Starbucks is gaining ground across all regions: a missed opportunity for Italy.

Starbucks, the American coffee roasting and coffee shop giant, continues to expand in Italy, opening new locations in the Veneto region. There are now around forty locations, generating profits and creating jobs. This is a wasteful business, considering we are the homeland of coffee: aside from the excellent producers and the myriad of small roasters, in Italy nearly 100 million cups of espresso are consumed at bars each year, an average of 1.6 per capita. So it's natural to ask, "Why haven't we created an all-Italian Starbucks?" We risk becoming a colony, even for the coffee, a market to be occupied, wasting the opportunity to think big.

WASTED ITALIAN PRODUCTS

Coffee, ice cream, pizza and coffee, the story is always the same: Italians start first, but arrive lastThese are typical Made in Italy excellences, the heritage and identity of a country, products that are part of an economic and cultural heritage, where high quality is only the premise. It's a shame, however, that As soon as you leave the universe of small, artisanal businesses and enter the world of large-scale industry, in the name of coffee, pizza and ice cream, Italy simply disappears.. And everything becomes the property of foreigners. With an incredible waste for the Italian system, for our economic growth, for thousands and thousands of jobs that are being lost.

Italy, with its myriad of small and tiny companies, produces 595 million liters of ice cream, 19 percent of the European Union's total. We are first. Germany, in fact, produces only 515 million liters, France 454, Spain 301, and Great Britain 258. However, if we turn the tables and look at exports, which are a gauge of a company's strength and ability to conquer markets, then the story changes. And we become last. German ice cream exports sorbets and ice lollies reach 401 million, the French ones 398 million, while the Italians don't invoice more than 223 million euros abroadWhat matters in this difference are the size of the companies, the support they have from banks and politicians to conquer markets, and the ability of entrepreneurs not to remain closed in on their own backyards.

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SUCCESSFUL ITALIAN BRANDS

From the cup to the ice cream, to the Team BuildingIn this sector too, we are witnessing the arrival of the American giant on the national territory: the giant Domino's Pizza has opened its pizzerias with the aim of placing its flag on a very rich market, from Bolzano to Palermo. The Domino's Pizza adventure has the same stamp as Starbucks, that is, a stars and stripes version of a typical Italian product, with the same ability to exploit a niche excellence and transform it into the flagship of a mass marketDomino's Pizza, headquartered in Michigan and founded in June 1960, is currently listed on Wall Street and has a turnover of $8,9 billion, with 12.100 locations in 80 markets (in India alone, between New Delhi and Madras, it operates 400 locations). The group is also the world leader in the home-delivered pizza sector.

TO LEARN MORE:Pizza makers wanted in Italy, the country of pizza, there is a shortage of around 6

THE QUALITY OF ITALIAN PRODUCTS

Coffee, pizza, ice cream: the music is always the same. We have the quality, the brand, even the genetic codes, of widely consumed food products, but we are never able to control the large networks, or the industrial and financial empires that are born under the sign of a brand. Italian coffee is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Pizza It has the Brussels label of Guaranteed Traditional Speciality (SGT), but the real global economy business with these products is done by others, never by us. Why? An initial answer comes from the financial weakness of our companies, which are generally undercapitalized and "bank-dependent," that is, prisoners of the banking system that monopolizes industrial credit. The stock market is just a sink (also dominated by banks and large public groups), and the enormous liquid savings of Italians (approximately 3.500 trillion euros) end up everywhere, even under mattresses, except to fuel the growth of the production and distribution system. To create a large chain with international reach, the brand and the quality of a productMoney is also needed, and lots of it: something Italian companies aren't able to provide. More than a third of pizza purchases, for example, worldwide are made via cell phones, apps, and the internet. To make its stores more competitive, the Starbucks group has expanded, investing heavily even in the entertainment sector, creating the Starbucks Digital Network, which produces films, TV series, and news, primarily for the chain's coffee shops.

WEAKNESS OF ITALIAN COMPANIES

The second point of weakness concerns the size of the companies. In Italy, only 0,8 percent of companies have a turnover exceeding 50 million euros, while 94 percent do not exceed 2 million euros.. The dwarfism of companies has become a chronic disease of the Made in Italy industrial system, and the best examples of excellence suffer from it, where fragmentation is strongest. Finally, waste is the fruit of our excessive individualism, sometimes even seasoned with peaks of narcissism entrepreneurial. Remaining within the Made in Italy umbrella, the paradigmatic case is fashion. We compete directly with France in a sector where we are the world market leader, after the French. We are creative, capable of modernizing styles and materials. But we never manage to unite. The result: France has created two global fashion giants, while Italy has created neither. And within the Arnault and Pinault empires, there are also many Made in Italy brands, which have ended up in the hands of the French, along with their corresponding market shares.

A TRULY GENUINE ICE CREAM? THIS IS HOW YOU RECOGNIZE IT. AND THIS IS HOW YOU MAKE IT AT HOME.:

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