The World’s Best-Selling Limoncello Didn’t Happen By Chance | Micaela Pallini | Pallini | Ep. 131
This is Maffeo DRINKS. Ciao, Micaela. Welcome to Maffeo DRINKS.
Micaela Pallini:Hi, Chris. Thank you for having me.
Chris Maffeo:We realized that we live in the same neighborhood. I left Rome twenty years ago, but we are from the same neighborhood in Rome where we never bumped into each other.
Micaela Pallini:Very particular, I must say. World is really small.
Chris Maffeo:Yes. The world is really small indeed. So let's start. I was saying it's a great honor to have you because Pallini has been part of my upbringing as living in Rome, and it's one of those brands that are very well known in Rome, in the rest of Italy, internationally. But growing up, every bar that I used to go to, I remember seeing those bottles that your ancestors were making, were in charge of.
Chris Maffeo:So it's a fantastic journey, hundred and fifty years. So we'll talk about this. And actually, let's start from this. Hundred and fifty years, many things happen in the meantime. Without going too much into the history, how does a company that is 150 years old evolves and what have you inherited from your predecessors and what is the legacy that they left to you and your role into it?
Micaela Pallini:That's a complicated question, But I must say, first of all, I have to be very thankful to my predecessors, because they left a very healthy company. So this means they left me free to try and experiment and do what I was thinking that would work without having to think about debts, about looking for money. So this is one of the most important things that I have inherited. Pallini was a very Roman company, Roman based company. We went through two world wars because it was established in 1875 in a very small city called Entrodolco, which is near Amatricia, where they are famous for the Amatriciana.
Micaela Pallini:We moved to Rome in the twenties near the Pantheon. Back then we were doing different liquors, especially anise based. So Sanbuca and Mistras, the dry anise, the ouzo style product used for lacing espresso coffee. We were pretty famous for that and for the fruit syrups. There was not one single place in Rome that would not carry Pallini product.
Micaela Pallini:The company changed when we started exporting Rama Sambuca that made it to The US, the first sambuca there, became the largest selling, and it still is the largest selling sambuca in The US. The company kept evolving. The export was not one of the other gifts that my father left me because we had a knowledge of some markets already and that allowed us to step into the new millennium. When we realized the St. Luka trend was changing because the brand had moved the ownership of the trademark to a larger multinational to the Adjet in the nineties.
Micaela Pallini:That is a different story. If we have time, we can go over that. We realized that we had to go back to our roots and do something new, relatively new. We had to reinvent the wheel, reinvent our past. And at that time, Limoncello started to be outside of Italy too.
Micaela Pallini:Thanks to the Italian restaurant owners that used to give their homemade Limoncello to their guests at the end of the meal. Everybody really liked it. It started booming. Companies started to do a Limoncello, which was on the shelf. And this was kind of a trend that in the nineties revived the whole alcohol and especially liquor industry in Italy that had lost a lot of volume since the sixties.
Micaela Pallini:If you remember, the liquor cabinets of our grandfathers used to have rozale, granules, liqueurs, brandy, whiskeys of all sorts. Nowadays, our liqueur cabinets are much thinner, maybe higher in what we select, more premium, but much less variety. So the Limoncello was one of those vibes that had reenergized the whole industry in Italy, And it was starting to make some initial moves outside of Italy. And we decided to do that. So to take all our experience in the export market and start exporting our family recipe So
Chris Maffeo:let's go in order because it's been a very long journey as you explained. So the company started with the aniseed category. So the famous Mistra where the listeners may not know that that's what you use in the cafe coretto Back in the days and still today, that's the go to category that you the go to liquid that you put in the cafes in the espresso Corretto. But the company was born I read the story, and I will put the link, people will be able to read on your website the full story. It looks like a bottom up journey because it is a story of opportunities.
Chris Maffeo:The company was involved in other categories. It's a fantastic story. And what you mentioned earlier, the healthy company that you inherited. The question that I have is that not just luck. It's a proper management that your predecessors had, but also it's a story about healthy growth, which is something that I'm always talking about that very often companies start to take shortcuts and run to accelerate growth at the expenses of healthy growth.
Chris Maffeo:So debts and situation and problems that you may have in the company. How does that play? I want to talk to the founders out there that are listening to the episode. What is the role of healthy growth?
Micaela Pallini:I think it's fundamental because first of all, we are a family owned company. So all our shareholders are still called Pallini. Since many are women, the next generation will not be called Pallini, but still family owned. There was a study published several years ago that family owned company, especially in the food and wine industry, they are famous because they build for the next generation. This is kind of the mentality you grow up with.
