Forget press releases and service language. To understand Andrea Fofi, you shouldn’t just look at the extraordinary numbers of the Roma Bar Show, but at his hands. There is a silent truth that unites the vision of great international blockbusters, the construction sites, and the volcanoes he climbs around the world: it is the truth of things that endure, that do not applaud and do not misunderstand you.
Fofi is the entrepreneur who knew how to transform an intuition into a global point of reference for the bar industry, only to then continue searching for the profound meaning of work in the toil that cannot be delegated. A former lawyer who reads between the lines of a sector often too full of ego, Andrea lives in a dynamic balance between the success of consolidated projects and a brain that “hums” in the middle of the night, birthing new challenges. We put him in front of the mirror, between the shield of his British humour and the roar of “Iddu,” to have him tell us what remains when roles are stripped away and one decides, finally, to bet everything on substance.
You lived in New York and London, you built events for thousands of people, but then you find yourself harvesting olives or being on a construction site. Is it a need to get dirty to wash off the fiction of certain environments, or is it just that you trust the earth and bricks more than people?
“Perhaps it’s both, but not as alternatives. When you move through very symbolic environments, sometimes you feel the need to bring the body back to where things endure. The earth doesn’t applaud, the bricks don’t misunderstand you. If you make a mistake, you see it immediately. If you do well, something remains even when you leave. It’s not so much a lack of trust in people as a distrust of roles. In certain social or creative environments, you are always a bit ‘on stage,’ even when you believe you are being sincere. Getting your hands dirty then becomes a gesture of detoxification: not to punish yourself, but to strip away layers. As if to say: let’s see what remains when there is no audience. And then there is something else, more silent. The earth and the construction sites teach a form of truth that doesn’t pass through language. They don’t promise meaning, but they require presence. They force you to stay in slow time, in the toil that cannot be accelerated or delegated. It’s a way of putting the world back into scale.”
They say a lawyer never stops being one. In this world of courtesy smiles and pats on the back that is the beverage sector, how much do you enjoy being the one who reads between the lines and, deep down, immediately understands who is cheating?
“I don’t enjoy discovering who is cheating. I enjoy understanding how true what you are saying to me is and how much, instead, is just service language, then I decide accordingly how to interact with you. In the beverage sector as elsewhere, it’s not that I don’t trust people much. It’s that I know how easy it is to tell oneself stories — especially when the product is good and the ego moves fast. My motto is a bit: ‘I am here, I listen, but I am in no hurry to believe you’.”
They describe you as a tornado, someone who pulls everyone along. But who pulls you along when you are tired of smiling? Is there someone to whom you allow the luxury of seeing you without that British humour you use as a shield to keep everyone at a safe distance? And above all, what really makes Andrea laugh?
“No one in particular pulls me along. I stop, every now and then, and that’s it. That said, I too, like everyone, have my circle of people dear and close to me, the irreplaceable ones, the certainties to whom I don’t have to ask for anything, my family. What makes Andrea Fofi laugh… I must admit I laugh much less than in the past, in some ways I am less carefree (I ask myself why every day) and perhaps so ‘stuck’ in work that I rarely find the time for it or the people who succeed in doing so. Then everyone, my mother first and foremost, tells me I have a beautiful smile, so maybe I should force myself to laugh a bit more. Anyway, I am not just what you see in motion, but I don’t have to explain to you what keeps me still.”
You sold the Roma Bar Show… Was it an act of freedom or the recognition that, in the end, everything has a price and nothing really deserves to have one’s soul dedicated to it forever? What does it feel like the day after having sold a piece of your own history?
