A double shot coffee business

Sometimes family businesses are destroyed by marriage, by the insertion of a foreign body into an otherwise harmonious household, and sometimes marriage introduces the fresh blood that helps the business to prosper.

There’s no doubt that Vittoria Food & Beverage, Australia’s largest pure coffee roaster, is an example of the latter. In fact so successful has been the interloping in-law that it is now his business.

Les Schirato, son of a 40-year employee of Vittoria, married Luisa Cantarella, daughter one of the founding brothers, Orazio. The business is now, effectively, the Schirato family company: Les and Luisa’s son Rolando, named after Les’ father, works in the business and is in line to succeed his father as CEO.

The Schiratos, Les and Luisa, own 51 per cent of the company and Luisa’s sister Clelia Winton, owns the other 49 per cent. The Schiratos own what Les calls the “governing share”.

Vittoria began as Cantarella Brothers in Sydney’s Haymarket in 1947, an importer of Italian foods for the wave of Italian migrants who flooded to Australia’s shores after the Second World War. The brothers, Orazio and Carmelo, were very successful and expanded to coffee roasting and packing in 1958, but Carmelo died soon after and Orazio bought out his estate.

Orazio had four children: Giulio, Muzio, Luisa and Clelia, but it was Luisa’s husband, Les, who had the drive and ambition to transform the business.

Les started working for the company part-time in 1972 while he was at school, helping out his father. In 1976, aged 21, he got a job with grocery wholesaler, Davids Holdings, and then worked for Fiat Australia, before marrying Luisa and returning to the family business in 1981 to run sales and marketing.

His big idea was to get vacuum-packed Vittoria coffee into the big supermarkets, and despite a lot of resistance it worked: Vittoria was the first non-instant coffee on supermarket shelves. (Disclosure: that’s when I started buying the stuff -- it was a divine revelation, the essence of Italy, which I had just visited, transported to Australia, and I’ve been buying it ever since).

Orazio and Les grew the business rapidly during the 1980s as retail and restaurant demand grew, but when the recession of the early 90s hit, the Cantarella Group, as it’s still called, had too much debt and was on the ropes. The co-founder, Orazio, stepped down as CEO in 1992, 45 years after he started the company, and handed over the reins to his national sales manager, Les Schirato -- his son-in-law, and son of his previous sales manager, Rolando Schirato.

Les then set about rebuilding the business -- working seven days a week and ploughing the cash back into paying down the debt -- and at the same time building his and Luisa’s ownership of it. In 1995 they bought out Orazio and Giulio (Orazio Cantarella passed away a year later). In 2001 Les was named the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year and in 2002 he bought out Muzio to give him 51 per cent, and control.

In a way this business has had two comings -- one under the Cantarellas, and then another under the Schiratos, with Luisa providing the bridge between the two.

Les’ mantelpiece is now festooned with awards, having turned the business from a basket case into a $210 million-a-year success story, and he still remembers the day he made that last payment to the banks. He has kept the business debt-free ever since. There are two outside directors -- Brian Long the former chairman of Ernst & Young, and Pat Elliott – and a total staff of 300.

Coffee sales are split between supermarkets and high-end restaurants, and it’s all produced from beans roasted at a big modern factory at Silverwater near Sydney. The company also sells espressos machines and accessories, Santa Vittoria mineral water and soda, and Jarlsberg cheese.

And having persuaded Al Pacino to endorse the coffee in TV commercials, the Schiratos are about to open an office in Los Angeles to support growing sales in the United States.

And, yes, Les’ national sales manager, and likely successor as CEO, is Rolando Schirato.