Micaela Pallini:So saying this, you take steps that are measurable, and you're not jeopardizing your company in whatever risky growth. Also, it's been proven by the study that some of companies are those more solid companies financial wise. Some years ago, we used to work with one bank only, and the bank was only up for deposit mainly. They tried to knock at our doors to make us invest in the OSMO. Invest is helpful when you want to do something.
Micaela Pallini:At the same time, it kind of ties you up because you don't want to risk other people's money because you cannot push them to do things they don't understand because not all our shareholders work in the company or are entrepreneurs who understand what's linked to risk. I mean, as I told you, I was lucky because I was able to have them listen to my ideas. We took the risk we could take. Nothing to improvise in Italy. The relationship between bank and company is not as easy as in other countries.
Micaela Pallini:Like in The US, they would lend you money very easily if they like the idea, taking risks. Back in Europe and especially in Italy, take no risk. So they don't lend you money unless you have a lot of money. This is their mentality. And so this is what leads you in your decisions.
Chris Maffeo:You said something interesting because I talk about this building bottom up for many years, and there's still a lot of misunderstandings of what it's meant by that. One of the definitions that I've come up with to re explain it to myself is really growing in a way that doesn't jeopardize the future. That is ultimately for me what building bottom up means. It's not about building slow or not taking risk, but whenever you are faced with a decision, it's about thinking if things go south, then what happens to the company? And what happens to the brand?
Chris Maffeo:And what happens to the reputation of the brand first? And then also financially. I like what you said about jeopardizing because that is ultimately what it is for me. But being a family company, you have to bring on board the family members that happen to become shareholders through the years while a founder would have to explain it to people that are also not from the business, but they decided to invest in the company. For founders, it's a bit more they have to make it a little bit more fancy to attract people.
Chris Maffeo:For you, it's a different kind of journey because they are already shareholders and you have to keep them involved with the right understanding.
Micaela Pallini:I represent the fifth generation of the family. There's a saying that the first generation creates the company, the founder. The second maintains, the third destroys. This is
Chris Maffeo:Well, that's
Micaela Pallini:We were working up that the third generation did not destroy, but kind of maintain. The third generation was the generation that went through World War two. So I would say they were very tough. It was not an easy time. I have bottles from that time.
Micaela Pallini:They're all different colors or all different labels because the scarcity and material, but they were able to keep it running. So kudos to them. Let's say they're very, very clever. So having so but I also think that a founder is more enamored of their idea with a passion, the kind of I don't know if it keeps us strong because you are the one that creates the whole business that has the idea at the beginning. So you think you are unstoppable somehow, and this is what you communicate.
Micaela Pallini:Because on the other side, business does not allow you to stand still. This was a very interesting discussion. I once had with some shareholders when I wanted to do some investments. They were like, Oh, but this is risky. Can't we just not do any?
Micaela Pallini:Unfortunately, business cannot stand still, right? If you stand still, you automatically go back. So you have to find your way of working, of investing, keep company strong, and building it one step at a time. And this is what we did with Limoncello. We understood we had to do something new.
Micaela Pallini:We could not rely on our past. We had to invest more money, and we had to take some moderate risks, and now which was the fact we started doing marketing. Because our family legacy was always built on two pillars, which were quality and service. So quality, not just quality of the liquid, but also quality of the service you give to your customer, how you listen to them, how you understand what their requests are. That's always been a very important part of our DNA.
Micaela Pallini:And then, of course, service, because if bloodhills don't get on the shelf quickly enough, they cannot be bought, and they cannot make a second order. Let's put it like this. And so service is very, very important.
Chris Maffeo:Wow. Listening to you makes me think about the similarity between the ability to listen to the market and to customers and, again, the shareholders and people involved with you in the ownership. Because in the end, you are in control because you are the CEO. But at the same time, you have to listen. You have to have that kind of humbleness to listen to the trade.
Chris Maffeo:This is one of the things that many companies do wrong in the fact that once they enter the office, all of a sudden, they are within the wall and within the meeting room and the boardroom. And then all of a sudden, it's like, yeah, whatever. The market, they don't know what we are doing. It's like the old saying, was it Henry Ford that said, if we listen to the market, they would have asked for a faster horse, not for a car. It's always about that balance between what you see in the market, the humility of listening to maybe they may not know the full picture of what I see, but this is actually a great idea and let's explore it.
Chris Maffeo:I'm fascinated about the transition from the aniseed focused business to the Limoncello. So tell us how this idea came about.
