Zotter opens flagship store in Essen

On 21 November 2009, the well known Austrian chocolate manufacturer opened its first specialist store in Essen. Located in a recently extended shopping centre, the attractively fitted out store, with 80 m² of retail space, offers a “chocolate theatre”, in other words it’s all on the go, nothing is static, with little paternosters carrying bars of chocolate or samples here and there. The first few days have shown the store to be a great success, with well over 1,000 customers a day crowding in to get to know a completely different chocolate manufacturer. (Picture: A chocolatier of a different kind in Essen)
The people in the shopping centre at Limbecker Platz in Essen are fascinated: a miniature cable car circuit runs round the whole store and carries bars of chocolate from one place to another. From the escalator in one of the shopping centre’s four rotundas you can’t miss the new Zotter store. Blinds on the cabinets seem to be drawn down briefly by an invisible hand, only to go up again automatically. A mini paternoster lift loaded with chocolates moves in a continuous loop from shelf to shelf. In the lower section of the split-level space, you come to a chocolate fountain pouring its liquid contents over a cascade of spoons. It’s just amazing, with lots to taste and, of course, to buy.

“Although we supply around 8,000 retailers all over the world, not one of them stocks the complete Zotter product range,” says Werner Luef (on the right in the picture below), the marketing manager of Zotter Schoko Laden Theater GmbH, explaining why it is necessary for the company to have its own model stores. A short time ago (1.10.09), a chocolate store was opened in Innsbruck in Austria where, on less than a third of the area of the store in Essen, the chocolate theatre performs. “Footfall is vital to us; chocolate is impulse buying,” is how Luef explains why they have selected locations like the one in Essen. Quite a high proportion of the crowds streaming past are tempted into the store. (Picture: Miniature cable cars)

And what you find there to sample is very impressive – you can try at least a dozen different flavours out of the total of 68. They include quite common flavours like almond or nut nougat. However, most of the bars of chocolate have rarer combinations of flavours that people have not come across before, such as orange-almond-mint, cranberry-thyme, sesame-sour cherry, celery-truffle-port wine, cherry brandy with marzipan, mango, chestnut, nutmeg-grapes. The spectrum of exotic flavours could almost go on for ever. (Picture on left: Try the tasty, chocolate-coated, dried sour cherries)

“We’ve even got pink coconut and fish marshmallows,” says Luef. Are we hearing correctly? Fish in chocolate? Yes, that’s right, because nothing is so way-out that we shouldn’t try it. “One of our best sellers is our hand-crafted chocolate with mountain cheese, hemp and mocha,” says Zotter’s marketing manager. And what about another new flavour? When you try it, it crunches startlingly between the teeth. “That’s the crackling (pork lard),” laughs Luef. They sell the whole gamut of chocolate with between 30 % and 100 % cocoa content. Whilst chocolate containing 100 % cocoa is hardly palatable, it is used by allergy sufferers in their own recipes. The company produces vegan chocolate with soya milk, and there’s also chocolate based on sheep milk instead of the usual cow’s milk.

The actual manufacturing of chocolate is carried on in Bergl in Styria in Austria, where most of the 100 employees work. The high value and highly priced Zotter chocolates are sold predominantly via specialist wholefood stores and confectionery and chocolate shops. As well as the colourful slabs, since the beginning of 2009 Zotter chocolate has been sold in unusual cardboard packaging in both the specialist and the conventional trade under the Mitzi Blue label. The format is that of a CD and it is intended to create an association with music.
(Picture: Chocolates temptingly on sale on the counter)

Much of what attracts people to Zotter chocolates is the colourful and varied designs on the packaging. They are the creation of the artist Andreas H. Gratze, who has been a friend of Josef Zotter since they were young. For years he has been designing the amusing figures and shapes on the packaging that stimulate the imagination and reflect the people living in other continents where the raw materials are produced. Product recognition is assured by means of a heavy black border and gold coloured printing. If you stand in front of a shelf of Zotter chocolates, you have the impression of being in a mini picture gallery.

Whilst Zotter’s main business is its wide variety of 70 g bars of chocolate (price: 2.99 – 3.20 euros), the company also sells pralines and a number of other articles in a product range that comprises 200 items. For example, in 2009 Josef Zotter brought out an attractive cookery book with the title “Alles Schokolade” (on the table in the picture on the right). So that you can get all these wonderful delicacies home in tiptop condition in warm weather, there’s even a bright cool bag (hanging on the wall in the picture) with a cooling element. And in the Essen store you can also buy shakers for cocoa (milk + melted chocolate), beakers and other products with attractive designs.

The new Zotter store in the Ruhr region has an attractive range of everything connected with the valuable cocoa bean, and, of course, all the chocolates are made from organic raw materials and are Fair Trade! To create even more transparency for the customers, the company wants to set up a traceability system so that the chocolate can be tracked back from the product to the grower.

In Austria Zotter has become such a cult that, mainly at weekends, around 200,000 people visit the company headquarters every year to see the “Chocolate Theatre”. “That’s often over 2,000 people every Saturday,” Werner Luef is delighted to report. But from now on, Germans need no longer travel all the way to Austria, because they can have the same experience in Essen or soon in other places too – the company is planning more stores in big cities like Berlin and Munich in the next few years. (Picture on right: Visitors crowding round the counter; in the background the escalator in the Essen shopping centre at Limbecker Platz)

Tip:
www.zotter.at