Caffè Vergnano opens its first café on the island of Ireland
The Italian roaster picked Limerick, not Dublin, for its Irish debut, backed by a local operator and Coca-Cola HBC, with nine more openings planned by the end of the year.
Caffè Vergnano Limerick: the Italian coffee roaster opened its first café on the island of Ireland on Catherine Street on 15 September, 144 years after Domenico Vergnano opened a grocery shop in Chieri, near Turin.
The Limerick café is owned and operated by local entrepreneur Shane Gleeson under licence, not run directly by the Italian company. Vergnano has used the same model to expand abroad for years, pairing its coffee and training with operators who already know the local market.
Coca-Cola HBC Ireland and Northern Ireland, which distributes Vergnano's beans and capsules in the country, backed the opening, giving the roaster a distribution partner already selling into Irish cafés and supermarkets before the shop's doors opened.
Skipping Dublin for a first Irish site is unusual for an international coffee chain.
Ten shops on the roadmap
The Limerick opening is the first result of an expansion plan Vergnano announced in May, covering ten new coffee shops in Italy and abroad by the end of 2026. The company has not said which cities come next, though its recent European openings have favoured secondary cities over capitals, including a first Budapest site earlier this year.
Founded in 1882, Vergnano is among the oldest of Italy's large roasters still under family control, now run by the fourth generation from a headquarters in Santena, outside Turin. The company entered coffee farming directly in the 1930s, when it bought a Kenyan plantation, a rare move for an Italian roaster at the time.
A city, not the capital
Skipping Dublin for a first Irish site is unusual for an international coffee chain, most of which open in the capital before expanding regionally. Limerick's own restaurant and café scene has drawn steady investment over the past two years, and Vergnano's arrival adds an Italian name to a market where Ireland's Chef of the Year, Wade Murphy, has argued fine dining needs less formality, not more imported prestige.
Whether Limerick gets a second Vergnano site, or the next opening goes elsewhere, depends on how the Catherine Street café performs over its first winter.