Micaela Pallini:The market had given us some clear direction. Italy, it's a much smaller market for alcohol than it is the rest of the world. Because as we know, the whole environment is changing and changing fast. What we knew is that if we wanted to do a premium product, we need to go outside of Italy. We had to cross the borders because we were never good in doing cheap brand.
Micaela Pallini:We always wanted to build a brand. My father understood that we needed to make a change, and he saw the potential of Limoncello. He said, we need to do a premium brand. We need to go on the export market. We have to start with The US because in The US, you can do anything if you try and do a premium.
Micaela Pallini:You do it well. You're consistent with your message and your liquid, then you can be successful. So what we tried to do was a premium Limoncello, and this is why we didn't start with Italy. Because when we went to the Italian supermarket chain saying that we wanted to do the best Limoncello, best packaging, the most elegant premium with the idea of having it in cocktails, they looked at us if they were totally mad.
Chris Maffeo:No. I can't even I'm laughing because I can imagine the face of the buyer.
Micaela Pallini:So we started with export. We took our family recipe. Part of our family came from the Amalfi Coast. The third generation was made by three brothers. One was my grandfather who was not involved in the company, and then his two brothers who were involved in the company.
Micaela Pallini:And these two brothers married two sisters from the Bravelo area, which is on the Amalfi Coast. And that is where we had all this knowledge of the lemons, the Amalfi lemons. So the idea was to actually put something extra. We were the first to choose a specific area to characterize the product. So have the Limono di Amalfi.
Micaela Pallini:So that is as it states on the label. We also have a small production facility on the Analfi Coast where we produce Limoncello in the beautiful ceramics in Vierry. And that has also been I think that also we were the first to promote the premiumness also of the liquid. And then my father put me to work when I came in to develop and finalize the recipe of the Limoncello so that it would be the right balance between sweet rice a bite, you know, the citric bite. We wanted to use something that was very balanced because the idea behind it was that if we left Limoncello as an after dinner drink that Italian restaurant owners would give for free, we would never make it on the shelf of a back bar and make the brand visible.
Micaela Pallini:So we always wanted it to be inside a cocktail. We were more twenty years too early, but when it happened, we were there.
Chris Maffeo:Let's go in order here. We discovered another coincidence because I grew up going every single summer since zero to 15 years old to Viedri Solmare, which is exactly where you make the ceramics. I have many of these ceramics here at home. It's a fantastic thing. I'm in love with the Amalfi lemons anyway, which is another story for another episode.
Chris Maffeo:What I like about this story and about this sum up narrative is the fact that you didn't just jump on, okay, Limoncello is cool. Let's jump on Limoncello. It was inside your company, inside your family. I can imagine those lunches and dinners with your aunts talking about the Limoncello that we were probably making at home. In a family that is producing alcohol, all of a sudden, are you gonna do a Limoncello?
Chris Maffeo:What is interesting for me is the vision that you had. We was laughing about the buyer conversation when you explained your vision because it's very easy to talk about Limoncello in 2026 because there's Limoncello Spritz everywhere. Everybody's familiar with it. Many foreigners, not only Italians. Back then, it wasn't even Italians from the South because my father was from the South.
Chris Maffeo:People in the North Of Italy already didn't know Limoncello if we go back fifty years ago. The interesting thing is how you wanted to create something premium, But then also, like, you were saying you didn't take risk, but actually you bet on a category that back then was basically just a homemade something that you would make at home. You would buy the alcohol and then your family members would make a Limoncello in their family. And then you said rightfully, you know, the restaurants and the trade, you know, they were treating it as a freebie, you know, at the end of the dinner together with the Amaro category and so on. So, you know, how tough was back then?
Chris Maffeo:You know, like, you're talking about twenty five years ago, roughly?
Micaela Pallini:With the new recipe and the new label came out in 1999. We started exporting it in The US. The first container left in 2000. So, yeah, twenty five years ago. And this is one of the reason why we did not focus on Italy.
Micaela Pallini:Italy came after because we had the opportunity to go on the duty free. And we wanted to build visibility through the brand because from the very start, in The US and UK, which were our very first two markets, we had success. So the product started moved because they liked the bottle. They liked the concept. We found a good importer.
Micaela Pallini:We were the first Limoncello brand to put some marketing behind it. And for us, it was never just an add on product as it was in Italy for every liqueur producer. It became the heart of our company. And so I think we still are the only really global Limoncello company. And, of course, we we are we're still small, but we were able to capitalize on the opportunities that were given us.
