Business history of Philippe Suchard confectionery company

Philippe Suchard (1797–1884) was born in Boudry, Switzerland. In 1814, he started an apprenticeship in confectionary with his older brother Frédéric in Berne. In the year 1825 Suchard opened his first confectionery shop in Neuchâtel, Switzerland. He offered fine chocolate made by hand and laid the cornerstone for Suchard's success.

In 1825, Philippe Suchard opened a confiserie in Neuchâtel, and a year later, in 1826, he set up a chocolate factory in Serrières, where he raised manufacturing standards and lowered prices.

With just one worker, he was already producing 25 to 30 kg of chocolate per day. He invented various machines and devices. The one that is very important to the chocolate production is a special machine to mix sugar and cocoa powder to make the chocolate a homogeneous mass.

By 1833 Suchard was the largest chocolate company in Switzerland, producing half of the nation’s total production, employing approximately 250 people.

After Philippe's death in 1884 in Neuchâtel, his daughter, Eugénie Suchard and her husband Carl Russ-Suchard, took over the functioning of his factory. Carl Russ-Suchard opened the first Suchard factory abroad in 1880 in Germany, at Lörrach, the first in a series of international expansion efforts. In 1901 Suchard established the Milka chocolate brand, one of Europe's oldest and most popular brands of milk chocolate.

The Suchard and Tobler companies joined forces in 1970 to form Interfood, which Jacobs’ coffee company joined 12 years later to form Jacobs Suchard. The Tobler company began in 1867 when Jean Tobler, formally Johann Jakob Tobler, opened a small shop called Confiserie Spécial in Switzerland.

In 1990 Kraft General Foods acquired Jacobs Suchard, making it number one in the European roast and ground coffee market and a leader in confectionery.
Business history of Philippe Suchard confectionery company