He’s already been renamed Italian TV’s Willy Wonka, but Fabio Fazio prefers to define himself as the ‘chocolate editor’. The conductor actually bought a chocolate factory, Lavoratti, a historic brand in Varazze, the birthplace of Fazio’s father, where the future conductor spent much of his childhood. Lavoratti was finally destroyed by the pandemic. So Fazio, together with his friend Davide Petrini, an entrepreneur working in the catering industry and also in the FFP2 masks sector, decided to take over the company and completely renew its machines and products in order to launch high-quality chocolates on the market. created by an institution of confectionery tradition and the wise use of ingredients such as Corrado Assenza, legendary owner of Caffé Sicilia in Noto.
The only thing that Fazio really wanted to keep is the Lavoratti brand, accompanied by the year of the company’s birth: 1938. Lavoratti 1938 thus stands out on every packaging of the production line with an elegant packaging “all made of Italian paper and completely biodegradable”. , explained Fazio at the official christening of his “second life” organized at Carlo Cracco’s restaurant in Portofino. Each product is reminiscent of a publication in the picture. So the series of tablets in different flavors are collected in one box like a series of books, then there are the chocolate sticks and the chocolates that are collected in volumes. “As in publishing, there will be special editions and monographs.” And the Easter eggs will also be contained in an Albissola pottery.
The ingredients deserve a special mention, especially fruit, but also salt and sage, selected by Assenza among the small top products of our land, from Giffoni hazelnuts to Bronte green pistachios and Cinque Terre lemons. “We produce fruit powder in Lavoratti with a precise drying process,” explains Assenza. The main ingredient cocoa comes from Ecuador. From a multi-award-winning, fifth-generation family business, Hacienda San José, that “ensures sustainability standards and a code of ethics at work,” Fazio pointed out. The new Lavoratti “already employs 15 people, including 20 in affiliated companies,” said Petrini, who is CEO of the company, which was also founded by his wife Alessia Parodi, Fazio and his wife Gioia.
One of the first special editions concerns Christmas, with “chocolates inspired by the typical flavors of Christmas food,” added the host, who will be conducting “Che tempo che fa” again from October 9, with a contract with Rai at the end of the season ends. “This is an important year, the twentieth. We will see. One thing is certain: With my second life as a chocolatier, I have created an oasis of happiness for myself”. Finally, to the Adnkronos who asked him if he intends to adapt this chocolate story into a TV story (after what happens to ‘Chef’s Table’ on Netflix, for example),
Fazio replied, “Not even for a dream”.