Illycaffè Chairman Andrea Illy on the Vast Potential of “Virtuous Agriculture”

Andrea Illy breathes coffee. Not literally, of course, but coffee has indeed been a part of his being since birth. The third-generation head of Illycaffè, he is the company’s chairman and, with CEO Massimiliano Pogliani, leads the massive global enterprise. With good reason—namely, its high-quality, beautifully packaged products—Illycaffè remains one of the largest coffee operations on the planet, with distribution in 145 countries. Last year, it brought in 483 million euros in revenue.

Andrea’s path to the trade, on some level, was predictable: The company was founded by his grandfather, Francesco, and later run by his father, Ernesto. He entered the business shortly after earning an advanced degree in chemistry from the University of Trieste. Starting at Illycaffè 1990 as a supervisor of quality control, he quickly rose to become CEO in 1994 and in 2005 was named chairman. (He also studied business at SDA Bocconi in Milan and attended other management and executive programs along the way, including one at Harvard Business School.)

In his current role, the 55-year-old continues to commit himself to the brand. Over the past three decades, he has seen Illycaffè surge from a more regional business to an international phenomenon. Not your average executive, Andrea speaks with the wisdom of a philosopher about things like contemporary art, the redemptive power of beauty, and the chemical, biological, agronomical, and physical elements of coffee growing and preparation. More recently, Andrea has been emphasizing the potential—and for Illycaffè, the reality—of “soil-to-soil” coffee production. He calls the concept “virtuous agriculture,” a term he coined to describe a method that combines sustainable farming with a focus, in part, on regenerating the environment by enriching soil with organic carbon.

On this episode of Time Sensitive, Andrea talks with Spencer Bailey about the neurophysiology of beauty, the art and science of coffee, and why Illycaffè had made contemporary art so central to its brand and identity.