The string that binds us
Our biscuit packets have always been tied by hand, one by one.
The string that is used to tie them is and will always be, along with the colour blue, the distinctive element of our bags.
In 1900, baskets, crates and sacks made of cloth or jute were used to transport food. The basic necessities were sold to the general public in various shops: the baker’s, the chemist’s, the greengrocer's; later grocery stores appeared, where instead you could find a bit of everything: from coffee, cereals, legumes, wine, various 'jars', but also cured meats, cheeses and even chocolates, licorice and candies. In those small shops, all the goods were sold strictly in bulk: a piece of paper was placed on the scales, sugar, flour, spices, etc. were added to the scales with a small shovel and then a small package was made with the same paper and tied with string.
The same thing happened with our products in the historic Mattei bakery in via Ricasoli; pasta, bread, sweets and biscuits were sold by weight, wrapped by folding the edges of a sheet of blue paper and closed making a small package, which was then tied with a piece of string. Only at the end of the 1930s did the flat-bottomed bags of double-colored powder blue paper make their a
Whereas for the first square bottom bags, those which are still used today, we still had to wait until the early 1960s for them.
The string that was used at the time was waxed rope twine. The bags were and still are closed with a first tie and a subsequent particular knot, a sort of noose, which enables you to carry the 'package' hanging from a finger. There were no "shoppers"! Only paper shopping bags, much less plastic! So customers came out of our shop with their 'package' of blue paper hanging from a finger with a string.
NEW: Today, with the introduction of our new flavours, different color strings have been introduced: red for chocolate, green for pistachio, beige for hazelnut.
📷 cover of Alessandro Moggi