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“We, the Ferreros, as a family company, believe that value is created by building mutual trust and taking responsibility towards those who work with and for us. On a planet under ecological and social pressure, it is essential that companies take care of their people and the communities in which they operate, extending their reach to the supply chains.”
“The fundamental values that distinguish us have allowed us to continue to achieve our goals and maintain a solid business continuity even during this difficult period.”
“He is Michele Ferrero, the Italian genius of 'making,' the inventor of hugely successful products such as Nutella, Kinder, Ferrero Rocher, Mon Chéri, Estathé, Fiesta, and Tic Tac: products that have become familiar brands recognized in every corner of the planet, thanks to which the Group bearing his name grew from a thousand employees in the fifties to four thousand in the sixties, to then rise to ten thousand in 1990, up to the current 41,441 worldwide.”
“As I was arriving, I was losing my courage because I was so, so, so shy, really super-shy. When I arrived in town, I immediately went to the first bakery I found, there were three steps to climb and I stumbled. When I arrived I saw a man with an unkempt beard and terrible little eyes scrutinizing me.
"What do you want, pretty boy?"
I wasn't capable of putting my words in order, I always stumbled, and he urged me on: "Tell me, lad, tell me..."
I stammered: "Two wheat loaves, two rolls, please." And I left. But I must not give up, I told myself, despite my endless shyness.
I found another baker, entered the shop and, oh Madonna, it was again a man! With a two-day beard, wide-open eyes...
"But what do you want?"
I stammered again: "Give me two wheat loaves, please."
Then, finally, I went to a lady who certainly was a mother, and seeing this poor little son coming forward...
I told her: "Thank you, madam, I am here" and showed her my business card.
She says to me: "I've never seen it. But where is the chocolate factory in Alba? I didn't know there was a chocolate company there".
And me: "Look, in Alba we made a very good product that Langa has consumed a lot and so if I can..."
"Let me see."
I advance with this wooden box, I don't know if you remember, it was an extraordinarily simple thing, I showed the product, I opened it but the oil had come out, the wood had turned all black, and she says to me: "But, pretty boy, what do you want me to do with this merchandise? I can't do anything."
And me: "Look, I'll leave this as a sample and I'll come back in the afternoon if you allow me..."
I went out to eat, I ate my four sandwiches, I drank a bit of water from the communal fountain, and around one o'clock I went back. I looked inside the window of the lady's bakery and saw that the product was no longer there. My God, she sold everything! I thought.
'So, ma'am, I no longer saw the goods in the window, does that mean that you sold everything?'
'No, no, pretty boy, it's that it all collapsed!'
'So, ma'am, I apologize, I'll take everything back and go home.'
'But no, pretty boy, there's no need' she told me. 'When my customers came in, they smelled the scent of hazelnuts and asked where it was coming from... With their sense of smell they headed towards your product and in the end, a slice here, a slice there, I sold everything. So, pretty boy, I want to place a purchase order for ten kilos of stuff.'
I went back home with this order and said: 'We won, dad!' And from there started the story of Ferrero».”
“The story of a man, a family, a company, and a land that in the early twentieth century was defined as 'of the losers' and which proved in the third millennium to be that 'of the winners'. A story that starts from far away, from a small village in the Piedmontese Langhe, thirty-two kilometers from Alba, Farigliano, and from an apparition.”
“There is sadness and hope in the Ferrero home. Mother Clara, having become a widow after the death of her husband Michele in 1911, must also say goodbye to the two sons on whom she had pinned her hopes to carry on the family tradition. The two boys are convinced that their destiny lies elsewhere, not among those four farmhouses, the woods, the vineyards, and the hazelnut groves that descend from six hundred meters above sea level down to the Tanaro river. They want to leave, to find their own path.”
“"A land with a known heart and an uncertain periphery," according to Giorgio Bocca, another true Piedmontese. "From Pliny, who writes of it and its capital Alba as a 'fertile land and a distinguished city, among those that make the region between the Apennines and the Po splendid' to Saint Bernard who tells the bishop of Milan about this 'country of Paradise', to the Corsican Napoleon, rhetorical as much as greedy, who first joyously announces 'Alba is ours, we are here in the best and most fertile country in the world' and then immediately drains the municipal coffers and empties the pockets of the landowners." He then concludes: "Surely, to the starving and ragged sans-culottes who followed Bonaparte through the poor lands of Millesimo and Cairo Montenotte, Alba and the Langhe must have seemed like the promised land, just as they did to us partisans of the mountain when we came down in '45. A happy place, fertile, distinguished but, I repeat, within what borders? One of the mysteries of the Langhe, one of its charms, is precisely this indefinability."”