Micaela Pallini:And the first really big one after The US importer was Roma duty free airport.
Chris Maffeo:Tell me about this. Before you dive into this, to give a bit of context, one of the things that I'm always talking about is winning the home turf, being credible at all, which doesn't mean that you have to be the market leader to core. It's about being credible so that when foreigners come to Italy, they find the brand. Otherwise, all the effort that you are making in a market like The US or The UK, when Brits and Americans come to Italy and they don't find the brand, then they start having doubts. No?
Chris Maffeo:So the duty free plays this role that is very interesting for me. So tell us about how you went to Rome duty free.
Micaela Pallini:So it was a very interesting opportunity that I enrolled because, actually, even through is the association of the nurse in Italy. The local Confindustia of Rome was con had some contacts with Belarium Airport. And we the buyer wanted to have a corner of Roman products. So she called us to put Mistra and Renana Senvucca on the shelves because she wanted to create the local heroes corner. And when I went to see her, I said, listen.
Micaela Pallini:But we have a really good Limoncello premium products. It's doing incredibly well. The liquid is phenomenal. And she said, no, Limoncello. I want Limoncello.
Micaela Pallini:I have already three or four different brands. I don't care about a new one. But I kind of begged her. I was much younger then. So I looked at her in the eye.
Micaela Pallini:I says, listen. I believe in my brand so strongly. The moment you sell 1,000 cases, I will give you 200 for free. And she could not just ignore it. And so she took me on.
Micaela Pallini:And now we have 60% on the global duty free share of Limoncello business. Wow. And we are listed among the 100 top spirit brands in the duty free, and you have to think we are fighting against really, really big players that have a lot of money to promote because it's very, very expensive. This is one of the point where I told you our shareholder, listen to me. When we saw that we had grounds ROMA duty free and it started growing, it's a very tough business because the operators are really few.
Micaela Pallini:To get into the business, you have to prove you have the numbers to stay there if you want to become national and international. Okay? So you start from local, and then you have to go international. We had to promote the brand. We had to do beautiful displays.
Micaela Pallini:We believed in it. We overinvested. There were tough years in which the company actually lost money at the end of the year because we were overinvesting. We used the duty free platform to display the brand, plus marketing. There, my shareholders believed in me.
Micaela Pallini:Also, with my father, we were able to invest and make ourselves seen and known. It became kind of a case. It's very funny when you go to a buyer and they give you the promotion slots before they give Accra, you know, which is like, okay. It's not exactly not in the same category yet. I'm glad you like it.
Micaela Pallini:You see us this way, but it's not true. But, anyway, it was a long journey, and we were the first. There's interesting because when we started promoting the Limoncello in the Duty Free, you could see the whole category boom. Because before us, nobody was really pushing it in the way we do now. If you now walk through any airport, especially in Italy where it is considered kind of a souvenir item, you will see incredible displays of Limoncello.
Micaela Pallini:And most of the time, it's Pallini.
Chris Maffeo:We were talking about growing in a healthy way. You'd said you overinvested. You invested ahead of what you could because you really believed into the the the channel. But also like well, I was not part of the strategy back then, but it sounds like it was connecting the puzzle of what you were previously doing already. Because if you are already selling The UK, in The US, duty free is like connecting the dots of what you're doing because then you have all these influx and in and out of so many travelers through Rome Fumicino that all these people are buying the bottle as a souvenir.
Chris Maffeo:It starts to become something that they have at home. It start to become something that they offer to their friends. And then all of a sudden, becomes something that when they see it in bars or in bottle shops, they recognize and they actually say, okay. This is something that talks to me and it's something that I'm used to seeing. Hence, I will probably rebuy it.
Chris Maffeo:But also the other interesting thing is what you said about the we didn't comment it back then when you said it, but you were there in a time where Limoncello was basically nothing as a category. So when the trend came, you were ready. The old adage, luck is when opportunity meets preparation. If you're not there with distribution and with presence and with demand, when a trend comes, you just cannot switch on the button and work on it. So what we see today with the spritz is not a coincidence if they call you before the Aperol promotion because it's considered as an occasion.
Chris Maffeo:It's the same occasion. If you take the Aperol spritz, the the Hugo spritz, the Limoncello spritz, people say it's not a category, the Spritz itself, because it's not. But all the brands that contribute to that aperitivo occasion, they fight in the same spot, especially in countries where there is Aperol fatigue, where people have been drinking it for a while and then they want something new. Probably Limoncello was the right candidate to emerge and say, oh, actually, we can do something with a Limoncello.
