Discover Rhea

THE HERITAGE
OF TOMORROW

An Extended Family Business

Since its beginnings, Rhea has always been a family business, and it continues to be so to this day....

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RHEA. THE HERITAGE OF TOMORROW

An Extended Family Business

Since its beginnings, Rhea has always been a family business, and it continues to be so to this day. Ever since Aldo Majer, and later his son Carlo, laid the foundations to build what Rhea Vendors has become today, the values and ideals they passed down have remained strong throughout the years. With the passing of the Majers, Rhea became what we like to call an “extended family business”, where each person, from our colleagues at the Rhea branch offices around the world to the technicians on the factory floor to the Board of Directors, is a valued and cherished part of a tight-knit community. More than sixty years after Rhea’s founding, the company still feels like family: the affection and respect among all our people is a testament to the values that still characterise the Rhea team.

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DISCOVER RHEA

I HEAR THE
PLANET'S
URGENT PLEA

# SUSTAINABILITY

Sustainability has to be more than just a buzzword. It has to be part of a company’s core values...

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A JOURNEY OF A THOUSAND MILES BEGINS WITH ONE STEP

REALISTIC
SUSTAINABLE
GOALS

We all know that the planet can’t be saved by switching to paper drinking straws. But we also know that every little bit counts.
At Rhea, our commitment to a greener, more responsible future is rooted in the belief that every action we take today, however small, can help to shape a brighter tomorrow.
This translates into a holistic approach to doing business that recognizes the interconnectedness of economic success, societal well-being, and environmental accountability, all of which are essential for a sustainable, inclusive, and prosperous future.
Because sustainability isn’t just a buzzword for us. It’s a way of thinking, of working, of being.

THINK OF IT AS
CORPORATE HYGIENE

We don’t presume to save the planet ourselves. But we do understand that the choices we make in the present can have far-reaching implications, not only for future generations but – let’s be honest – for our own continued success.
In our pursuit of environmental sustainability, we have adopted innovative technologies and practices aimed at reducing our ecological impact. From energy-efficient machinery to eco-friendly materials sourced from eco-conscious partners, we strive to minimize waste and emissions at every stage of production. Indeed, ecology is built directly into the design of our machines, which feature modular components, energy-saving technologies, and certified FSC packaging.
You don’t need a slogan to understand the self-evident truth that a clean manufacturing operation is just smart business.

THIS IS
THE EASY PART

For Rhea, sustainability means not just respecting the environment, but respecting people. But that’s nothing new. Since our beginnings, in 1960, we’ve always understood that our success is intertwined with the well-being of our employees and the communities where we operate.
This is evident in our commitment to fair labor practices, workplace safety, and diversity and inclusion. We provide our workforce with opportunities for growth and development, fostering a culture of empowerment and equality by embracing the richness of varied perspectives.
It should be clear to everyone that a happy, healthy, and economically secure workforce makes for a thriving society, which is essential for the success of any business.
At Rhea, treating people with respect comes naturally. It always has. It’s who we are.

ETHICAL
GOVERNANCE

compound noun /ˈeθɪkəl ˈgʌvərnəns/

The set of principles, practices, and standards that guide the behavior and decision-making processes within an organization, prioritizing fairness, transparency, integrity, and trust;
Ensuring that a company’s actions align with its values and with the best interests of its stakeholders, i.e., employees, customers, and the broader community;
Fostering meritocracy and social diversity, fighting all forms of corruption, committing to equal rights and equal pay;
Securing a business’s long-term viability and reputable standing by consistently making ethical choices that benefit the planet and society as a whole.

There. We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.

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I CREATE THE
CHANGE I
WANT TO SEE

# INNOVATION

Innovation is a two-way street. The ideal company-customer relationship is where...

