italian brand of chocolate and gelato that has been delighting customers since 1878, has arrived in the Philippines.

It was founded by Silviano Venchi who spent all his savings to buy two bronze cauldrons to experiment with chocolate. His chocolates achieved such a level of fame that the company started supplying to the Italian Royal Family. Today, they are found in 70 countries, including in the UK, Hong Kong, Dubai, and the US. They’ve been brought to the Philippines by Good Eats by SSI, which manages other franchises such as Salad Stop! and Shake Shack.

Venchi has opened its first store in Bonifacio Global City’s (BGC) Central Square, and will also be opening in The Podium in Ortigas next month. They’re also looking at further openings, with two every year in the pipeline, Venchi Asia-Pacific Chief Executive Officer Marco Galimberti told BusinessWorld in an earlier interview.

A TASTE OF CHOCOLATEDuring the store’s preview at Central Square’s Upper Ground Floor on Nov. 18 (before opening to the public last Tuesday), guests had a chocolate tasting featuring some of their bestselling offerings, such as their Nougatine, their very first product, made from crumbled hazelnut and caramel, encased in a chocolate shell.

Other products in the tasting include the milk chocolate Gianduiotto Ricetta Originale (fragile and creamy; melting before it reaches your mouth because of the heat from your fingers), and the Chocoviar 75% (a luxurious bomb of very rich, dark chocolate, coated in a pebbly shell made of the same, resembling caviar).

As for the gelato, we settled on vanilla and a chocolate-hazelnut blend (the two flavors are the hardest to mess up). What we found was a gelato that was incredibly creamy. While satisfied with our two choices, we do regret not getting more than a sample of a third, pistachio flavored-gelato: the taste was like biting into the nut itself.

None of these come particularly cheap, however (taste does come with a price). One can grab 100 g of chocolate for about P900, while the small gelato cone, for up to two flavors, comes in at P300.

We asked Mr. Galimberti what his favorite was: “Still this product,” he said, gesturing to a wrapped piece of Nougatine. “Part of our Italian childhood for a long time.”

WHY HERE?Why did they come to the Philippines? “This is the question that every journalist asked me today,” he said. “And I’m going to answer the same. For two reasons: first is that if you have a global brand ambition, you need to address this market. It has a big population. Young, curious, digital, and cool. It’s just cool, no?

“All the global brands are here. All of them. We have to be here as well,” he said.

“Second, we have a lot of Filipino clients outside the Philippines.”

While they boast of having up to 90 flavors of gelato and 250 chocolate recipes, they only display a limited number in the BGC store: 12 by the count of the previous BusinessWorld story, Mr. Galimberti counts 16 with us (he must have counted the sorbet, that is, water-based treats).

“As you can imagine, we cannot display all 90. But that is okay. The important thing is that we bring variety. Sometimes, the best way is to go back to old recipes that we dismissed many years ago, and we take them back. It’s like fashion.”

The pool of flavors they can explore is small, and that’s for a good reason: “We don’t use bad ingredients, so we don’t use colorants, thickeners, flavor enhancing… we need to play around a very small assortment of raw materials. The best way is to continuously rework the… ingredients. It’s also improving and making better all the processes that you have. The best innovations are improvements of the existing.”

SUSTAINABILITYThe use of “good” raw materials runs deep in the company philosophy: sustainability programs in the company cover improving their environmental impact through packaging, energy optimization, and sustainable supply chains; not to mention social engagement projects.

“I’ll tell you a secret, which is not a secret,” said Mr. Galimberti. “Chocolate is a product of agriculture. It’s a product that grows in less-privileged countries; in countries that have struggled with economic development and so on. It’s actually said that the industry woke up too late in realizing that we were standing over exploitation of land and people,” he said. “The cocoa bean price has (risen) tremendously in the last year. I think it’s healthy. This translates to direct improvement of livelihood especially in the West African belt, where cocoa beans grow.

“As an industry, we need to think… as human beings, we have destroyed our planet; abused our planet, and if we want to continue having the products of nature being edible and being good and enjoyable, then we need to put our focus back into taking care of the land. That’s it. We cannot disregard the land and agriculture and so on. I’m very happy to see that there is regenerative farming… at the top of the agenda of the financial institutions.”

On that note, the cocoa beans Venchi uses come from South America and West Africa. Meanwhile, the nuts come from Italy: Mr. Galimberti recalls that they source their hazelnuts from a place just 50 km from their factory. “It’s also a way to protect local labor. Nobody wants to work in agriculture anymore. So we need to protect that.”

THE ITALIAN WAY OF LIFEVenchi then becomes a window to the Italian way of life: asked what we think it’s like, we said “easy and relaxed.” He agreed. “When you walk in the store, do you feel oppressed, do you feel that it’s not welcoming… distant? No. I think you can navigate and browse the chocolate, you can touch them, you can try if you ask… there is no mandate.” We suddenly got a vision of Willy Wonka singing, “Living there, you’ll be free/If you truly wish to be.”

“Don’t misunderstand, but there’s no arrogance. It is extremely accessible. And that’s what Italy, as you correctly said, is. And that’s what we want to transfer to our consumers, bringing forward the Italian lifestyle. It’s colorful,” said Mr. Galimberti.

Perhaps that’s the reason why they’ve lasted since 1878? “I think it’s because we (did) something good in the end, right?”

He compares the company to another famous Italian brand, Armani, with its namesake Giorgio still working up to his 90s. “Still this great passion… there is so much passion in what we do. We’re so proud of it, that in the end, passion keeps us, as a driving force.” — Joseph L. Garcia