As this issue of CoffeeTalk looks at the year’s key event for cof­fee roasters—the 11^th Annual Roasters Guild Retreat (see above) – it’s only fit­ting to chat with one of the industry’s long­time, behind-the-scenes lead­ers: Howard Weiss, who rep­re­sents roast­ing trail­blazer Scolari Engineering, based in Milan, Italy.

Weiss is the gen­eral man­ager of Texpak Inc., which exclu­sively rep­re­sents Scolari in the United States and Canada. Scolari pro­duces green silos and com­puter dri­ven cof­fee roast­ers, grinders and roasted stor­age sys­tems. “The No. 1 thing for me is to keep the qual­ity high,” says Weiss. “I think it hurts every­body and their profit mar­gins when the qual­ity of cof­fee drops, so that’s the most impor­tant thing for me.”

‘This could be my future’
Weiss believes that he’s highly for­tu­nate to back-up one of the best com­pa­nies and prod­uct lines in the indus­try, so he’s always happy to share about Scolari. “That’s the most fun for me—showing off what we do.”

Weiss has worked in the indus­try for over 20 years. Prior to Scolari, he worked for General Foods Corporation and Tetley USA. At Tetley, he set up two tea fac­to­ries and even did a cof­fee project for them—ground cof­fee in a tea bag. Later, he founded Texpak to sell mate­ri­als to the cof­fee and tea indus­try – items like sta­ple wire for tea bags. One day, he came in con­tact with Scolari and expe­ri­enced first-hand their line of equip­ment. He was impressed. “I thought, ‘This could be my future,’ and I never looked back.”

A rich his­tory in roast­ers
Scolari Engineering was started some years before World War II by Antonio Scolari – the father of the company’s cur­rent pres­i­dent, Dario Scolari – when the fam­ily decided to buy a com­pany that was roast­ing cof­fee and man­u­fac­tur­ing roast­ers. After years of per­fect­ing and fine-tuning, Scolari now offers some of the most advanced, exact­ing sys­tems for con­trol­ling cof­fee in roast­ing fac­to­ries. “We’re the leader because more and more busi­nesses are grav­i­tat­ing towards qual­ity roast­ing,” explains Weiss. “They’re try­ing to use bet­ter beans and try­ing to do a bet­ter job, and the Scolari equip­ment is about tak­ing care of the cof­fee. It’s about con­trol­ling the roaster.”

According to Weiss, “con­trol” and “con­sis­tency” are the keys to qual­ity coffee—and that’s where Scolari excels. “It’s about tak­ing care of the cof­fees to make a qual­ity prod­uct,” he says. “That’s our biggest advantage.”

Integrated sys­tems, being a part­ner
Today, Scolari is focused on inte­grated roast­ing sys­tems and cutting-edge tech­nol­ogy. The com­pany says it doesn’t sell a group of indi­vid­ual machines; they install a sophis­ti­cated “man­u­fac­tur­ing sys­tem.” Weiss notes: “We pro­vide the entire fac­tory, from drop-off of the beans up to the inlet of a pack­ag­ing machine. We design the fac­to­ries and we can install. Right now, we have a very inter­est­ing cof­fee grinder that has some advan­tages over tra­di­tional grinders, we have var­i­ous con­vey­ing sys­tems, and we can also lot-track the cof­fees – each move­ment of spe­cific cof­fees through­out the entire roast­ing pro­duc­tion process.”

According to Weiss, Scolari works hard to help its roast­ery cus­tomers through each step of the pro­duc­tion process, to help them main­tain high qual­ity. “It’s very easy to ruin coffee—in roast­ing, grind­ing or how you pre­pare the cup,” explains Weiss. “So we help our clients take each area of roast­ing and grind­ing very seri­ously, and we treat the cof­fee very well along the way. Essentially, when you begin with us, we like to lay out the entire plan, and we usu­ally plan with expan­sion in mind. So, if you need two roast­ers, we might draw the fac­tory for four roast­ers, for exam­ple. It’s bet­ter to thought­fully plan in the begin­ning as the fac­tory most likely will grow; so that’s some­thing that we try to do as a roast partner.”

Indeed, Weiss and Scolari are keen on being part­ners with cof­fee busi­nesses. “We keep in con­stant con­tact with our clients, find out what kind of prob­lems and oppor­tu­ni­ties they have, and we make sug­ges­tions on how to address those. Of course, a lot of our mar­ket­ing has been, “Your part­ner in coffee.”

Innovation
Scolari is rec­og­nized in the indus­try for its inno­va­tion. In fact, when the IBM per­sonal com­puter first came out, Scolari saw an oppor­tu­nity. “We were the first com­pany, com­mer­cially, to com­put­er­ize roast­ers, to drive a roaster con­trol pro­gram on a PC,” says Weiss. Now, the Scolari roast­ing sys­tems are highly advanced on a tech­ni­cal level; they’re totally com­put­er­ized. “We have more years in soft­ware than any­one,” explains Weiss. “And our often updated, mature pro­gram has obvi­ous ben­e­fits. Also, our pro­grams and equip­ment have flex­i­bil­ity. We record all batches, and the soft­ware helps elim­i­nate com­mon errors that oper­a­tors might make.” Overall, when it comes to trou­bleshoot­ing, Scolari machines are able to detect and flag the vast major­ity of faults, often before any­one is aware that a prob­lem even exists.

Join Scolari, Weiss in Italy
Weiss is clearly proud of his indus­try work and the com­pany he rep­re­sents. So much so that he strongly encour­ages poten­tial cus­tomers to join him in Italy, where he can demon­strate what Scolari equip­ment can do. He uses this anal­ogy: “It’s sim­i­lar to look­ing at a pic­ture of the Grand Canyon. I’ve seen pic­tures of the Grand Canyon and I’ve seen it in per­son. The pic­tures don’t do it jus­tice. It’s the same way with Scolari’s equip­ment. That’s exactly why I tell prospec­tive cus­tomers to visit us in Milan – because see­ing is believ­ing. We want to give them the Scolari experience.”

To learn more about Scolari Engineering S.p.A., visit www.scolarieng.com or con­tact Howard Weiss at 856−988−5533 or texpak@bellatlantic.net.