The story of Roberto Bonetti, the man who invented the legendary Boero chocolate (uncle of Lorenzo Biagiarelli)

The reasons why, in the 1980s, Boero chocolate has become a myth are different, and have to do with the entrepreneurial spirit of Roberto Bonetti, founder of Witor’swho passed away these days at the venerable age of 94.

The entrepreneur from Cremona, in 1962, was in fact the one who perfected the Boero recipe, the extra dark chocolate with cherry and liqueur filling that has become iconic over timea forbidden dream of a generation of kids who saw that alcoholic sweet as a symbol of entry into adulthood, but also a great commercial intuition, in understanding that chocolate could not be intended only for the youngest audiences. Already in 1956, to tell the truth, Ferrero had marketed its Mon Chéri, based more or less on the same principles, completely similar to the Boero chocolate. But, if you think about the provincial bars of the past, the ones that are experienced with a certain nostalgia for ice lollies, telephone tokens and footballer’s figurines, it is to Boero Witor’s that the mind immediately flies. The one that combined the pleasure of chocolate, the transgression of alcohol and the thrill of winning, because with the Boeros at the bar “you always won”, even if it was just another Boero.

Thus, the nostalgia effect of Boero becomes even more powerful, in this late summer in which the world of Italian chocolate says goodbye to one of the old-style enlightened entrepreneurs, Roberto Bonettiwhich built a small confectionery empire around that chocolate that still today has over two hundred employees in the factory in Corte dè Frati, in the province of Cremona. Today, we remember Witor’s especially at Easter, when many of the eggs we buy in large-scale distribution come from there, exactly as happens in the over eighty countries in the world where the brand is distributed. But it all began way back in 1959, when in a small laboratory in Cremona a thirty-year-old boy, Roberto Bonetti, decided to produce chocolate, starting – as his biography says – “without a penny in his pocket”. Times in which the economic boom allowed people to dream big, and rewarded those who dared to do so.

The memory of Lorenzo Biagiarelli

In the aftermath of the entrepreneur’s death we discover that, in addition to being the owner of Witor’s, Roberto Bonetti was also the uncle of television chef and influencer Lorenzo Biagiarelli. He himself tells it, in a memory published on his social channels.

“I met my uncle when he was no longer greedy, and who knows if he ever was. I don’t know, I never asked him. We started late, as a family, to celebrate Christmas together, certainly after the first publication of the China Study, which immediately became the Bible for him. He ate like a bird, he filled everyone’s plate but much less for himself, although lunch on the 25th was the only exception to the rule”, says Biagiarelli. “Once he came to hear me play, I refilled his glass a few too many times, that evening we laughed like crazy, after which he didn’t drink anymore. It seems to me that he always applied the same moderation to food that he had in life, the one that earned him the nickname of Uncle Scrooge, from me who was his nephew”.

“He was like him in every way: a successful businessman, a historic and thriving company, even his number one, that chocolate with a cherry inside that he invented in 1959, the Boero. And at the same time he drove an old Fiat, then a slightly damaged Picanto, he had an overcoat that was always a little worn, a cap with a tartan pattern and even his hair, white and fluffy, fell a little in front of his ears like the sideburns of the richest of Ducks. One time it was raining and he came to pick me up, in the trunk he had a few dozen umbrellas, he had to go and sell them in front of the cemetery. That was the time I understood that my uncle was not passionate about money, but he was passionate about work, his eyes shone, you could see life flowing through them”.

“The truth is that I know little about my uncle and the little I know has faded like a legend. I would have liked to see him pulling his street-vendor laundry cart, together with my grandmother, just after the war, when we were little more than children. I would have liked to see him selling meringues cooked in the barracks oven, almost as a contraband, to put together the first nest egg already during the draft. I would have liked to see him in Brazil on the cocoa plantations, or that time at the Canton Fair. I can no longer ask my uncle anything because he passed away yesterday, at the age of ninety-four, perhaps dead of bad luck. But at least, like this, I can continue to imagine his life as the incredible adventure of an extraordinary man. It was.”