1943. Italy, barely, tried to get out of a war that had weakened the economy and left rubble everywhere. Catanzaro and Calabria had paid a high price to the cause of the World War and the future seemed anything but rosy.
With the impoverished people who could only rely on their desire for redemption, the chances that someone would give life to an increasingly solid and loved business, seemed very few.
But, almost as if it were a fable, those times so hard and uncertain were the best soil on which Guglielmo’s coffee could grow and take root. Thanks to the passion, the heart and the desire to show that the future could be brilliant that Guglielmo Papaleo lavished, day by day, in building his dream.

A dream started in 1935 when Guglielmo Papaleo began as a salesman in a grocery shop in the historic center of Catanzaro. But after 8 years of employee work, he decided that it was time to give life to his creature, so, in the same city, he opened a shop on Corso Mazzini, inside which he placed a small coffee machine.
Between sacrifices and difficulties, Guglielmo Papaleo continues his idea with stubbornness and in 1947 he begins the real activity of production, sale and tasting of coffee, until, ten years later, he manages to start the first roasting, in Catanzaro in the Sala district .
It was an establishment composed of customs warehouses, production department and administrative offices. Caffè Guglielmo also began to launch the first advertising campaigns.