Gaggia

History

Giovanni Achille Gaggia filed a patent in September 1938 for a coffee machine that used high pressure instead of steam, forcing water through grounds to create crema. The company bearing his name started in 1947 and was officially incorporated the next year, first making commercial machines before releasing the Gilda, its first home model. A major breakthrough came when a bar in Milan’s Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II installed a Gaggia machine. Production for home use began in 1977.

Giovanni’s son Camillo, along with Armando Migliorini, grew the business on the Navigli but ran into financial trouble. In 1989, with revenue over 56 billion lire, the company was sold to Gerhard Andlinger. The stainless steel Classic model, originally called Classic Coffee, launched in 1991 and remains in production, with later updates like the Classic Pro in 2019 and the Classic Pro Evo in 2023. Gaggia entered the superautomatic market in 1999 with the Synchrony Digital.

The company faced a crisis in 2007 due to falling sales, risking closure of its Robecco sul Naviglio plant and a move to Romania and Gaggio Montano. Two years later, Gaggia followed its parent Saeco, which had been acquired by Philips. By 2010, all Gaggia machines were made in Milan at the Robecco factory. The 2015 Classic was built in Romania, while the New Classic is made in Italy with an aluminum boiler.

Gaggia was bought by Saeco in 1999, and Saeco was bought by Philips in 2009. Gaggia still runs its own line but uses Saeco designs in some home machines. Before the Philips takeover, most domestic models had aluminum boilers; now they use stainless steel.

In popular culture

In Wolf Mankowitz’s 1957 short story ‘Expresso Bongo: The Story of the Making of a Modern Idol’ for the Daily Express, the narrator frequents a fictional “expresso” bar in Frith Street, Soho, called the ‘Tom-Tom’, which features “a pretty young man playing the Gaggia coffee machine with the dash of a theater organist.” The story’s persistent misspelling of espresso as ‘expresso’ has been noted by cultural historians as a pun between the new Italian coffee and the commissioning newspaper. Mankowitz adapted the story into a 1958 West End musical of the same name, which 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.