“In the early 1926, Pietro and Piera are in Alba, where they open a pastry shop on the corner of Vittorio Emanuele street and Pierino Belli street. The connection with Dogliani remains strong and every summer, once school is over, young Michele spends the holidays with mother Piera at his grandparents' and uncles' farm, which includes a hazel grove and a vineyard of their own, in the small district of Pianezzo, four kilometers from the main town. Years later, with his uncle Giovanni, he also goes up to Viaiano, to take part in the grape festivals or to drive some new tractor. The bond between the two brothers, Pietro and Giovanni, and their hometown will remain strong as long as they are alive: in 1956, for example, on the occasion of the Melbourne Olympics, Giovanni will present the community with one of the first televisions, an Olympic Channel set in a wooden cabinet, which will allow the locals to watch the programs of the newly-born Rai and the Olympic competitions which will see the Italians triumph in fencing, rowing, cycling.”
“the beginning of the history, dated May 14, 1946, the day the Sole Proprietorship P. Ferrero, a chocolate, nougat, and various sweets factory, was officially born.”
“"Sow with wisdom… Know that many seeds go outside the right soil, others are eaten by magpies... Those that go into the right meadow, into fertile humus, must be cared for, made to grow well, with slow and careful development. Slowness will ensure the quality of the fruits."”
“Pietro, the more restless of the two, invested his savings to open the Ferrero Café and Pastry shop under the arcades of Via Corte, in the historic center. An insistent idea occupies a large part of his mind: to drastically reduce the cost of chocolate. "If I can make chocolate that costs half or a third of what one pays in shops," he says confidently, "if I can sell for a few lire a substantial piece of chocolate, today reserved for a few rich people and a few days of major festivities like Easter and Christmas, I will make it a product that is pleasing to all palates and within reach of all wallets, I will make it popular, people will fight in front of my pastry shop just to get it. I will conquer the market of children, I will ensure their snack, at four in the afternoon I will have them lined up clamoring at the doors of the Café Pastry."”
“Some start calling him 'the scientist'. There are those who spy on him from the laboratory's glass windows and say that, when he is not called to the cash register, Pietro spends hours and hours on vials and alembics, in a white coat, with the air of a chemist engaged in who knows what kind of alchemy.”
“That pastry shop, marking the starting line of the Ferrero marathon, is still there today, almost a century later, renamed Caffè Bicerìn under the arcades of via Corte, next to the ancient Porta Soprana in Dogliani.”
“Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor and philosopher, who said 'I live according to nature and accommodate humanity' and 'Live as if every day were the last, plan as if you lived for eternity'.”
“As a boy, Michele saw the poverty of those lands and would not forget. "From there his reserved generosity was born," says Serafino Bindello, his personal driver for twenty-eight years. "He did charity but discreetly. Nobody knew that in the morning I was going around delivering money for someone he had seen in difficulty the day before."”
“His diploma had been confirmed by the Purge Commission [composed of professors of proven anti-fascist belief and former partisan students, re-examined all the diplomas issued from 1943 to 1945, cancelling those who had been suspected of fascism or collaborationism] but he was not too interested in that fact. He told me that Michele Ferrero's diploma had also been confirmed and he planned to visit him in Alba where he was setting up a factory to make chocolate.”
“those first tastings and hazelnut-based products, Cioni provides some tasty details: "A challenging activity for Michele was finding the right proportions to blend hazelnut and chestnut powder together. He would crush the hazelnuts in class during lessons. He’d open the desk drawer, place the hazelnuts on the inside edge of the drawer, and then close it sharply, covering (or attempting to cover) the noise with a coughing fit. After crushing the hazelnuts, he’d use his pencil sharpener to reduce them to small pieces. Then he peeled the chestnuts and chopped those up as well. He measured the quantities of both ingredients and mixed them together on a piece of absorbent paper. He continued to grind the mixture with the pencil sharpener until it became almost powder-like. He would pick up a bit of the powder with the tip of the sharpener and invite us to taste it. Our judgments were always negative, also because by repeatedly working with the pencil sharpener on the desk to grind the mix, it tasted of wood and ink, and bits of absorbent paper would always end up in it."
But Michele does not give up. "I must have got the proportions wrong," he explains. "I'll try with two thirds of hazelnuts and one third chestnuts. You'll see it will definitely be better."
