The sixty years of Caffé Mauro's history are rooted in the tireless activity of Mr. Demetrio Mauro. Born in 1905 in Reggio Calabria, he was only 10 years old when he started to work as cabin boy in the ships of the Strait, nurturing in the meantime the great dream of establishing his own business. In 1930, with many sacrifices, he bought his first boat, called "Salvatore Padre", and in 1936 he successfully moved his activities to Africa, to the lands than in that period were Italian colonies, where he established a travel agency. The Second World War events forced him to start from scratch. His adventure started again with a new passion: coffee.
Mauro's family was in Milan since 1946 to try to start a new coffee roasting activity, but homesickness brought them back to Calabria. When in November 1949 Demetrio Mauro established the Caffè Mauro company, there was only a small coffee roasting machine with a capacity of 20 kg placed in an old warehouse in via Florio, near to Reggio Calabria port. With his efforts and far-sightedness, Demetrio Mauro was able to start off a long series of successes, starting again from his land and from his roots of southern man.
In June 2008, Independent Investments, an investment holding company founded by Fabrizio Capua, acquired Mauro Demetrio S.p.A.
The new management team has now set its sights on achieving a firmer foothold in the Italian market and further strengthening the Company’s distribution on overseas markets, focusing once again on the Company’s undisputed product quality and more than 65 years of experience. Already present in more than 35 Countries across the world, Caffè Mauro has set itself a new challenge: to acquire a stronger foothold in the foreign markets, thus increasing its international market share.
Caffè Mauro has developed an assortment of the highest-grade blends painstakingly selected to guarantee the pleasure of this traditional daily ritual for the food and restaurant/café industries:
• exclusive blends of 100% Coffea Arabica for the most refined, aromatic and delicate coffee
• classic blends of Arabica and Robusta coffees, artfully ground, with rich flavor and intense aroma
• blends, among the first in Italy, developed specifically for home espresso machines, where special blending, roasting and grinding guarantee a creamy espresso with an aromatic flavor, just as tasty as the one you drink in a café
• decaffeinated blends, ideal for those who wish to avoid caffeine but still enjoy coffee
• blends of premium quality Arabica and Robusta coffee beans for retail stores, restaurants and cafés and vending machines
Forever focused on sourcing quality and coming up with new ways of experiencing and interpreting the coffee culture, the Company has developed a way of making the perfect espresso in one single, simple operation: SEM, Sistema Espresso Mauro. This new system is ideal for the home or office. Innovative espresso machines that combine next-generation technology with an exclusive, elegant design to guarantee excellent extraction of exclusive Caffè Mauro blends for an espresso with an intense aroma, always creamy and every bit as good as barista-made espresso.
In 1997 Caffè Mauro inaugurated its latest fully automated production facility in the industrial area of Villa San Giovanni, near Reggio Calabria, to produce a variety of blends of roasted coffee. Roasting methods can be flexibly arranged based on coffee type/quality. Each type of coffee has in fact a specific roasting curve that is stored in the computerized control system. The new system also makes it possible to perfectly control flows of fresh and heated air, thus eliminating the risk of over-roasting. For the Caffè Mauro management team, research into advanced production technology has always been coupled with achieving premium product quality. In order to guarantee the finest quality to its customers, the Company decided to “go back” to the “slow roasting” method and to invest in those precious minutes of roasting that are so critical for ensuring the preservation of the organoleptic properties of the coffee beans.
The taste of Caffè Mauro is so special because it respects natural roasting times. Bean roasting is the most important and delicate moment in the coffee-making process because it determines the quality and aroma of a good espresso coffee. During this step coffee beans undergo what is known as the “Maillard reaction”: the bean loses weight, changes color, increases in size and develops an aroma.
Unlike many Companies, which use 5-6 minute high-temperature industrial roasting cycles, Caffè Mauro uses a “slow” method, with 15-18 minute cycles at much lower temperatures. At the end of the cycle, before preparing the blends, the coffee is air-cooled to “stop the cooking process” and avoid the serious risk of over-roasting.
