Cafetto: for the love of coffee

Cafetto Founder Chris Short reveals how two brothers, an espresso bar, and a cup of Italian coffee inspired his cleaning product business.

New ideas are often influenced by the work of others. A painting, drawing, or piece of writing can spark inspiration, develop passions, and lead to fresh concepts – or business plans. For Cafetto Founder Chris Short, his machine cleaner concept was ignited by the coffee mastery of two immigrant baristas.

“I moved to Melbourne in 1984 and soon developed a passion for coffee. I was working for a company on Queen Street and on the same road was Nick’s Bar, a little café owned by two Italian brothers,” he says.

“It was an authentic Italian espresso bar. I picked up a coffee from Nicola and Michele Fazzolari every morning when I got off the train, then I’d walk down again on my coffee break and grab another. I gradually became addicted. Their coffee was delicious.”

Seven years later, when Chris returned to his hometown of Adelaide, he wanted to bring a piece Melbourne’s coffee culture with him. Hoping to recreate the quality coffee experience he once had, he purchased a professional coffee machine.

“I bought a machine, but realised it needed a special cleaning product. The next time I was in Melbourne I picked up a jar, but found it was substandard and performed poorly as a cleaner,” he says.

Determined to craft the high-quality espresso he had enjoyed from Nick’s Bar, Chris made it his mission to develop a coffee machine cleaning product that didn’t affect flavour and would provide a solution for the market.

“At the time, my father had a chemical company in Adelaide. I spoke to one of the chemists, showed them the cleaning product I’d bought, and said I thought we could do better. Over the next couple of months, we developed our first product, Espresso Clean,” says Chris.

In his mission to grow Espresso Clean into an established brand, Chris became dedicated to promoting it. He regularly attended tradeshows, where he eventually met his first international client.

“In 2005 at Hospitality Live in Sydney, I met Chris White, owner of Altura Coffee in New Zealand. He became my first international customer. After that we began to go to shows in Singapore and started to build an international reputation,” he says.

As recognition for his cleaning solution grew, Chris introduced new products to diversify the Espresso Clean range. He also changed the brand’s name to reflect his love of Italian coffee.

“Rob Balassa, Operations Manager for Douwe Egberts in Australia, contacted me and said he was having problems importing cleaning products for the Australian market,” says Chris.

“We talked about tablets and sachets and that’s where the inspiration for us to expand the range came from. From this relationship I also came up with our new name, Cafetto. I wanted to give the solution an Italian sounding title so came up with ‘per il caffé perfetto’, which means ‘for the perfect coffee’ in Italian. I then combined it to form the word Cafetto.”

On the road to the company’s success, Chris was also presented with challenges as the brand’s expansion demanded more space and resources.

“We had to start making some very serious investment decisions to grow our manufacturing capabilities. We had a small factory that was only 3650 square metres, which we upgraded to a 20,000 square metre facility to meet the growing requirements,” he says.

Twenty-one years on from establishing the company, Chris attributes its continued success to his team, who he says is like a second family.

“We’re in about 75 countries now and have set up offices in Singapore, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. It has been a very exciting time and we have met some incredible people in the industry along the way,” he says.

“However, one of the highlights of my whole career has been working with my Cafetto family. We have such an incredible team and I can’t think of better people to be on this journey with. There’s still a long way to go in growing the company, but with people like this supporting me I have great aspirations for what we can achieve.” 

For more information, visit cafetto.com