Italian coffee giant illy has officially expanded into the capital city, as it announced the opening of its second coffee shop in Malta.  

On Thursday (today), it announced that the second cafeteria will be in St Lucia Street, Valletta. The coffee chain’s first outlet opened in November at Mercury.

“With carefully curated options catering to every palate, our store is not just about coffee – it’s an immersive experience,” illy Malta said on Facebook.

illy was founded by Francesco Illy in 1933. He is behind the invention of the iletta which is considered as the blueprint for contemporary espresso machines and has since transformed the process of coffee preparation.

His approach to packaging, based on pressurisation, enabled illy’s first exports to Sweden and Holland in the 1940s. This particular method remains adaptable in today’s method in preserving and enhancing coffee’s freshness during transport and storage.

Illy’s quality was given a boost after Francescos’s son Ernesto illy joined the company in the late 1940s. He had a doctorate in chemistry and started an in-house lab for coffee chemistry. Later, he saw the spearheading of the coffee’s expansion into homes by selling small cans of ground coffee for the first time.

As the years went by, Ernesto Illy expanded more through the first pre-measured espresso pods, introduced the illy Art Collection, new logos and is now established in more than 140 countries under the guidance of Ernesto’s son, Andrea Illy.