Italy’s oldest barista Nonna Anna is still going at 100

Grandma Anna is up and at it again, just like every morning, day after day, week after week – for 65 years.

At 100, Grandma Anna or Nonna Anna as Anna Possi is known in this picturesque village above Lake Maggiore, is Italy’s oldest barista.

For more than six decades – since 1958 to be exact – Nonna Anna has been opening her Bar Centrale at 7 am. It closes at seven in the evening in the winter and at nine in summer – 365 days a year.

In November, Nonna Anna celebrated a century of living – and there’s a sign on her cafe to prove it: La barista più longeva d’Italia or the oldest barista in Italy, to remind guests of her achievement.

But despite all the pride, there is a problem: Italy’s café bars, many of which are family-run, are running out of new blood.

There are 132,000 cafés between South Tyrol and Sicily, compared to 20,000 more 10 years ago, according to the latest figures from the National Hotel and Catering Association Fipe. The reasons for the decline are almost the same everywhere: working days of 12 to 14 hours, low wages, high rents and now even higher commodity prices for coffee. Being a barista is not an attractive job alternative for young people, the trade group says.

Yet café bars are an integral part of everyday life in Italy. A caffè, what is known in many other parts of the world as an espresso, or a cappuccino in the morning, often with a cornetto pastry, another cup or two at lunchtime and then an aperitivo in the evening is the everyday routine for many Italians. Whether you’re in a big city or a small village, you see each other and talk about this and that, about football more so than politics.

Open all year round – even at Christmas

This is also the case with Nonna Anna, who is of course an institution in Nebbiuno. She officially retired at 60 back in 1984.

“But why should I stop? My bar is so much more than work for me. It’s my life,” she says.

She is even at the machine on Sundays and public holidays.

“People want to drink their coffee at Christmas too.” Her last holiday was in the 1950s – eight days in Paris.

Possi was born a few kilometres away, in Vezzo, also above the lake. Once she had finished school and World War II was over, she worked in a restaurant on Lake Geneva for a few years. It was there that she met her husband René, a Swiss national. Together they bought the bar in the centre of the village of Nebbiuno. But René has now been dead for half a century after a heart attack.

“Today, everyone just looks at their mobile phones”

Sometimes her daughter Cristina, 61, who works diagonally opposite in the town hall, helps out. She also lives directly above the bar, in the flat next door. Possi’s son lives 75 kilometres away in Milan and her two granddaughters are already out of the house. So even at the age of 100, she does most of the work alone from morning to night. She even chops the wood for the small stove herself.

Nonna Anna doesn’t earn much money. A caffè costs €1.20 ($1.30), a cappuccino €1.50. If there are no tourists, she has no more than €40 in her till on some evenings. She receives a pension of €590.

“But I don’t need much. The important thing is that I’m around people. Then I feel good.”

But: “People used to sit here, talk and play cards. Today, they all just look at their mobile phones,” she says. When there’s nothing to do, she takes out her knitting.

No glasses – and half a tablet a day

And her health? “My head is still going strong and so are my bones,” says Nonna Anna. The last time she saw a doctor was two and a half years ago, she claims. Her daughter Cristina says it was more like five.

She doesn’t need glasses, but she does need a hearing aid though she says it never works. And, as far as medication is concerned, she only takes a single tablet a day, for high blood pressure.

“But I only ever take half a tablet. You don’t have to believe everything the doctor says.”

Italy’s oldest barista no longer has any big plans. “I used to want to go to Paris again. But that’s probably not going to happen,” she says.

“It doesn’t matter: the French don’t know coffee anyway,” she adds mischievously.

Daughter doesn’t want to take over

She has no illusions about what will happen to the Bar Centrale.

“When I’m gone, my bar will be gone too.”

For a while, she hoped that Christiana might take over, but her daughter is not planning to do so. Nonna Anna shrugs her shoulders and takes out her knitting again.