“The sale of the Roma Bar Show was simply a due act, the recognition of the fact that we needed a strategic, institutional, and financial partner that would allow us to make the definitive leap and assert ourselves even more at an international level. Probably ‘alone’ we would not have had a long life and the moment to do it was now. I believe, and I am increasingly convinced of it as the years go by, that what you do especially if you are an entrepreneur, has a well-defined duration; it’s not a matter of saying ‘everything has a price’ but simply that ‘everything has an end.’ It is natural that the end one hopes for is the one with ‘happy’ in front of it, and this, if one is good, even in letting go, can materialize in a detachment. Let’s talk about it again at the end of 2027…”
You are a serious traveller and you also seem like the type of traveller who avoids resorts to live the true essence of the place. But what do you really look for when you escape from Rome? Are you looking for something new or are you just looking for a place where you are not ‘Andrea Fofi,’ where no one has to ask you for a favour, advice, or an invitation?
“I love travelling very much, I don’t take vacations, and if I have to choose, I choose destinations that are as ‘wild’ as possible, even ‘extreme’ at times. A few months ago, I left a lot of myself in Socotra, an almost Jurassic island in Yemen. Then I am a lover of volcanoes, I often look for destinations where I can climb a volcano. In Stromboli, an island I have in my heart with its incredible volcano ‘Iddu,’ as they call it there, which I also have tattooed. There I feel like Andrea without Fofi, I live the island, the islanders (few, or rather very few now), and the friends who have lived there for many years. There no one asks for anything or asks anything of you if not the respect of it… the island, its times, its fragilities, the earth.”
You are about to open Nucleo. Sincerely: did you really need it? Or is it that strange hunger that comes to you when you feel that things are becoming too calm, too comfortable, and you need another mess to manage so as not to die of boredom?
“No, I didn’t need it, just as I don’t need many other things that pass through my head every day or rather in the middle of the night when I wake up suddenly and turn on my brain, which starts buzzing. What a chore, believe me. I have an irrepressible desire to be bored to death and do nothing, which is why I bought a farmhouse in Umbria during Covid to take refuge in (to tell the truth, even there you do everything except get bored, returning to the talk of the earth we were having before), but then the mess subconsciously prevails over me and I do things or I get involved in things. For this 2026 alone, I have ‘gifted’ myself two new pains, Nucleo and Cocktails in the City Rome, which we will launch in Italy, in Rome, in mid-May. I’m joking, I’m super excited and proud of the projects and the people involved.”
With your experience and your disenchanted gaze, can you still enjoy a drink in any bar or are you condemned to always see the error, the wrong glass, the ice that isn’t right? Tell me one thing about yourself that isn’t written in any press release, something that would make those who know you only through work say: ‘Is Fofi really this too?’
“I’ll answer by premising that I have never felt like an expert drinker or one with a superfine palate, besides not drinking much myself. Furthermore, if and as far as possible for me, I try to frequent bars and the scene as little as possible, but don’t ask me why as I won’t answer; those who know me well know why. That said, I have been lucky enough to travel around the world quite a bit and try a lot, and the answer today is still the same: no, I can’t enjoy a drink or a dish because I am a damn psychopathic observer who loves professionalism, especially in service. It may be a matter of mindset, but I catch everything and I criticize, always however with the constructive will to stimulate myself and those who work with me or for me to offer the best possible service. What is Fofi besides all this… well, I wouldn’t know, I prefer to let the people who truly know me say it. Fofi is an eternal dreamer, who believes in people while not trusting them (I always give at least one chance), who bets on them and who, despite being disappointed, continues to believe because life is made of people and therefore one cannot do without them, ergo… let’s believe in it as much as possible. But always alert to the scams that are anyway around the corner when you least expect them… unfortunately, there are also many TERRIBLE people.”
SUBSTANCE, NOT REFLECTIONS
Andrea Fofi doesn’t seek perfection for its own sake; he seeks consistency. Whether it’s the monumental growth of the Roma Bar Show towards the Nuvola, a dry-stone wall in Umbria, or the soul of Nucleo, his signature remains the same: that of someone who isn’t afraid to get their hands dirty to find a grain of truth. In an industry that often prefers the reflections of the glasses to the substance of relationships, he continues to bet on the human factor. With eyes open, guard up, and the awareness that, in the end, only what you build with vision and presence truly stands the test of time.
