Chocolat Suchard facts for kids
Chocolat Suchard was a famous chocolate company. It was started by Philippe Suchard in 1826 in a place called Serrières, which is part of Neuchâtel, Switzerland. It was one of the very first chocolate factories in Switzerland.
History of Suchard Chocolate
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The Suchard chocolate factory grew a lot thanks to Philippe Suchard's son, also named Philippe (who lived from 1834 to 1883). After him, his son-in-law, Carl Russ (1838-1925), took charge of the company from 1884 to 1924. When Philippe Suchard died in 1884, his daughter Eugénie Suchard and her husband Carl Russ-Suchard continued running the factory. Carl Russ-Suchard even opened the first Suchard factory outside Switzerland in 1880, in Lörrach, Germany.
The Suchard factory used the power of a nearby river to run its machines. They used special grinding mills with heated granite plates and rollers. These machines helped turn cocoa into a smooth paste. This made chocolate much cheaper to buy. Before Philippe Suchard opened his factory, a small chocolate bar could cost as much as three days' pay!
Even with new methods, chocolate was still quite expensive, so not many people could afford it. Philippe Suchard had some money troubles at the start. But things changed in 1842 when he got a huge order from Frederick William IV of Prussia, who was the king of Prussia and also the prince of Neuchâtel. This big order helped the company boom! Soon, Suchard chocolates won awards at the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London and the Universal Exposition of 1855 in Paris. By the end of the 1800s, Suchard had become the biggest chocolate maker.
In 1896, Carl Russ-Suchard was inspired by the success of another chocolate maker, Daniel Peter. He decided to create the first milk chocolate bar for Suchard. Then, in 1901, the company started using more machines for production. They also launched a new chocolate brand called Milka for the Swiss market. Carl Russ-Suchard chose a unique purple wrapper and a picture of a Simmental cow to show that Milka used real milk.
Suchard became a public company in 1905. In 1930, it changed into a holding company, which meant the family no longer owned it completely. Suchard kept growing in other countries and at its original factory in Serrières. In 1826, they made 30 kg of chocolate a day, but by 1924, they made 60 tons! The number of workers also grew from 100 in 1875 to 920 by the late 1960s. The company also started making other products, like Suchard Express (a chocolate drink) and Sugus (fruit candies).
Company Mergers
In 1970, Suchard joined with another chocolate company called Tobler. Together, they became a new company called Interfood. Then, in 1982, a person named Klaus Johann Jacobs bought Interfood, and it became part of his company, Jacobs Suchard. In 1987, Suchard bought most of the shares of the Côte d'Or chocolate company.
In 1990, a big company called Philip Morris (which was also based in Neuchâtel) announced they would buy Jacobs Suchard. In 1993, Philip Morris combined its European food business, Kraft General Foods Europe, with Jacobs Suchard AG. They renamed this new company Kraft Jacobs Suchard. Later, in 2012, this company spun off its chocolate and candy brands into a new company called Mondelez International.
The original Suchard factory in Serrières is no longer used to make chocolate. Mondelez moved the production of Suchard chocolates to the Toblerone factory in Bern in the 1990s. In 2015, Mondelez opened a new production line for Milka and Suchard chocolates at its factory in Bludenz, Austria.
See also
In Spanish: Chocolat Suchard para niños
