Gaggia

The founder, Giovanni Achille Gaggia (1895–1961), applied for a patent (patent number 365726) for the first modern steamless coffee machine on 5 September 1938, to be used commercially in his coffee bar. The machine forced water to flow over the coffee grounds at a high pressure, producing the 'crema' that is unique to espresso.

The Gaggia company was founded in 1947 and formally incorporated in 1948. It first produced machines for commercial use, but shortly thereafter released the Gilda, its first home machine.^[4]

Success came when the Motta & Biffi bar in Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, in Milan, installed a Gaggia machine. Initially the coffee machines produced by Gaggia were exclusively for professional use, but in 1977 production expanded to coffee machines for domestic use. Giovanni's son, Camillo, with his partner Armando Migliorini, expanded the business on the Navigli but encountered economic difficulties. In 1989 the company, which had a turnover of over 56 billion lire, changed ownership and was sold to the Austro-American businessman Gerhard Andlingler.^[5]

In 1991, Gaggia introduced the iconic stainless steel ‘Classic’ model, initially branded as the ‘Classic Coffee’.^[6] The Gaggia Classic has continued in production ever since, including the recent ’Classic Pro’ (aka 'GCP', 2019) and ‘Classic Pro Evo’ (RI9380, 2023) models, which added an improved ‘professional’ steam wand and a variety of colours.^[7]

Gaggia entered the superautomatic espresso machine market in 1999 with its ‘Synchrony Digital’ model.^[6]

In 2007 the Milanese company went into crisis due to a drop in sales, with the risk of closing the Robecco sul Naviglio plant and moving production to Romania and Gaggio Montano. Two years later, Gaggia follows the fate of its parent company Saeco, which had been taken over by the Dutch multinational Philips.^[8]

As of 2010, all Gaggia espresso and coffee machines are still manufactured in Milan at the Robecco factory. The 2015 Gaggia Classic was built in Romania instead. The New Gaggia Classic is made in Italy again and uses an aluminum boiler.

The Gaggia S.p. A company was purchased in 1999 by fellow Italian competitor Saeco International Group, which in turn was purchased by Dutch manufacturer Philips in 2009.^[9] Gaggia still operates a separate line but now is using Saeco designs in some of its domestic espresso machines. Before the takeover by Philips, most domestic espresso machines from Gaggia had aluminium boilers. Now they have stainless steel boilers.

In 2017 Philips sold the Saeco Professional division, along with the Gaggia brand, to N&W Global Vending SpA, an Italian Bergamo based company known as a leader in vending machines for drinks and snacks. In November, 2017 N&W changed its name to Evoca Group,^[10] which revitalized the Gaggio Montano plant in Bologna. The company specialized in the production of machines for bars and restaurants and relaunched the Gaggia brand.^[11]

In Wolf Mankowitz’s 1957 short story ‘Expresso Bongo: The Story of the Making of a Modern Idol’ for the Daily Express,^[12][13] the anonymous narrator frequents a fictional “expresso” bar in Frith Street, Soho called the ‘Tom-Tom’, at which his client Bongo Herbert is paid to perform, and which features “a pretty young man playing the Gaggia coffee machine with the dash of a theater organist,” providing crowds of customers with “café expresso and doughnuts” at one hour, and “pizzas and expressos” later. In an attempt to induce Garrick Records to sign his client, the narrator plies their “hard-to-get talent spotter” Mr. Mayer with “cappuccino” from the Gaggia.^[14] Cultural historians Jingan Young and Stephen Glynn agree that the persistent “misspelling of espresso as ‘expresso’ [in Mankowitz’s story] acts as ‘a pun between the new Italian coffee and the commissioning newspaper [that] helped to cement the common error of pronouncing “expresso” instead of “espresso”.’”^{[15][13]: 104, 118n10 [16]}

Mankowitz subsequently adapted his story into a 1958 West End musical of the same name; the play was a hit, and the original story was reprinted in The Atlantic. He then adapted the musical into a 1959 film starring Cliff Richard, in which a Gaggia machine features prominently.

In Don Sharp’s 1958 film, The Golden Disc, the heroine helps her aunt renovate her antiquated London café, transforming it into a hip espresso bar. The “most telling” moment in this process is “the ceremonial arrival of the Gaggia espresso machine” as the new centrepiece of the bar.^[17]

The teenage narrator of Colin MacInnes’ 1959 novel Absolute Beginners details a Gaggia machine producing “cappuccino" in a contemporary Belgravia coffee bar.^[18]

A Gaggia four-group lever machine is featured in Federico Fellini’s 1978 film Orchestra Rehearsal, during the scene in which the contrabass clarinettist is interviewed in the auditorium’s bar.^[19] The peculiar method employed by the barista using the Gaggia machine subsequently became known as the ‘Fellini Move’ or ‘Fellini Manoeuvre’, used to induce pre-infusion or to introduce more volume into a shot than a single ‘pull’ from the machine would otherwise allow.^[20]

A Gaggia commercial semi-automatic machine features in a scene in 1987’s The Living Daylights, when James Bond (Timothy Dalton) and Saunders (Thomas Wheatley) meet over espresso at the Prater Café in Vienna, just before Saunders is killed by SMERSH.^[21]

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