Bianchi Vending Brand Guidelines: The Bergamo Machine Maker the Trapletti Family Bought Back

From imported vending machines to a Bergamo factory.

Bianchi Vending makes hot-drinks vending machines, machines with lit display windows for snacks and cold drinks and, through a sister brand, espresso machines for bars. Its home is Zingonia di Verdellino, in the province of Bergamo in Lombardy, where trade reports from 2009 and 2020 place its headquarters.

Its starting date depends on the source. The trade magazine Beverfood wrote in 2011 that Bianchi Vending was founded in 1959, and in March 2009 that the Bergamo company began at the end of the 1950s by importing the first electromechanical vending machines into Italy, before starting its own production in the early 1960s. Other accounts tie the company to the Trapletti family. Comunicaffè reported in April 2018 that Bianchi Industry was acquired in 1976 by Angelo Trapletti, who already owned and chaired the Bianchi bicycle brand, and Beverfood wrote in July 2014 that Angelo founded the company “almost forty years ago.” Both dates appear in the Italian trade press, and both point to the same Bergamo business.

From 1992 the company was led by Angelo’s son Massimo Trapletti, according to Comunicaffè and the European Vending & Coffee Service Association. In the 1990s, Beverfood reported, it added spiral machines for packaged food to its hot-drinks range, and from 1997 it built an international sales network of its own branches.

Investors, a restructuring and a return.

In the 2000s Bianchi passed through several investors. Beverfood reported in 2009 that GE Equity, part of GE Capital, joined the shareholders in 2001; that in 2002 the company absorbed Tecnomet Italia, a maker of can and bottle machines; and that ABN AMRO Capital became the largest shareholder in 2005 and took full control early in 2008. Accounts of the family’s exit differ: Comunicaffè dates the sale to 2007, while Beverfood describes the family’s absence as a six-year pause ending in 2014. In 2006, Beverfood reported, a new plant was built at Pescara, on the Adriatic coast, for the cold-drinks and snack range, and in 2007 the group entered the bar trade by buying the business of GEM-Futurema, a maker of professional espresso machines.

That year also brought a new look. Beverfood reported in December 2007 that the group changed its logo and launched two advertising lines at the SIC-HOST show in Milan: for bars and restaurants, a model dressed in red under the word “HOT,” short for “Ho.Re.Ca. Our Temptation”; for vending, a brighter, more modern image on a white background, replacing an earlier campaign set on black, under the acronym “LOVE” — “Live Our Vending Experience.”

At the end of 2008, Beverfood reported, the company was bought by FA Capital, a vehicle backed by Goldman Sachs, after ABN AMRO decided to sell its private-equity holdings. In May 2011 Beverfood reported a completed recapitalisation and debt restructuring with its lending banks, and Vending International later noted that the company had been through an arrangement with creditors. In July 2014 the Trapletti family bought Bianchi Vending back, with Massimo Trapletti as chairman and chief executive, Beverfood and Comunicaffè reported. At the time, Beverfood said, the range counted 60 different dispensing systems and more than 40 patents, sold in more than 40 countries through seven branches and made in two plants.

The category.

Vending machine makers sell to operators, not to the people who buy a coffee or a chocolate bar, so they present themselves in two registers at once. To operators they talk about capacity, reliability, telemetry and ease of refilling; to the public their machines must look inviting on a station concourse, in a university corridor or beside an office kitchen. The glass-front snack machine, with its spiral shelves in view, and the coffee machine with a large lit selection panel are the two faces most people know.

The front panel has become the main design surface. Makers fit touchscreens, illuminated buttons and printed or backlit graphics, and many machines are co-branded with a coffee roaster or a drinks company, so the maker’s own name often sits small on the cabinet. Cashless readers for cards and phones now sit beside, or in place of, the coin slot, and some makers build their own payment and remote-management systems alongside the machines.

Behind the cabinet is an industrial story. Makers’ own websites and brochures tend to show factory lines, sheet-metal cabinets and spare-parts services. Several of the makers in this guide are based in northern Italy and two in Peralta, in Navarre, and some have passed through mergers and private-equity ownership.

The trade meets at fairs such as EU’Vend in Cologne and Venditalia in Milan, where makers launch new ranges to operators and distributors. This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand — who founded it, who owns it, and where it says its machines are made — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Vending, coffee and Brasilia under one roof.

Since the buy-back the company has widened its reach into coffee for bars. In October 2015 Vending International reported that Bianchi Vending had acquired Brasilia, an espresso machine brand, to strengthen its division for hotels, restaurants and cafés. The Italian Trade Agency’s company listing now names the parent as Bianchi Industry S.p.A., “led by the Trapletti family,” with three brands: Bianchi Vending, Bianchi Coffee Solutions and Brasilia. The company says it has two production sites in Italy, at Bergamo and Cisterna di Latina, south of Rome, that 80 per cent of the components in its machines are made in house, and that it sells in more than 50 countries.

Its machines carry short product names. Beverfood reported in March 2026 that the Everly coffee machine, which Bianchi calls a best seller, had gained an ESV version with a variable-chamber coffee group for espresso and long drinks; the trade agency listing describes the Flessy L, a snack and cold-drinks machine with a lit display window and a touch monitor. Comunicaffè reported in 2020 that the company’s strategy rested on a “Design Your Break” philosophy, and that it had a Nordic subsidiary, Bianchi Vending Scandinavia, run from Stockholm.

The family also speaks for the trade. Massimo Trapletti was elected president of Confida, the Italian vending association, in April 2018, Comunicaffè reported, and in September 2025 Vending International reported that Bianchi Industry’s commercial and marketing director, Paolo Ghidotti, had become president of the European Vending & Coffee Service Association, while Trapletti remained chief executive and Confida president.

For a design guide, Bianchi Vending shows how a machine maker can change its look with its market, from a black campaign to a white one and a red line for bars. Compare Evoca, another Italian vending maker, and Lavazza, an Italian coffee name. For this guide we use espresso red, black and a warm white with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Bianchi Vending’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.