Micaela Pallini:Well, we were kind of surprised by the trend. We had tried to promote as a mixing cocktails since the beginning. We always went to an importer, and we gave them two policies, one for the off trade and one for the on trade. We tried not to focus on Italian restaurants because they were giving it out for free, so they didn't really care about the product or talking about the product. So it was a very difficult conversation, especially if you wanted to be premium because they were fighting against competition that was giving it out for prices that we were not interested in.
Micaela Pallini:We always try to put it on a cocktail list, put it on a menu. And we had started looking into the spritz a little bit before COVID. Things really changed in 2021 after COVID. People reemerged. They wanted much easier drinks.
Micaela Pallini:They wanted something that was colorful, joyful, bringing them together. And the Spritz occasion was just the best occasion. And people were looking for lighter drinks, which is even gone much further on because now they're also looking for cocktails, But they were looking for light, easy to do, and easy to replicate at home drinks, and Limoncello Spritz started booming all of a sudden. UK was actually the first market to really believe in it. And we were there.
Micaela Pallini:We started believing it. We have packs, Limoncello and Prosecco selling in the airport. We've done things among which we have a canned Pallini Spritz, Pallini Limoncello Spritz selling in many markets. UK, US, Germany. The trend is there.
Micaela Pallini:It's growing, and it's a tough competition.
Chris Maffeo:You're saying that you were surprised, but thanks to your efforts. No? Because if you were one of the few brands actually activating the Limoncello category, you'd never know when it ticks. No? Maybe after so many years of speaking into a void with people not listening and not doing it, then all of a sudden when they start to see something, then all of a sudden it's like, hang on a minute.
Chris Maffeo:Like, we have a category that we can play with and we can give a differentiated experience to our guests. So probably that long term consistent effort, if you were always talking about cocktails and Spritz was one of them, it actually ticked at the end.
Micaela Pallini:Let's let's believe so. I don't know. It's always a it's always a mixture of luck and opportunity. And as they say, like, luck comes to people who who are willing to risk. I would say that we were able to capitalize.
Micaela Pallini:It is very tough because it's still a category in which 50 of the category is sold by unbranded. So, of course, it's very difficult to go from Limoncello Spritz to Pallini Spritz, and this is where our effort is now. Mhmm.
Chris Maffeo:Mhmm. Let's talk about this because this is an interesting point. I talk to many companies about the importance of being on the menu. Every company has their playbook with bottle on the back bar, beverage menu, cocktail menu, and so on. But in a category that is very unbranded, how can you tackle being seen with your brand?
Chris Maffeo:Because many bars are reluctant to actually put the brand name on a cocktail.
Micaela Pallini:This is difficult because we cannot invest as much as other larger companies. So we try a mixture of opportunities, cocktail placements with the name on the menu. It's one of them. We do a mixture, like activate a bar, so it give them POS visibility that can go from ice buckets to neon signs, which we have a limited budget too. We are not a large player like other players, but we're getting there.
Micaela Pallini:You see the product. We try and ask for a product on the back part. One of the other challenges is that Limoncello is mainly kept in the fridge or in the freezer because it's served cold when you drink it as a afternoon dinner drink. So this is why we try to have it in the cocktail because then that would allow us, if you have it on a cocktail menu, to have it on the back bar or in the well, and people would see the brand. But we also had a three liter dummy liter bottle, which worked very well.
Micaela Pallini:People like it very much. And we gave it out for if she bought 18 bottles, we would give it for free a three liter bottle, which in most cases contains real Limoncello. In some markets where it's not allowed, it has it's a dummy. But in many markets, you can actually buy it in Rome Airport, the three liter bottle.
Chris Maffeo:That's a nice gift to give to someone when flying back from Rome.
Micaela Pallini:Definitely. A little heavy now.
Chris Maffeo:It's a bit of a heavy one. Let's talk about trends and what you have experienced in the market because what I like about the 150 years old journey is the fact that there has been a lot of opportunities on the way. You were talking about people drinking less and people having different approaches to alcohol. If I'm not mistaken, you also have a Zero version of the product.
Micaela Pallini:Yes. Limon Zero was actually developed during COVID, during the lockdown, and we had been requested to work on a nonalcoholic beverage. We did not believe it because we've seen many of those trends over the years. I think we came up with a really nice recipe. We were able to balance not to make, like, a bitter lemonade, but it came out really nice because the difference between a spirit, a distillates, and a liqueur is that you add alcohol to liqueur.
