Where did they find business partners in the era of no internet? From pharmacy to chocolate empire
Before there was Nestlé, there was milk chocolate. And before there was milk chocolate, there was Cailler. And before Cailler …just pure chocolate – bitter like old coffee.
For Europe, chocolate was not a dessert at the time, at least not for common people, and was consumed as a warm beverage or even as a medication. Same for Switzerland. Not because they adored authentic taste so much but rather due to the status and habit – those who could afford the drink of powdered cacao beans had actually got used to its specific taste.
The world-class chocolate story started for Switzerland from an observation made by a young man who travelled to Italy and grew into reputation for the whole country. There are, of course, no achievements without personal involvement, so in the following (almost) 60 years after that journey, the Swiss chocolate history was born from a personal ambition of a grocery store owner François-Louis Cailler, another food seller Charles-Amédée Kohler's curiosity, a chain of experiments by a chandler[=EX1] Daniel Peter, scientific knowledge about food a pharmacist Henri Nestlé had, and their common readiness to merge the efforts.
Family & neighbours
Do you know what your neighbours do for living? Daniel Peter knew. And was not afraid to make use of that knowledge.
He lived then in Vevey, 20 km from Lausanne, and professionally was far from cacao beans industry. He was earning well by selling candles. By 1860s though, kerosene lamps replaced candles and consequently, Peter’s business became useless. In a few years he married and happened to become one family with François-Louis Cailler who was his wife’s father. Cailler didn’t see the event – he had died 10 years previously – but his chocolate factory was already approaching its 45th anniversary while under control of the man’s wife and sons. Thus, Peter switched to chocolate industry.
Although this life turn was a concourse of circumstances, by the end of 1860s Daniel Peter very consciously reached another his neighbour Henri Nestlé with an idea of combining chocolate with milk (either condensed or powdered, both created by Nestlé) to get a new, more delicate dessert for sale.
Nestlé was working with his condensed milk at the time, so that’s what they tried. Then tried again. And again. And such was the process for the following seven(!) years until they found a good enough formula of milk chocolate and launched the product. Milk chocolate not just reached the market but became viral, and some four years later, in 1879, the two neighbours – a local citizen Daniel Peter and a Germany-born Henri Nestlé merged their efforts for the Nestlé Company.
View over Vevey. Image by R D, the Archive Team, CC0, Wikimedia Commons
Also in the story
- food technology experiments which led to new forms of chocolate
- the role of science in chocolate industry
- what happened when it became clear former partners had become competitors
- whose brand survived the longest and how
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[=EX1] a candlemaker