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INNOVATION

OUR SECRET FORMULA FOR THE PERFECT CUP OF COFFEE

Our award-winning patented Variplus technology is a system of three components – Variflex, Varigrind and Varitherm – which work together to coordinate the ideal brew pressure, grind, water quantity and temperature, customizing them for each drink within the selections offered by our machines. Unlike traditional coffee machines, Variplus adjusts all factors to make each drink unique, exactly how they’re supposed to be made. With Variplus, it’s like having a professional Italian barista at your service, 24/7

Variflex. The perfect brew pressure

Variflex is an adjustable brewer featuring an infusion chamber that adapts to the quantity of ground coffee required by the drink selection, thereby making the optimal use of the dose. The interaction between the mechanics and the software ensures the ideal brew pressure, which in turn means a perfect cup of coffee, every time.

Varitherm. The perfect water temperature

Varitherm is a heating system that adjusts the temperature of the water to the specific drink recipe requested. As any coffee expert will know, different grinds require different water temperatures and variable amounts of time in contact with the ground coffee. The same goes for frothed milk for cappuccino or straight milk for a café au lait. At last, you can enjoy a proper latte macchiato, with each layer – coffee, milk, foam – heated to the right temperature. Varitherm features Rheavendors’ patented induction technology, which means up to 80% savings on energy costs and consumption compared to traditional boilers.

Varigrind. The perfect grind

Varigrind is an adjustable grinder that communicates electronically with the variflex brewer to dispense the grind best suited to the drink recipe selected, from coarse to super fine, and with the varitherm induction heater to determine the ideal water temperature.

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I TASTE AN
EXPERIENCE
DESIGNED
FOR ME

# TAILOR MADE

Customization is maybe the coolest perk of this new world that’s evolving before our eyes...

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BELIEVING IN CUSTOMIZATION

BELIEVING IN
CUSTOMIZATION

For Rhea, tailor-made means listening to all our stakeholders, from the market to the operators to the end users, each of whom has different needs. Rhea is committed to supplying custom machines, proudly Made in Italy and designed to accommodate not only different corporate styles but different cultural habits as well, enabling us to deliver a machine tailored to your brand identity and the drinks best suited to the preferences of the local consumer.

TAILOR MADE

EMOTIONAL FORMATS

Our formats are invitations to unexpected emotions, retaining users through extraordinary gastronomic experiences that are easy to insert in contexts such us:

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I SEE THE
WAY I WANT
THINGS TO BE

# QUALITY

Quality is complicated. It is both measurable and intangible. It has to be intrinsic to the product, obviously. But I also have to be able to experience it.

Social Policy Activity on the Field

AB SOFTBALL CARONNO

For years, Rhea has been supporting the Caronno Pertusella Softball team, a women’s sports club that embodies the values of inclusion, fair play, and promotes the sporting and personal growth of all its players. AB Softball Caronno offers the opportunity to practice softball at both amateur and professional levels to girls, teenagers, young women and adults who find in sports an outlet for individual and collective expression. Rhea fully shares the values of this sport and this Sports Club, which is a reference point in the local area, known both nationally and internationally.

PULMINO AMICO

Rhea contributes to the PULMINO AMICO project for the Auser Senior Group in Caronno Pertusella, by providing a specially equipped vehicle for the transportation of people with disabilities on a free loan basis. Thanks to our support, the Auser group provides an essential and inclusive service to the local community, ensuring that those facing mobility challenges have easier and more dignified access to services and activities. This project has represented a significant step towards breaking down physical and social barriers, promoting the inclusion and well-being of people with disabilities in our community.

RHEA WOMEN SPARK

The Rhea Women Spark project is an internal training initiative developed by Rhea to promote female empowerment and contribute to the creation of a fairer and more sustainable work environment.

The training project, which began in 2022 and was led by Professor Lorenza Angelini – partner at Akron – involved, in the initial phase, 15 female figures from each department. The aim was to bring out their full potential, develop soft skills, and gain greater self-awareness and team-working abilities.

In the second part of the program, participants put their acquired knowledge into practice by becoming team leaders for the following projects, aimed at implementing initiatives to improve the well-being and experience of the entire company, and raising awareness about the importance of environmental and social sustainability:

RheallySustainable (RhealmenteSostenibile) to reduce waste and promote resource reuse.

RheaConnect (ComunicaRhea) to increase visibility of innovative projects and social and environmental initiatives implemented by the company.

WeRhea has created a periodic newspaper, entirely produced by employees, which not only informs about company activities but also includes sections on passions such as food, photography, and much more.