Micaela Pallini:You blend it with the sugar syrup, the essences, the essential oils, the distillates of your botanic. When you the alkaline like gin, you have to take the alcohol out. And taking it out, you also take out a lot of the flavors. And often, these nonalcoholic versions of gins or other are not as nice. But with Limoncello, we were able to do a really nice job, and we launched it in the market.
Micaela Pallini:The first years were ignored, and we always thought, oh, this must be one of those trends you read about that never happens. It's happening. The volumes are there. We've had three years in a row of triple digit growth starting from extremely small numbers. When you sell one case and then the next year you sell two, it's a 100% growth.
Micaela Pallini:But now it's a little bit more than two cases. It's interesting. Is it going to stay? Is it going to fade away? We're here to try it.
Micaela Pallini:And we're promoting the Pallini Spritz and the nonalcoholic Pallini Spritz now that there are a lot of non alcoholic bubbles available.
Chris Maffeo:Wow. No. I think it is gonna stay because I see more and more people, not necessarily because they don't drink at all, but because at some point you just want to have a mix. I I see myself even with coffee. Sometimes when I'm working from home, have a couple of espresso and then I have a decaf, then I have another espresso, then I have another decaf.
Chris Maffeo:It's not always on or off with alcohol. It can also be extending the session. If you're sitting on a terrace outside, you don't want to have too many alcoholic drinks, and then you're gonna have a spritz or something that is without alcohol but still has all the flavor that you expect from a drink?
Micaela Pallini:I've noticed that younger crowd, especially, what happens is that maybe they don't want to drink every night, or they have one of them who is not going to drink because designated driver, which is not so important for us when growing up in Europe as it it was in The US already. So this leads to a trend where the person who is not drinking that night does not want to be sipping a soda or sipping water. They want to have something more engaging. And the mocktails give the opportunity of having a glass, of having something special that it's different and it's still very fun. You can sit with your friends and have a glass of something that looks like a cocktail, but it's not.
Micaela Pallini:Yeah. I think also it's happening. People want to go out maybe more often, but they don't want to drink as often.
Chris Maffeo:I agree. Often it's about the role of the glass and the serve, you know, that plays a role. In Prague, non alcoholic beer is super relevant but what I don't like is that it's served in its own glass, know, in this non alcoholic glass. What I usually ask when I'm out, you just pour it into the normal beer glass because the pour is exactly the same with nice foam because it's a draft beer. And then you avoid all this conversation I have to explain to you that I'm driving or that I don't want to drink or that I took some medicines or whatever the reason is.
Chris Maffeo:Very often, it's not about the presence of alcohol itself. It's how you make it easy for consumers to not ask, do you have an alcohol free version by being on the menu. There is a cocktail bar here. They build this cocktail menu in four different themes, but then the last drink of each theme is a nonalcoholic drink. And it's interesting because it's not relegated to the alcohol free section or mocktails.
Chris Maffeo:No. You just mention the name of the drink. The bartender knows what it is. Your friends at the table don't even have to know which category you went for. I ordered the whatever, Madame Butterfly.
Chris Maffeo:And it happens to be a nonalcoholic, and it's my business to do that. Let's talk about something we haven't mentioned. You have a PhD in chemistry. So one of the reason why you are so passionate about it, apart from being the CEO of the company, you start working on the production of this product. So did you actually work the recipe of the Limoncello that you are talking about?
Micaela Pallini:I was like every kid. When I first time to look for university, my father wanted me to do business, and I did not. So I wanted to be a scientist, kind of the big bang theory style of life. So I chose chemistry, and then I wanted to do more. I was thinking of staying in university, so I had the opportunity of doing a PhD and then to remain with a postdoc position.
Micaela Pallini:But after a while, I realized that I didn't have that strength, that stamina, that wish of pursuing research, which is is like being an entrepreneur. You have to have a force that drives you. I was just out of it, I think. So I told my father that I wanted to go back. And at that time, he already had started calling me because our initial family recipe for Limoncello was the typical family recipe, which ended up with a liqueur that was around 35, 38 degrees.
Micaela Pallini:And we weren't going anywhere. He kind of asked me to help because what we really wanted to do was to have the perfume the sweetness of anamphi lemons stand out in the recipe because they are different from the regular lemons that you buy at supermarket. These lemons are sweet. They have an intensity in their perfume. They're rich in lemon oils.
Micaela Pallini:When you put your fingernails in their skin, you can actually see these lemon oils coming out. We wanted this to be enhanced in the liqueur more than just the alcohol and the sweetness. There's a different style in Limoncello. If you try different Limoncello side by side, you realize how different they are. Since most of the time you drink it cold, nobody really tried paid much attention to that because something you take out of a freezer, it's standardized by the coldness.
