"Chocolatiers make 50% of their sales" during the holidays

• Artisanal chocolate, confectionery and biscuit companies are very active at the end of the year, where they generate the majority of their turnover.

• The president of the confederation of chocolatiers and confectioners of France, Thierry Lalet, explains that the sector is very attractive for young people.

• The organization has launched a “committed chocolatiers” approach to ensure that cocoa producers have fairer remuneration.

No less than 3,000 craft businesses exist in France around chocolate, confectionery and biscuits.

Nearly 500 of them are members of the Confederation of Chocolatiers and Confectioners of France, which defends the know-how of these sweet sectors.

During the end-of-year holiday period, these professions experience a high period of activity for which they have no difficulty in recruiting reinforcements because the sector remains attractive.

The point with Thierry Lalet, president of the confederation and manager of the Bordeaux store Saunion, on this sector to which everything smiles.

How do you prepare ahead of the end-of-year rush?

This is a very big peak of activity for us since on average an artisan chocolate maker achieves 50% of his turnover between December 10 and January 10.

It is very important because it will decide the good health of the company in the future months to start a new year.

Depending on the type of company, reinforcements may intervene for manufacturing and sales.

In others, like mine, we don't have reinforcements in manufacturing because the staff is already large, but in sales, because the customers all arrive at the same time.

You should know that when the chocolate has just been made, it is not there that it is the best, it takes two to three days for all the aromas to stabilize, so you can anticipate your shopping a little. .

How has the energy crisis affected your business and has this already led to higher prices?

In craftsmanship, we are more on a mid-range and high-end positioning.

Chocolate requires a lot of labor and a lot of patience, you don't release a product like that: there are rest times and a lot of phases.

At an artisan chocolatier, the price of a kilo of chocolate is on average between 60 and 110 euros per kilo in the Provinces and in Paris it is rather 160 to 180 euros per kilo.

There was a small increase in September on chocolates in general, but it was not cocoa that increased but rather all the other raw materials and to this is added the problem of energy.

Our machines work at night when they remain in the heating position.

If we stopped them and started them again in the morning, we would have to wait four to five hours before the chocolate melted again, which is unmanageable for our commercial activity.

How did your craft businesses weather the health crisis in 2020 and 2021?

Our products have been good antidepressants to get through this crisis better since we were lucky enough to be open.

It had no interest for the first confinement but for the second, it was a comfort product.

We organized a delivery service and we observed a resumption of local consumption habits.

How does the confederation work with National Education on updating the CAP chocolatier?

We are working to update it so that it is consistent with our businesses.

There are gestures that we no longer do, because we are equipped with machines, but for all that, we must not lose the know-how.

In the course of the old exam formula, they were asked, for example, for a chocolate cake to be baked. In some companies, like mine, we don't bake pastries at all.

A young person who has stayed two years in this type of company, therefore finds himself doing one to validate his diploma without having completed one during his internship in a company.

We think it is better to focus on the basis of our profession, that is to say knowing how to create interiors and mastering them perfectly rather than wanting to set up a multi-drawer diploma.

Does the sector recruit easily?

We are not a job in tension, we benefit from a rather positive image by the product and the working conditions.

A family life is possible by being a chocolatier, it's not like baking, you work very little on Sundays.

You also don't have to get up at 4 a.m. because chocolate isn't as perishable as a cake.

Today one of the most visible changes on the profiles is that we have 50% or even more girls in schools.

The confederation has initiated a “committed chocolatiers” approach

We live from our work and we employ staff, but at the same time, those who produce our main raw material, cocoa, cannot live from it.

40% of growers earn less than one euro a day worldwide: we can't go on like this.

There is a gap which is not logical so we wondered how to help these planters to live decently from their activity.

We spoke with a cooperative in Cameroon and we came to an agreement.

We have set up specifications, in exchange for fairer remuneration with, in particular, 50% of the harvest paid upstream.

We hope to develop this approach of “committed chocolatiers” also in Togo, Benin and South America.

To distinguish ourselves from the industrial and we need a fine cocoa, with organoleptic qualities other than the tablet sold at 1.50 euro.

The fair trade channels that already exist are rarely secure and we wanted to eliminate all intermediaries.

We regularly go to the plantations ourselves.

The industry consumes 90% of the chocolate produced, but with this project we have put a small grain of sand in the gears.

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• Economy

• Chocolate

• Christmas

• Christmas presents

• Gastronomy