The hazelnut-chestnut”
“"A challenging activity for Michele was finding the right proportions to blend hazelnut and chestnut powder together. He would crush the hazelnuts in class during lessons. He’d open the desk drawer, place the hazelnuts on the inside edge of the drawer, and then close it sharply, covering (or attempting to cover) the noise with a coughing fit. After crushing the hazelnuts, he’d use his pencil sharpener to reduce them to small pieces. Then he peeled the chestnuts and chopped those up as well. He measured the quantities of both ingredients and mixed them together on a piece of absorbent paper. He continued to grind the mixture with the pencil sharpener until it became almost powder-like. He would pick up a bit of the powder with the tip of the sharpener and invite us to taste it. Our judgments were always negative, also because by repeatedly working with the pencil sharpener on the desk to grind the mix, it tasted of wood and ink, and bits of absorbent paper would always end up in it."
But Michele does not give up. "I must have got the proportions wrong," he explains. "I'll try with two thirds of hazelnuts and one third chestnuts. You'll see it will definitely be better."”
“An anecdote directly connects Michele Ferrero to the writer, who was three years older. Piero Negri Scaglione tells us about it in the biography of the author of Partigiano Johnny. During the war, in the days of the occupation of Alba, Fenoglio is invited to the home of a family of pastry chefs. "Come down to the cellar, Beppe, I have something to show you," the son of the house owner tells him. Fenoglio finds himself in front of a mysterious object covered by a cloth. "A new machine gun?" asks the writer. "No, much more," replies the young man, removing the cloth: "It's a machine for making chocolate. When the war is over, I will finally be able to devote myself to it full-time." That young man is Michele Ferrero.”
“In Alba and the Langhe there is still nothing. Imagine chocolate, which costs about three thousand lire per kilo at the time: a real luxury. Pietro Ferrero understands that at this moment his old idea of making chocolate popular is even more important: to increase production, he must create specialties at much lower prices.”
“In short, Pietro Ferrero belongs to the category of individuals that Benedetto Croce defines as those who know how to 'turn difficulty into a stool, necessity into virtue'.”
“Alba is already famous for its truffles, and the Langhe are on their way to becoming known for their wines, but no one has yet grasped the potential of the hazelnut, the one that the PGI specifications, Protected Geographical Indication, will call the 'round gentle trilobate of the Langhe' or more simply, 'Piemonte Hazelnut'. There is plenty, and of excellent quality. For its good yield – usually between twenty and thirty quintals per hectare – and especially for its organoleptic qualities it will then be considered the best variety in the world; many characteristics make it a winner in the market. A manual of hazelnut cultivation (from the Latin corylus, hazelnut) helps us to identify them. Meanwhile, the”
“without problems of rancidity; the thin film that wraps the seed (perisperm) is easily removed after roasting.”
“In times when Italians have little money in their pockets, a kilogram of Pasta Gianduja is on sale for six hundred lire compared to the three thousand lire for a kilogram of chocolate. Pietro Ferrero has succeeded in his venture, giving substance to the idea that he has cultivated for years and pursued with determination: to take away from the pastry shop the reputation of being elite, reserved only for the rich or for major festivities. There needed to be a sweet treat for everyone, pleasing to every palate and within everyone's reach: it is the Pasta Gianduja, the fruit of research and patient trials, and the use of machines like that enchanted machine gun, shown by the young Michele to Beppe Fenoglio.”
“How was Pasta Gianduja born? It was the beginning of 1946, a year of restart for Italy, with the reinstatement of journalists purified by fascism, the return of the Corriere della Sera to newsstands, and the resumption of radio broadcasts across the national territory, and the institutional referendum between the monarchy and the winning Republic.
One day Giovanni, who had just returned from a trip to Turin, came to the laboratory and suggested to Pietro to experiment with something using molasses extracted from sugar beets. Pietro Ferrero starts with a panello, which is a solid residue of hazelnuts, obtained by extracting the oil; uses coconut butter, because cocoa butter was too expensive and difficult to find; and adds lean cocoa powder, sugar or molasses, and obtains a semi-solid mixture which he pours into rectangular molds, obtaining loaves that can be sliced. He submits his discovery to his wife and son, receiving their approval.
Why the name Pasta Gianduja? Because the taste of the mixture prepared by Pietro Ferrero reminds of the gianduiotti that Turin pastry chefs had invented at the beginning of the nineteenth century, following the Continental Blockade imposed by Napoleon after the defeat at Trafalgar. The Blockade had led to the disappearance throughout Europe of most of the goods from the colonies, and the Turin craftsmen, to save cacao, mixed it with roasted hazelnuts.
The day after finalizing Pasta Gianduja, also known as Giandujot, Giovanni arrives with his famous fire-red Fiat 1100, known throughout the Albese, to collect this new product, approved by the tasters Piera and Michele, and tries to place it with the bakers to whom he supplies yeast.”