Micaela Pallini:All the defects are taken out by the fact that it's really cold. So we really wanted to have something different, something that was lower proof. We were the first to come in with a lower proof Limoncello '28 and then '26, because of, and then to have certain qualities stand out. The balance between perfume, sweetness, and tartiness of the lemon. Also to stabilize some Limoncello have the black ring on top of the liquid because the lemon oils separate after a while.
Micaela Pallini:We were able to maintain a product that is pretty stable for two years. Lemon liqueurs don't go bad, but lemon is a very delicate scent and delicate product. So after two years, I would say, it kind of loosens its freshness.
Chris Maffeo:Wow. I can see you having that conversation at the Rome Duty Free with believing in the product. If you could put your hand on fire, how much you believed in the Limoncello recipe apart from the brand.
Micaela Pallini:What hooked me up with the family business was, like, Cafe Corretto with Mrache. I had never tried it until I was 20. And I realized how much I liked it, and I said, no. This cannot nobody in the family was going to was coming in. So my father was preparing to I don't know.
Micaela Pallini:Some kind of closing. He's trying with other family members to see if there's anybody interested. He was looking for a manager. So he was looking about several options. And when I said, dad, I wanna come and work with you, he said, I don't think it's a good idea.
Micaela Pallini:Because he used to call our location Porta Pache. You know? Because you really feel like you're alone. This Rome is not exactly the city where you think about developing a, you know, manufacturing company. It's more of a city of relationship, of lobbying, you know, international relations.
Micaela Pallini:So, actually, it's we had a pretty few manufacturers, manufacturers, and and it's it's Us us and and a a famous famous biscuit factory, which is right beside us, which is called Gettinini.
Chris Maffeo:I have a few biscuits here at some
Micaela Pallini:Believe it or not, my father-in-law used to behave in the same
Chris Maffeo:No way.
Micaela Pallini:In the same neighborhood where we grew up.
Chris Maffeo:That's a funny story. I remember reading and commenting on Gentilini on LinkedIn. I saw some posts that reminded me of my childhood. Back then, you didn't have a phone. So when you were having breakfast, you were reading the back label of the biscuits.
Chris Maffeo:I know all those brands by heart. I like the full journey because often people ask me, what do you think is a great brand right now when I'm having an interview? And I'm always reluctant to drop a name because if you don't know the full story, it's difficult. What is a great brand? And how long that brand stays on trend?
Chris Maffeo:When you have a company like yours that is 150 years old, so it's probably goes ups and downs. There are moments like growing like crazy and then it stabilized with all the family members involved. From what you were telling, it looks like it moved sort of like sideways. It wasn't really direct. You said your grandfather was not involved, but then your father was involved and then you were involved.
Chris Maffeo:It's not like a vertical line, like royalty. At some point, there is the cousin family that takes over and then it may go back to the original family. It's very interesting how when you see these dynamics of people that want to take the opportunity or people that just say, okay, I'm a shareholder. I like it as it is. I have my own career.
Chris Maffeo:I have my own things. These are just shares that I'm holding, and I prefer to give the opportunity to another family member, which is super nice for me to listen to.
Micaela Pallini:You make it sound more romantic than it really is. I mean, it wasn't that piece of cake because when I had to take over from my father, the other shareholders are my father's first cousins, but we're never that close growing up. So they didn't know me completely, so I had to gain their trust. It was not overnight. It's just like, oh, please be kinda like, fuck.
Micaela Pallini:It's your turn. Just do whatever you want. It was much tougher than that. So I had to change completely from my father's style of management to be much more participative. I don't know if this is a word in any language, You know, being
Chris Maffeo:More involved.
Micaela Pallini:Not that my father was not transparent. Not not that my father was not transparent, but he's been was in the company for such a long time, and he was with the previous generation when where what less shareholders that he kind of did his stuff and everybody trusted him. He didn't think that generation didn't think that relationship with shareholders were truly necessary. He just believed that I'm bringing them good results, they'll be happy. So for me, it was different.
Micaela Pallini:I had to build their trust. I had to build a different style of management. I was the first woman of the family to leave the company, so I had to change the approach in the company as well. I tried to kind of mock my father's style. I soon realized I would never be my father.
Micaela Pallini:And I must say that he was very courageous. The moment he stepped down, he never came back to the office. But he said, now it's your turn. You have to gain your, how do you say, your general the fact that you're you're the general. You're legislative in generality.