WellnessRhea (BenessereRhea) to organize activities aimed at improving employee well-being and mutual knowledge, including yoga classes, meetings with nutritionists, and eco-walks.

LiveRhea (ViviRhea), a practical guide on internal procedures aimed at new hires, to facilitate easy and positive integration.

Social Sparks to promote the Rhea Women Spark project using various internal and external communication channels.

A day in production to discover the beating heart of the company through a direct experience.

WOMEN4

Rhea has joined Gi Group’s Women4 project, an initiative aimed at promoting female employment in sectors traditionally dominated by men. According to a study conducted by FIM Cisl in 2023, only one out of five employees in metalworking companies in Italy is a woman, highlighting the need for initiatives like Women4 to promote gender equality in the workplace.

In collaboration with Gi Group, Rhea has launched the 100% Employability Academy for Mechanical Assembly Operators. Six women have had the opportunity to participate in a free training program aimed at acquiring specialized skills and developing soft skills in the company’s production department. After successfully completing the course, these candidates were hired as Mechanical Assembly Operators at Rhea with an open-ended contract through Gi Group’s staffing services.

This project represents another step forward in Rhea’s initiatives for the professional advancement of women.

DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS

Since 2020, Rhea has been supporting Doctors Without Borders with various projects to aid those who are on the front lines every day, helping people in need around the world. To further raise awareness and promote the activities of the non-profit organization, Rhea has designed, at the beginning of 2024, a special version of the Monolite project dedicated entirely to Doctors Without Borders. Monolite for Doctors Without Borders interprets the theme of social sustainability and – through the power of imagery – tells the heroic work of DWB workers, who every day provide healthcare and assistance where the right to care is not guaranteed. In this context, Monolite is not just an object, but a tangible message of solidarity.

Each of us can do our part to contribute to creating a better world. If you also want to support Doctors Without Borders, click here.

SEED OF INSPIRATION

Rhea, always committed to social sustainability and aiming to promote the integration of people with disabilities into the workforce, participated in this important social entrepreneurship project, Seed of Inspiration, by developing a coffee machine. Rhea studied and created an interface that allows blind or visually impaired people to prepare coffee by managing the selection through touch.

The project, which saw the opening of their first shop at Shanghai Times Square in 2022, is promoted by David Wang, founder of the Bear Paw Café. The seed is a symbol of birth and hope; indeed, Seed of Inspiration was created to give the opportunity to blind people (a community that exceeds 12 million people in China) to enhance their professionalism, eventually becoming co-owners of the coffee shop.

In designing the interface for the visually impaired, Rhea integrated a simple technology into an existing machine. A tactile panel with six raised shapes, each corresponding to a different recipe, replaces the touch screen: a square for espresso, a circle for double espresso, a triangle for Americano, a diamond for room temperature Americano, a star for hot water, and a heart for room temperature water.

The automatic coffee machine has then become easily usable by Tian Bao, the visually impaired barista at the Bear Paw Café.

This partnership shows the potential of automatic machines and technological innovation in promoting the inclusion and equality of people with disabilities in the workforce, opening up new career prospects and inspiring other communities to follow this example of empowerment and solidarity.

Discover Rhea

INVENTING
THE FUTURE

The power of imagination

Rheavendors has never been satisfied with simply keeping up with the times: we’ve always been ahead of them...

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RHEA. INVENTING THE FUTURE

The power of imagination

Rheavendors has never been satisfied with simply keeping up with the times: we’ve always been ahead of them. In the past twenty years, Rheavendors’ machines have undergone a drastic restyling focused on functional design, user-friendliness, and quality. Looking to the future, we realised that the vending world needed to be increasingly versatile, with machines dispensing a wider range of quality products, accepting new forms of payment, offering easier and more dynamic interfaces.
So that’s what we did.
Today, our know-how goes far beyond patents and intellectual property: it is our human heritage, a collective treasury of experience, knowledge, and skills that is not meant to be gatekept but passed on and shared.
And above all, it is the imagination that Aldo Majer demonstrated when he turned the knob on that first gumball machine way back in 1960. Since then, we have strived to imagine what comes next, expanding the horizons not only of the vending industry, but also our own. We recently celebrated our 60 years of history with Kairos, an exclusive machine based on an idea by Davide Livermore.

