“Here, we are the ones who work the most,” a 14-year-old boy told his brother, in a small kiosk located on a corner of La Boca, where damaged products were sold at very convenient prices. That young man was Guillermo Barzi, great-grandson of the founder of the “empire” on which that place depended, José Canale.
Barzi, who today is president of Bodega Humberto Canale and who was a Canale shareholder for a long time, immediately goes beyond that youthful anecdote and goes back to José’s arrival in the country. “He came in 1860 from a small town near Genoa, Italy. Since he had no money for the passage, he traveled in the hold of the ship, below deck,” he recalls.
José married very young and in 1875 he started a bakery in Defensa and Cochabamba, together with his wife, Blanca Vaccaro (who had also come from the same region of Génova, but whom he met in Corrientes, on one of his many trips from worked). Over the years they did well, they grew, and by the late 1800s, the place was converted into an upscale bakery. But the pioneer died very young, at 40, and his widow was left in charge.
José and Blanca had five children, only one of whom got fully into the business. His name was Amadeo and he would go down in history for being the creator of one of the most emblematic products on the Argentine table: the Canale sponge cake.
Riding on that success, they continue to grow and around 1906 they build the factory that later became the company’s iconic building, on Avenida MartÃn GarcÃa 320, in front of Parque Lezama. From 1910 to 1994 the border between Barracas, La Boca and San Telmo was linked by the biscuit and cookie factory. “It was the time when Argentina was progressing. Then the development of the entire industrial part of Canale grew hand in hand with Amadeo, creating the very Genoese sweet bread (very moist dough),” says Barzi.
Amadeo was the only one who married. One of Amadeo’s brothers was Humberto Canale, the only one who followed a university career and graduated as a civil engineer. At one point, he was associated with the engineer Luis Huergo, who was dean of the Faculty of Engineering and luxury consultant. Together, in 1909 they bought 400 hectares in RÃo Negro and founded the Humberto Canale winery, under the name of Huergo Canale.
But let’s continue with the biscuit and sweet bread factory, which grew and earned a name among consumers. Soon, the product portfolio began to expand and that is how cookies of all kinds appeared, under the Viuda de Canale e Hijos SA Establecimientos Fabriles brand. From that time have remained the traditional cans, today much sought after by collectors.
After the Second World War, Canale again developed a strong expansion process towards other product categories, such as noodles, cookies, jams, flour and cans. “Amadeo has four children, one of them is my mother,” says Barzi, as if not wanting the family thread to be lost in this whole story.
The two men, Manuel and José (MarÃa Magdalena and Blanca were the women) take the reins. They spent a lifetime inside the company. “They arrived at seven in the morning and left at eight at night,” says Barzi. José had a son, who was Rodolfo Canale, who would become the last president of the company, until his sale in 1995. But that is still a few years away.
This family monster came to have a tin shop in Llavallol that supplied cans to a large part of the Argentine market, several canning factories in different parts of the country that sold under the Canale brand (in Mendoza, RÃo Negro, Mar del Plata) and contracts for services in different factories in the country (for example, tomatoes in La Rioja). What started with that José and Blanca bakery now had 3,500 employees.
There was also the flour factory in MartÃn GarcÃa and a commercial organization that had 360 vendors. “They distributed to retailers with a phenomenal sales force. And one of the reasons why Canale begins to have problems is because it does not adapt quickly to the commercial change that occurs when large supermarkets begin to enter the country,” explains Barzi.
When it was sold to Socma (of the Macri family), in 1995, it had already been 25 years since the launch of another product that made history: Cerealitas, the first whole grain cookies in Argentina. “But, despite the new products, the company was doing poorly and it ended up being sold to the Socma group,” says Barzi, who at the age of 21, having just graduated as an agricultural engineer, went to RÃo Negro to take charge of the Humberto winery. Channel, .
In a first period Socma tries to continue with the same products of the old Canale. He achieves his goals for three years, but ultimately fails to achieve great success and decides to sell the company to Nabisco. It was the 1990s, years in which the large multinationals were stomping in the country. Finally, Nabisco sells it to Kraft (now Mondelez).
Many of the iconic products were discontinued, including the famous cupcakes. Today, according to Barzi with a hint of nostalgia, the only thing left on the market under the Canale brand is sweet bread and Cerealitas. 143 years have passed since that “white” baker laid the foundations of an empire that spanned four generations of Canale and etched his products among Argentine consumers.
