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Swiss chocolate café at centre of hostage drama

UPDATED: A café owned by Swiss chocolate maker Lindt & Sprüngli was thrust into the centre of international news by a hostage-taking incident on Monday that ended in a hail of gunfire leaving three people dead and four injured in downtown Sydney, Australia.

Published: 15 December 2014 19:55 CET
Swiss chocolate café at centre of hostage drama
Photo: Channel 7/AFP

A gunman known to local police and identified by local media as 50-year-old Man Haron Monis held 17 employees and customers at the Lindt Chocolate Café in Martin Place.

Police officials declared the siege was over almost 17 hours after it started when numerous hostages left the café just before officers stormed the place and gunfire could be heard in TV video footage.

Police confirmed the hostage-taker died along with two of the hostages, a 34-year-old man and a 38-year-old woman, while others were injured.

The café in 2004 became the first of four such outlets to open in the Australian city.

Now there are a total of eight Lindt cafés in Australia, with the other four located in Melbourne.

 "We are devastated by the loss of their lives and that several others were wounded and had to experience such trauma," Lindt said in a statement.

The Zurich-based chocolatier does not have any such cafés in its home base of Switzerland or anywhere else in the world, although there are reported plans for one in the US.

Images of the café in Sydney's central business district beamed around the world on Monday, as the hostage taker forced two women hostages to brandish a black Islamic banner with an inscription in Arabic against the café’s window.

A photo taken by Channel 7 news shows the women holding the banner above the Lindt logo below which the words Merry Christmas are printed on the glass.

News reports said five people had initially managed to leave the café.

After more than 15 hours, at least five more hostages were seen leaving the café, some with their hands up after a noise that sounded like a bang was heard in the building.

“We would like to thank everyone for their thoughts and kind support over the current situation at the Lindt Café at Martin Place,” Lindt said in an earlier statement published on its Australian website at the onset of the drama.

“We are deeply concerned over this serious incident and our thoughts and prayers are with the staff and customers involved and all their friends and families,” the statement said.

“The matter is being dealt with by the authorities and we are waiting for any updates from them.”


One of the first hostages to leave the café runs toward a policeman. Photo: AFP
See also: SWEDES WITNESS SYDNEY CAFE HOSTAGE DRAMA

The Lindt cafés are part of a chocolate empire founded in 1899 by Rodolphe Lindt, the son of a Bern pharmacist, and Rudolf Sprüngli, a Zurich pastry chef and chocolatier.

The company is now a global giant with sales last year of 2.88 billion francs ($2.97 billion).

Lindt has expanded beyond its Zurich base to operate six production sites in Europe and two in the US.

The company says it distributes its products in 100 countries around the world.

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CHOCOLATE

Swiss chocolate consumption falls to 40-year low in pandemic

The desire for comfort food during the pandemic has failed to boost the fortunes of Swiss chocolate.

Published: 2 March 2021 18:13 CET
Swiss chocolate consumption falls to 40-year low in pandemic
Photo: STEFAN WERMUTH / AFP

Swiss chocolate makers were perhaps expecting a sweet spot as people turned to comfort food during the pandemic but are instead facing devastating 2020 figures showing consumption in Switzerland melting to a 40-year-low.

Chocosuisse, the national federation of Swiss chocolate makers, painted a bleak picture this week of the impact that the Covid-19 crisis had taken on the industry, with plunging production, exports and even consumption.

And Lindt and Sprungli, one of the wealthy Alpine nation’s most famous chocolate makers, published its annual results Tuesday detailing a nearly 11-percent drop in its 2020 revenues, to 4 billion Swiss francs ($4.4 billion, 3.6 billion euros).

Amid lockdowns and a pandemic-fuelled economic crisis last year, it may not be surprising that Swiss chocolate makers overall saw their production fall, shrinking 10 percent compared to 2019, to 180,000 tonnes, according to Chocosuisse.

And exports, which account for nearly 70 percent of Swiss chocolate makers’ revenues, fell by more than that, slumping 11.5 percent in 2020, to 126,000 tonnes.

More surprising perhaps is that the country renowned for its love of high-quality cocoa products, where people gobble up more chocolate per capita than anywhere else in the world, also saw consumption drop.

Lowest since 1982

In fact, annual consumption fell to below the symbolic threshold of 10 kilogrammes (22 pounds) per person, dipping to 9.9 kilos — the lowest level since 1982.

A major contributor to the drop, Chocosuisse chief Urs Furrer told AFP, was the steep decline in foreign tourists, who tend to tip the consumption scales.

The per capita chocolate consumption in a country is calculated by dividing the volumes sold by the number of inhabitants, leading to inflated figures in Switzerland, where chocolate treats are a favourite souvenir.

“It would be impossible to calculate the exact consumption of residents, because in shops, the salespeople do not know if their customer lives in Switzerland or is a tourist,” Furrer said.

But the absence of tourists is not the whole explanation for last year’s decline. In Switzerland as elsewhere, the health crisis and accompanying restrictions including forced teleworking, has had a clear impact on consumption habits.

“Consumption also dropped in areas that are usually crowded with passers-by, like train stations and city centres,” Furrer said, pointing out that chocolate was often an impulse buy by people on the move.

Physical distancing requirements have also taken a toll on social occasions where handing over a box of chocolates might be expected.

“The sale of gift boxes of pralines has also declined,” Furrer said.

At the same time however, the sale of raw products like chocolate masse usually used by chocolatiers, bakeries and patisseries rose last year as more amateurs delved into making their own sweets at home.

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