By CHUCK OFFENBURGER

CERRETO LANGHE, Italy, Sept. 21, 2025 — For the last six days in the northwestern part of this nation, we RicheBurgers have been been on what I’ve kiddingly branded “our Kyle and Sharon Krause Italian roots tour.”

The Krauses are business leaders based in the Des Moines area whom Iowans have known over the past 50 or so years as the founders and operators of the Kum and Go chain of convenience stores; Solar Transport fuel trucking; Liberty Banks; farm properties; minor league teams in soccer, basketball and baseball, and more. They have been generous donors, especially to Iowa’s colleges and universities, K-12 Catholic education, several arts & cultural initiatives, and more.

In the last 10 years, as Kyle Krause began delegating his corporate responsibilities as chairman and CEO to his sons and other top employees, he also began making investments — which now total in the hundreds of millions of dollars — in interesting businesses and initiatives in Italy, the country of his mother’s heritage.

 

“Casa di Langa” hotel in the hilly wine country of northwestern Italy.

So, as my wife Mary Riche and I began planning a 16-day adventure in Italy that we are completing this weekend, we decided to have it include a celebration of our third wedding anniversary; a visit with our friend Amy Worthen, an artist and art historian who for decades has divided her time between homes in Des Moines and the Italian city of Venice, and visits to the Krauses’ businesses in the Piedmont region of Italy.

Here’s what we saw and experienced:

—We spent four days and nights at their “Casa di Langa” hotel, located in the gorgeous hills of wine-making country here. It is the finest, coolest and best hotel I’ve ever stayed in, and I’ve been in some good ones around the world. It is a 39-room “boutique” and “eco-conscious” hotel where the emphasis is on complete comfort for its guests and “sustainable elegance” in their operation. It has “5-Star” rating among the best hotels that exist. Casa di Langa’s general manager Eva Codina will explain more about what an unusual and courageous development this hotel has been by the Krause Group. And I’ll tell you more about it in this column and in future ones, too.

—We spent an afternoon at each of the two wineries that the Krauses have purchased, both of them founded back in the 19th century, and both still named after the families that founded them. They are the Enrico Serafino winery in the town of Canale and the Vietti winery in the town of Castiglione Falletto. On Friday, when we mentioned to a restaurant manager in the city of Alba that we had toured both the Vietto and Enrico Serafino wineries, he said immediately, “The best brands in the land!” I wrote about the Vietto winery in a column this past week, and in an upcoming one, I’ll introduce you to one of several key hires the Krauses have made in Italy —Nico Conta, the president of Enrico Serafino. He’s a classic Italian businessman.

—We had hoped to spend a weekend in Parma, the city where the Krauses bought the professional “Parma Calcio 1913” men’s soccer team five years ago, and where they started a women’s pro soccer team in 2023. Alas, neither team was playing at home while we were in the country. The men, in their first three games this season, are winless, with one draw and two losses, but there is real hope among fans around Parma for the enhanced roster the team seems to have now. The women don’t open this season until the first weekend of October.

A promotional poster that Kyle Krause’s Parma Calcio 1913 professional soccer teams put out in recent days to salute the fifth anniversary of Kyle’s ownership of them.

I want to make it clear that Kyle and Sharon Krause were not here with us as we were visiting their businesses, and we paid our own way for our travel and all accommodations. Kyle gave me answers to a few background questions by email, but he has not yet had time for an interview with me. The staffs at the Krause Group’s Italian businesses have indeed been kind, patient and cooperative with our persistent questions and photo-taking.

My overall impression?

The Krauses’ hotel, wineries and soccer teams are first-class operations. They have owner investment, vision, experience and commitment that have at first surprised the managers and employees we interviewed. People around the three small communities and one city (Parma) they’re operating in, were at first worried about a new ownership team coming in from the U.S. But Kyle Krause has won the confidence and support of most of them.

In short, the Krauses have represented Iowa very well in Italy.

There’s been a major business change for the family since their 2023 sale of the Kum and Go stores, Solar Transport and maybe other parts of their empire to Utah-based Maverik. That company was a competitor with its own huge chain of convenience stores, most in the American west. Maverik is now re-branding the 400 or so Kum and Go stores in 11 states.

The family’s collection of businesses is now named the “Krause Group,” with their headquarters remaining in the very impressive Krause Gateway Center in downtown Des Moines, where they’ve been since late 2018. That striking building was designed by the famous Italian architect Renzo Piano, whose other recent credits have included several of the notable new buildings around New York City.

