The first chapter begins in 1979, when Francesco and Annemarie Illy founded a company in Central Switzerland whose name said it all: Amici del Buon Caffè – the friends of good coffee. The name later became shorter. The idea did not.

At the time, espresso still had a dubious reputation in Switzerland. To many, it was an unfamiliar, unusually strong drink that was said to cause sleepless nights and palpitations. What helped most against this was patience and quality. Over four decades, Francesco and Annemarie brought Italian espresso culture into the country’s restaurants, cafés and homes – cup by cup.

What began as a passion for good coffee grew into a broader engagement with its origins, its processing and its preparation. After all, the quality of a cup does not start in the coffee machine. It begins much earlier.

The second chapter begins in 2022 with a fundamental realignment. Amici set out on its own path: with its own espresso blend of nine Arabica origins, a renewed brand identity and the ambition to understand coffee and its preparation even more as one interconnected whole.

This includes the development of the Reniala System. In 2025 we launched the R1, a coffee machine designed and made in Italy that works with specially developed paper pods containing ten grams of coffee. It combines our passion for espresso with the conviction that sophisticated technology should be easy to use in everyday life.

At the same time, we are engaging ever more closely with the origins of our coffee. Our projects in Peru, Ethiopia and Madagascar give us the opportunity to help shape cultivation, biodiversity and long-term agricultural development directly. We are interested not only in today’s harvests, but also in the conditions under which coffee will be able to grow tomorrow.

Setting up our own roastery in Ligornetto in 2026 marks a further step: even more responsibility for processing our coffee, and even more freedom to express its different characters through our own roast profiles.

The name Reniala is no coincidence. In Malagasy it means ‘mother of the forest’ and refers to the baobab. It grows slowly, can endure for centuries and stands for steadfastness. To us, it seemed a fitting model for what we want to build.