Micaela Pallini:I mean, you're symbols. They have to recognize you as the leader, and so I'm not coming, not even as your old adviser. I'm here if you want me. If you need me, I'll be in the family board because we have family board, but you will have to leave the company. I was I had actually be I was actually the CEO four years before he left.
Micaela Pallini:He was president, so I became CEO and president. And then I had to prove myself, which, I mean
Chris Maffeo:Which you are doing.
Micaela Pallini:I'm still doing. But I think I've earned the trust of my shareholders. I was also president of Fredrvine for four years, which is the Lion and Spirits Association of Italy. So the first woman to lead that. Doing both things with two teenagers, two kids going through middle and was quite a lot.
Chris Maffeo:I can imagine. It's very fascinating for me because I was telling you my family business. I show you what. I have it here. Was my grandfather, and his father opened the business.
Chris Maffeo:He was a distributor near Avellino in the South Of Italy. That's why we were going to Vietri for holidays. After one hundred years, nobody continued the business. Years of legacy was lost, which is one of the reasons why I I created my company and the podcast to ensure that all this knowledge from different people doesn't get lost and gets documented because this is one of the crucial thing. I can assume that in a hundred and fifty years, many things went lost in terms of maybe bottles or documents or anything in the company.
Chris Maffeo:So it's also our role to save it for the next generation because this is one of the crucial aspects of running a company. Right?
Micaela Pallini:Yeah. You have to decide what you want to make your central piece and the central values, core values of the company, family, but then at the same time, you should be able to open up to the new concept. Because they need to be attractive to external people. Companies cannot rely just on their families. If we want to grow, we need to attract new talents, and we need to attract new visions.
Micaela Pallini:This was something that we were able to do. We introduced an external general manager. We introduced an expert director because we're now over 80 markets. So you need to be in the company. You need to be present in the company.
Micaela Pallini:When you're at such a small operations as we are, our sales revenues last year was 25,000,000, and we have 40 people working for us. So it's like in the middle, but you cannot as they say, the eye of the owner makes the horse back in Italy. So it means you need to look for what's happening. So I cannot travel to a few 80 countries and think that things will work themselves out. Maybe once we will be double or three times the size we are now, it wouldn't be possible.
Micaela Pallini:We will have a general manager with higher skills, and we will have multiple production sites. Right now, we have to find a balance. So we're able to introduce a expert manager who brought with him a mentality we were missing and that helped us to grow.
Chris Maffeo:Wow. Fantastic. So thanks a lot, Micaela. It was a fantastic conversation. Leave us some final thoughts wrapping up the episode.
Chris Maffeo:What do you want to leave to the listeners? Where to find you? And then some thoughts about where to find you. I know you are on LinkedIn.
Micaela Pallini:Yeah. I'm not very good with these social medias. I don't like feeding my own page or bragging about myself too much, but you find me on LinkedIn or enroll in if you wanna come and say hi. In every business, actually, in life, you can never stand still because when you stand still, you go back. And now we are on the verge of a lot of changes.
Micaela Pallini:Well, we shouldn't be scared because there's a lot of talking about how IA will impact us in the future. I think we have a lot of opportunities. We can speak to people that we in my father's time, we never thought you would ever reach. And it's still exciting. And and the thing is you have to be true to yourself.
Micaela Pallini:And what I believe is since my name is on that damn bottle, I try to be exactly what the bottle says. I'm not sure other brands stick to that as much, but for us, it's always been a true belief in our family core values. So we are what we say we are. We're true to ourselves. And believe it or not, now in Italy, they call us have to have Pallini Limoncello because it has become a brand.
Micaela Pallini:So as they say, But now they call us because they say that Pallini is actually a cold brand has become, thanks to duty free, thanks to our export work, thanks to the consistency of our message. So these are values that still believe. Shortcuts and jumps in this industry is, of course, you can do it. You can spend your money like you want, but we have grown steadily for ten years in a difficult market, and we are keep growing, slowly, slowly, even in Italy. And I believe that if you're true to yourself, this pays off in a long run.
Micaela Pallini:And so this is why the difference between carrying a name into the next a 150 is being true to yourself and believing that you have to do the things to stay on the market. You have to build, as you say, bottoms up. So listen to the market, do the right things, and keep doing them.
Chris Maffeo:So cheers to that, Micaela.
Micaela Pallini:Ciao, Chris. When you come to Rome, you have to visit us always.
Chris Maffeo:I will definitely do that or we have breakfast in the place that we found out we built a breakfast.
Micaela Pallini:Ciao. Ciao. Ciao.
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