 

Ten levels of terraces, made of granite, wood, iron railings and lavish plantings, coming down the center of Casa di Langa, with the bottom level being the “infinity” swimming pool. (Photo by Mary Riche)

One of their biggest business projects now back home is the “Pro Iowa Soccer Stadium and Global Plaza” project, proposed for the southwest corner of downtown Des Moines. The Des Moines Register has reported that would include a 6,300-seat stadium for new professional men’s and women’s teams playing “USL Championship Soccer,” which is one step below Major League Soccer in the U.S. On the men’s side, that would have the Des Moines teams competing against teams from such cities as Birmingham, Tampa Bay, Las Vegas, Miami, Indianapolis, Charleston, Orange County, Sacramento, Phoenix, Tulsa, Pittsburgh, San Antonio, El Paso, Colorado Springs and others.

The “global plaza” would have new hotels, restaurants, bars, and mixed-use housing.

The soccer part of the big project, including the stadium, is reported to have a cost of about $93 million, of which $75 million has been raised — including $23 million from Kyle and Sharon Krause. Add in the Global Plaza elements, with all those other business and housing developments, and the total price of the whole large project could stretch to $500 million, according to the Register coverage.

The City of Des Moines, Polk County and the State of Iowa have all made pledges of various amounts.

After what I’ve just seen of the Krause Group projects in Italy, I believe more than ever that the “Pro Iowa Soccer Stadium and Global Plaza” is not only a good idea, but it must happen. Kyle Krause is at the top of his business-building game right now, and if he can’t see his business ideas materializing in Iowa soon, I think we’ll be seeing them happen somewhere else.

Now, a few more observations about the “Casa di Langa” hotel.

If you get there — and I recommend you save up some money and do so — you will be shocked at how rural the hotel is. The closest town, Cerretto Langhe, has a population of 397. Albaretto Della Torre, atop the ridge a mile away, has 215. Nearby Roddino, where Kyle and Sharon Krause have a home, has 389.

“When Kyle bought this property in 2017, he bought what had been an abandoned construction project,” said Eva Codina, the hotel’s general manager. “The previous owners had in mind building a hotel on the site, but they ran out of financial resources. It sat here for 15 years, more or less a big hole in the middle of the countryside, dead grass all around it, and the local people were not happy about it. When Kyle bought it and we started to work on it, the local people really responded well. They appreciated that we were finally making it happen, and, of course, the construction company we used was from right here in the area, so that meant a lot of jobs for them.”

The Krause Group hired architects and interior designers from Milan, who worked with the construction company from the immediate area.

They completed the construction and opened in the spring of 2021.

 

The staff of about 70 has been expertly trained for hospitality service. “We had to do a lot of training,” Codina said. “Now, we see the results. I answer every online review from our customers personally, and this year we’ve seen so many compliments.”

You get reviews like that when your hotel offers, among dozens of other nifty little touches, cork coasters for your drinks, crystal glasses and glass carafes for your in-room drinking water, ceramic cups and saucers for your in-room espresso and tea, peaked ceilings as high as 20 feet in the rooms, heavy cotton robes for guests, wood boxes dispensing Kleenex, luggage racks made of solid wood with leather straps, and even this — toilet seats “handmade in Italy” from the company “Cielo,” with that company name translating as “heaven” or “paradise.”

And there’s a lighted bocce ball court, of course.

The bocce ball court at one side of Casa di Langa. (This photo and those below are by Mary Riche, unless otherwise credited.)

A terracotta wall of a Casa di Langa walkway, one that works about like the louvered wood side panels of a grain storage building used to do.

The photographer Mary Riche with a huge, antique, terracotta bin that was once used for storage of flour. It’s now one of the art pieces at Casa di Langa.

The “infinity” swimming pool at the bottom of Casa di Langa’s terraces. The water from the pool spills over its outer edges, to be collected by a system of pipes which return the water for other uses around the property.

A gardener in his John Deere electric gator passes a distinctive sculpture on the grounds of Casa di Langa. Most of the art pieces on display on the hotel grounds, in the guest rooms and in the common areas around the hotel are contemporary originals by well-known artists from around the world.

A huge tub of trailing petunia flowers just above one of several sitting areas around the hotel’s grounds.

The herb garden outside the Casa di Langa kitchen and dining room. The red fruit in the foreground are pomegranates.

A gorgeous and delicious fermented carrot salad at Casa di Langa. All parts of the salad were grown in Casa di Langa’s gardens.

Mary Riche on the fitness trail.

A medallion on the wall at the entrance to Casa di Langa.

 

—

You can comment on this column below or write the columnist directly by email at chuck@offenburger.com.