Beyond Functionality

Rheavendors transcends national boundaries, leveraging intercultural exchange to continuously adapt and introduce new concepts that respond to evolving market demands. We understand that machines must speak a universal language of user-friendliness and reliability, crucial for winning over consumers. The new millennium sees Rhea increasingly committed to innovation and the exploration of cutting-edge technologies. Our focus extends beyond functionality to encompass greater economic and environmental sustainability, the improvement of the man-machine relationship and, above all, the assurance of product quality. And by that we don’t just mean the machines themselves, but the overall experience of interacting with them and the “in-cup quality” of the products they dispense.

“The work of fine-tuning a machine to respond to people’s preferences could be compared to playing a piano. There is a keyboard that you can play boldly or delicately, in line with people tastes”, Carlo Majer once said.

Designing new attitudes

The design of Rhea’s machines has always distinguished us from the competition. Back in 1960, Angelo Mangiarotti, a renowned industrial designer and architect, designed Rheavendors’ first vending machine. That was a turning point, as it set the scene for decades of collaboration with world-class designers who captured the spirit of the time and transformed it into current trends, such as Michele De Lucchi, Angelo Micheli, Massimo Iosa Ghini, Ferruccio Laviani, Bruno Morassuti, Franz Bergonzi, Well Design and Luan Peter Hasnay. We pursued a vision of impeccable design on the outside, and state-of-the-art technology on the inside.
While it’s true that one shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, there’s no reason why a great book shouldn’t have a beautiful cover. After all, the whole point of good design is to visually communicate the intelligence and functionality of the internal technology, and the quality of the products they dispense.

Making it personal

Throughout the ‘80s, as the culture of coffee continued to grow, so did Rheavendors. At the time, it was easier to find a proper Italian espresso or cappuccino in the break room of a French factory than in a Parisian café. So Rhea decided to embark on a vast territorial expansion, matched only by that of its own beverage menu. We were the first to introduce the innovative concept of “coffee cocktails”, such MoccaCino and latte macchiato, and we offered classy touches such as sprinkles of powdered cocoa on a cappuccino, or hints of milk foam to transform an espresso into a macchiato. Rheavendors showed how automatic retailing can, and should be, a personal matter.

The Coffee Ritual

Responding to the growing sophistication of the coffee-drinking public, Rheavendors decided to invent and build the first whole-bean espresso vending machine with a built-in grinder. With a focus on design, innovation, and reliability, Rheavendors started selling the new machines at an incredible pace. Bruno Morassuti, designed an elegant espresso machine which landed a place in the permanent collection of New York’s MoMA. The automatic retailing concept was catching on in a world whose increasingly hectic pace demanded that coffee breaks to be both more frequent and more efficient. What better solution, therefore, than a machine that occupied minimal space, looked great, and also provided an opportunity for workers to join in that democratic ritual of chatting over a good cup of coffee?

How it all started

It’s incredible to think how one of the world’s leading coffee machine manufacturers started off with a simple gumball machine. Aldo and Giuliana Majer’s original business was always looking for original ideas to expand their expertise, and one day they decided to prototype a sketch by their friend Angelo Mangiarotti, one of Italy’s first and greatest industrial designers. The result was a masterpiece of mechanical and formal simplicity, a powerful icon of the Italian Sixties: the gumball machine. And so, Rheavendors was born. By 1962, it was already the first Italian manufacturer to offer an integrated range of vending machines for cold post-mix drinks, hot soluble drinks, and packaged snacks. Rheavendors has taught the vending market that automatic retailing is much more than a simple transaction: it’s about trust, values, and above all, family. Our clients can rely on the continuity of vision and moral integrity passed down from the Majer family, who supplied smart and tailor-made machines while respecting the original Italian recipes and traditions.

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Doctors Without Borders. How coffee can help

What happens when forces unite for a noble cause? Explore our partnership with Doctors Without Borders as they work on crucial medical missions worldwide and join us in honoring their extraordinary efforts with our new edition of Monolite.