“The most authentic account of that invention comes years later from Michele, already a successful industrialist, in a beautiful interview given to Alfredo Pigna of the Domenica del Corriere, where his father's invention cream is called 'pastone'. "Do you know what pastone is? Some call it the chocolate of the poor, but I would say it's the sweet of the humble... My father Pietro invented pastone, a kind of gianduiotto, which was very good and inexpensive. My father and also my uncle Giovanni, who was his partner, thought that our best customers, customers for a sweet, would become those thousands of workers, bricklayers, carpenters, farmers who at breakfast time used to buy some tomatoes and a bit of cheese to put in the middle of a loaf of bread. And if – my father and uncle thought – we give them the opportunity to have a snack with a sweet that costs the same, or even less than what they bought before? They were right. It was an overwhelming success that we still cannot fully understand today. On that pastone, Ferrero was born.”
“Persuading country girls to come to work in Alba, where in the meantime the textile giant Miroglio was also born, is sometimes a feat: the factory is still considered, among the ancient peasant families, a threat.”
“Michele Ferrero would later explain: "We are particularly interested in following the product through all its phases: when it is broken down in the crumb, when it takes shape, when it leaves the factories, when it enters the homes where the judgement will be pronounced. A judgement that can make our fortune or our ruin. That's why we want to know it immediately, through the retailers. Their opinion, their advice is very precious to us.”
“Feeding his passion, the reading of specialized magazines has always been at the base of his constant updating: Michele never misses an issue of Italian publications (few) and also foreign ones (many), assisted in translation by a young and promising assistant who would also make her way into his heart, Miss Maria Franca Fissolo.”
“At this point, however, something unexpected happens. From that isolated factory, impossible to reach for rescue teams, the workers do not want to leave. Many of them rush from their homes despite the threats. And together with Pietro and Giovanni, they start shoveling the mud to save the valuable machinery.
The two brothers devote themselves to working with the workers non-stop for four days and four nights. "Fieui, fomie vedde noiaotri," let's show them, Mr. Pietro encourages everyone in Piedmontese dialect. "Let's get to work without waiting for help that might never come... I can almost hear the competition: look, Ferrero is down! We have to show that we are not down. Let's also get down to work. We have to pick up the company and bring it back to life, better and stronger than before." They keep the three daily eight-hour shifts, as during normal production. But some teams work up to sixteen hours straight, amidst imaginable discomforts: eating bread and salami in the morning and also in the evening, and drinking a glass of wine. A proof of self-denial and dedication that rewards the Ferrero family for so much bitterness.”
“The glorious Giandujot, although excellent and best-selling, sometimes oozes from the packaging, and for this flaw, some merchants complain. Michele discovers in a specialized magazine the existence of a substance, soy lecithin, which has the ability to retain fats. In Europe, lecithin is still almost unknown, few import it. But he manages to find some. The experiment is a success. The addition of lecithin stabilizes the mixture and allows the launch in 1951 of Supercrema, as is named what we might call the mother of Nutella. It is sold in containers ranging from airtight tins to tubs and glasses, but also in toy wooden houses.”
“unique."
"You must go and see, contact people, understand the competitors' products that are affecting ours..." And so I traveled the world," confirms Morena Salvatore, who has been in marketing in Alba for years. "From Tokyo to Shanghai, from Hong Kong to Beijing, from Johannesburg to New Delhi... In this wide geographical horizon, Mr. Michele inserted and planned time around the appointments marked on his agenda. For example, he knew that Valentine's Day in Italy lasts just one day, but in America and Japan it lasts several days, it's a gift not only for your loved one, but also for friends, your teacher, your neighbors, it's a celebration of affection, and he wanted to try to introduce this concept in other countries as well. A 360-degree lovers' celebration."
The vision of Michele Ferrero, his international vocation, would become part of a corporate culture that has never ceased to live.”
“"Mr. Michele outside the supermarket, after making his choice, would ask people: 'Why did you buy it? For whom are you buying it?’. He translated the consumer's needs into an inimitable and unique product, accessible to everyone."”
“"Work, work, work; always be connected to work; make a good product at the right price, out of respect for the consumer; never speculate; invest in research, lots of research to discover the latent desires of Mrs. Valeria, the prototype of consumers and the ideal CEO that Michele considers at the top of the company. And have patience because sometimes we would continue for years doing tests. This was a constant characteristic of the entrepreneur Michele. His philosophy was certainly not that of someone who squeezes a lemon until they get a drop, and then throws it away, without any vision; no, he took care of every product with dedication, gradually, trusting in its potential: if the first two years it doesn't make money, it doesn't matter, one must think in the span of five, six years. Think big."”
