Pietro

"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."

"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."

"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.""

"Did he know about Michele's experiments with hazelnuts during school in Mondovì? "No and I find this biographical detail curious. I believe this precursor sign is due to our grandfather Pietro, who was an inventor, had eccentric and original traits, very sui generis, of the first-generation entrepreneur, starting from pastry making and landing in the factory. Dad Michele breathed the air of the family pioneer, his father, who was also a man of extraordinary modernity and ahead of his time.""

"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."