The donuts Mabel, which were hugely successful in Brazil, were created by the Italian brothers Nestor e Udélio Scodro. They came from the region of Veneto.
The brothers Nestor e Udélio were born in a small town called Crespano Del Grappa, located in the province of Treviso, in the region of Veneto.
Still very young, the brothers decided to leave Italy right after the Second World War, to seek opportunities on the American Continent, as well as thousands of Italian immigrants did at that same time.
first came Udélio Scodro, who arrived in 1947. Two years later, in 1949, he invited his brother, Nestore Scodro, who arrived at 19 years old, to Brazil. In Italy, Nestore Scodro was an anti-fascist and had fought against the troops of Benito Mussolini and the Nazi Adolf Hitler. He was a musician, a violin virtuoso.
Upon arriving in the new country, Nestore initially thought about establishing himself as a classical musicianHe even played in dance orchestras. However, he eventually gave up music and, along with his brother, went into the business of assembling and selling ovens and other equipment for bakeries in the city of... Mococa, in the interior of the state of São Paulo.
Chance and donuts Mabel
Like almost every good success story, the beginning of manufacturing Mabel donuts it happened by chance. One day the brothers went to deliver one of the ovens and the customer didn't pay. So, they decided to bake a recipe for delicious coconut donuts which they had brought from Italy.
At first, the donuts were for personal consumption, just for employees' late-afternoon snacks. But they were so successful that the oven never stopped. In 1953, the Scodro brothers founded Mabel donuts in Ribeirão Preto, a city 113 kilometers from Mococa.
Only in 1962 the company opened its first factory, which produced maximum 500 kilos of donuts and cookies a day. Until 1967, the brothers sold the treats in a small fleet of kombis. It was at this time that they professionalized the company.
In the following years, the Mabel donuts fell into popular taste and quickly became market success and mandatory presence at children's school lunches.
Mabel donuts get their first factory
In 1975, its first industrial park was opened in Aparecida from Goiânia, in the state of Goiás. In the following decades, Mabel diversified its product line with the launch of butter cookies, savory crackers, wafer cookies e stuffed cookies, which quickly won over millions of consumers in Brazil and other countries.
In 2000, the company manufactured 4,7 million tons of cookies, which placed it as the fourth largest industry in this food sector in the country. But the year of a positive record for the company would also bring a tragedy. An plane crash caused the deaths of Udélio Scodro, his son Cláudio, managing director of the company, and three other directors of the group.
In the following years, Mabel's great success began to attract the attention of multinational companies of the sector, who made the first purchase offers. In 2001, Nabisco e Danone tried to close a deal. The following year, it was the turn of the all-powerful Nestlé. But Mabel continued to resist and preferred to pursue her path of success on her own.
And the next steps were innovation, with the launch of new products, such as new versions of its famous donut, which hit the market in 2006: Banana and Cinnamon Donut e Rosca Leite.
Product diversification
Furthermore, the brand anticipated the market trend of launching children's products, with the line Mabelokos, including sandwich cookies printed with animated characters, like the friendly little monsters lupy, Fred e Choby. In the following years, the children's line would feature characters from the series on its packaging. Simpsons and the movies Kung Fu Panda e Rio.
Another new feature was the premium line My dream, made up of 10 products focusing on noble versions of the chocolate flavor and aimed at adults, also free of trans fat. These products served consumers concerned about quality of life and that they had refined palate. The brand expanded its product categories, launching potato chips and even corn snacks.
In 2009, Mabel presented a line of donuts, Cookies e savory crackers in seven flavors and individual packaging with just 100 calories. Furthermore, the company invested R$10 million in marketing and placed 18 new products on the market, such as bottle butter flavored cream cracker, specifically to be sold in the northeast region of the country.
End of an era
Finally, in November 2011, after several attempts by large companies to buy Mabel, the North American company PepsiCo ended up acquiring the Brazilian business group for around R $ million 800. With this, Mabel gained even more distribution power.
In the following years, new developments continued to be launched, such as sequilinhos, or relaunched, like the line of Mirabel waffles, the famous 40-gram snacks that were successful in the 1980s and 1990s. The donuts gained versions with icing toppings, in the flavors lemon pie, passion fruit pie e coconut with condensed milk.
Currently, the company has factories in four Brazilian states: Goiás, Mato Grosso, Rio de Janeiro e Sergipe. Mabel is present in 20 countries and has estimated revenue of R $ million 500 and capacity to produce more than 1 million packages of cookies a day.
A life full of achievements
In 1998, Nestore Scodro moved to Miami ( United States. He could enjoy a retired life, but decided to open a company distributing cookies and manufacturing corn chips under the brand skinny.
In 2017, the book “The Good Old Way of Entrepreneurship”, by journalist Raquel Pinho. The work tells the saga of the brothers Nestore and Udélio Scodro, including part of their childhood in Italy and all their adventures in Brazil until they became mega-entrepreneurs in the food products sector.
Nestore Scodro is still alive, at 91 years old. He is a widower of Maria Luiza Scodro, whom he married in the early 1950s, who died in February of this year. And father of Sandro, Sonia e Sergio. Sandro continued to lead Mabel after his father moved to the United States until it was sold to PepsiCo.
Mabel donuts marked her childhood three generations of Brazilians, who never forgot the taste of this treat created by two italian brothers. Another huge collaboration for Brazilian industry with the fruit of work of Italian immigrants.
By Roberto Schiavon/Italianism
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