Interview with Benedetto Cavalieri
Can you tell us the story of your pasta factory, when and how it was born?The Cavalieri family already produced wheat after the unification of Italy, then the country was invaded by soft wheat that cost much less and this caused a big crisis, my great-grandfather understood that things had to change and therefore left for the north to introduce there the hard wheat that cost less and its processing systems, my grandfather then, after graduation, asked his father a small allowance to stay a month or two abroad, and in a few years, when he returned, he built the mill and the pasta factory. He was a person of few words and to his 83 employees he only said that since they had the best plants and the best wheat they also had to make the best pasta. This pasta represents the prestige of me, my family and our land, each package must tell the effort and passion that we put into making it, we have never done advertising, just word of mouth, it is the quality of our pasta that has always paid off. Since, being small, we couldn't compete with the big producers, we aimed at the highest quality. Ours is an extraordinary product with a recognized uniqueness, we just made people fall in love with our pasta.
Did you start working in the pasta factory out of passion or necessity?
My grandfather's house was in Maglie, where we had and continue to have the pasta factory, my grandfather was a great patriarch, the whole family gathered at his house. I started working in the pasta factory as a challenge to my father who said that I was not suitable for the business, that's how it started, for self-respect!
Tell us about the "delicate method" with which you work your pastaThe starting point is always the raw material but this can be mistreated or exalted, in the case of large production requires overproduction and this causes the semolina to be stressed losing many of its qualities in the process. We must instead strive to preserve the properties, eating it you must feel a tenacious quality. It is necessary to preserve the properties at all stages of processing, for example we dry them at very low temperatures, about 38 degrees, which takes longer but it is worth it.
In an article that appeared in La Repubblica you said you were seduced by a bucatino, tell us about your falling in love.When I was at university a friend of mine asked me how to make the hole of the bucatini, I didn't know and so I rushed to inform myself, that for me was almost an insult, I felt humiliated by my ignorance!
What is your relationship and your link with Puglia?I am very proud to be from Salento, but my pride has nothing to do with parochialism, it is a pride that comes from our land and our traditions, from the ability to innovate and transform them without forgetting or erasing them.
You studied law and wanted to be a journalist, why did you change your mind?It is my dream in the drawer, in the next life I will be a journalist. In this one I made quality pasta and I fell in love with this job, although I was never very encouraged to do it, my father never praised me but a year after his death I dreamed about it and in a dream he finally said "Bravo! You are doing a great job". That was enough, I woke up happy.
Your pasta is also very successful abroad, it was even adopted by Ferran Adrià, tell us how and when this collaboration with him and other famous chefs starteg.The collaboration with Ferran is thanks to my son Andrea with whom a good relationship was born. Ferran in his experiments made spaghettoni with banana flour and then asked for Cavalieri pasta because he was working on a new recipe, he wanted to grind the dough to try one of his adventurous recipes. Then there was Massimiliano Alajmo who in 2011, during an event at the Principe di Savoia hotel in Milan with Japanese chefs, introduced me and my pasta to them and all the suppliers, about 250 people. I remember I told him "Massimiliano either you take me in your arms or you have to turn to my son Andrea". In fact, he is very tall and I disappeared when I was with him! Ajmo and Nadia instead with our pasta invented spaghettoni with onion. Finally, the Trois Gros in France opened their doors wide to us, one day I got an email in English asking for our price lists, we thought it was a joke, instead they called us to tell us that they wanted to introduce Italian recipes in their menus because not only the international customers but also the French wanted them! And they wanted a quality pasta. These things give us confidence.
You said: "To be big you have to stay small. And don't be sly". Can you explain it to us? I am sure that for us Italians, for what we do, for our products, for what foreigners believe we are able to do and require us to do, there would be work for all and for centuries, without being sly, instead there are many sly people and the damage done by them is enormous, there are too many people looking for shortcuts, saving on everything. We care about our difference, it's a family vocation, we are Calvinists, our motto is to have measure and not to pull it off.
What is the secret of the Made in Italy and its pasta in particular?The fact that Made in Italy has 2000 years of biodiversity, we are the result of extraordinary experiences, of an extraordinary history and this is what foreigners want from us, because our food culture, unlike France, is the result of a thousand contaminations that form our history, to which we have added our creativity, typically Italian and different from all the others.
Tell us how your collaboration with your son Andrea was born and how and if this collaboration has changed the face of your company.Andrea was born after many years of marriage, he was the son of parents already a bit 'old and therefore more prepared. He's a very measured boy, he looks a lot like my father, I always say that it's his reincarnation, it's something between me and my father, but this being crushed between us doesn't weigh him down at all, on the contrary! By now he can run the company autonomously, and this gives me great security, tomorrow he won't find us unprepared or inadequate. "Let's learn to learn" was my grandfather's slogan, then my father's slogan was "We are doomed to grow" my son's slogan is: "Let's have fun growing up".
His pasta format le ruote pazze, one of his most successful pastas, was even mentioned by Ozpetek in Mine Vaganti when he makes an important character in the film, his grandmother, say: "We tried to make the wheels too and try to make them better than those of Benedetto Cavalieri, but we didn't succeed". Can you tell us the story of the crazy wheels, how they were born and why they are so successful?The crazy wheels are the invention of the first pasta maker of my father, who came from Gragnano, Pasqualino Imparato, I was still studying at the University then, for some strange twist of fate the pasta came out with three different thicknesses, Pasqualino put his hands in his hair and shouted: "Only we are capable of drying a pasta with three thicknesses!" The fact was that the rigmarole was made of copper and bronze that gave the chewing different thicknesses, the spokes of the wheel then keep it tight, it is the format of which we are most proud!
How important is your packaging in the marketing of your pasta?Our packaging is a woman's work! We wanted something different, something special, with my wife Claudia we went around to study new trends, then we turned to various designers. But in the end it was Claudia who invented our packaging and we even won prizes for it! Packaging is very important, it's the first approach, when we make a new packaging then we go to the stores that sell our pasta around closing time, we display our products and then we ask customers if they have noticed something different and they almost always notice it! This means that the packaging works.
We went through and we are still going through a very difficult time, the coronavirus has had heavy implications especially in the catering sector. How did you live this moment? What were the difficulties and the consequences? Paradoxically, we believe that such a crisis can also be a motivation for a new way of thinking and conceiving food, a more ethical and environmentally friendly way. You are already so positioned, do you have new ideas? What will the implications of this situation in your company be?At the beginning we had a vertical collapse, in March the crisis was very serious, but then there was a very strong recovery of work, in America, in France, and even in our country there was a hoarding, a very high demand from private consumers, we sold a lot via the Internet. Our future project, by the end of the year, will be to start communicating on social networks, on Facebook, but always with great courtesy, proposing ourselves in a measured way, it's the first time that we are on social networks, and we want to do it in an entrepreneurial way, with great attention. Because as I said, we care about quality and we want to remain a niche product, for amateurs, educated people who understand the difference. There are big chains like Walmart and Esselunga that would like our pasta, but we have never given in, we could potentially produce 150 quintals of pasta a day and instead we produce much less, just to increase quality.
