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CHRISTMAS

#AdventCalendar: The curious history of the chocolate box you’re bound to receive this Christmas

Each day of December up until Christmas Eve, The Local is sharing the story behind a surprising Swedish fact as part of our own Advent calendar.

Published: 19 December 2019 06:59 CET
#AdventCalendar: The curious history of the chocolate box you're bound to receive this Christmas
Has it really been Christmas if you haven't dug into one of these? Photo: Fredrik Sandberg/SCANPIX/TT

If you're spending part of the Christmas season in Sweden, chances are high that at some point you'll be digging into a bright red chocolate box with the name Aladdin.

The boxes contain a selection of pralines and truffles, a mix of dark, milk and white chocolate with fillings including orange truffle, chocolate crisp and rum and raisin.

People in Sweden buy 2.5 million of Aladdin boxes each year, almost 2 million of them over the Christmas season, and they are a perfect go-to for that hard-to-buy-for relative, a Secret Santa exchange or, let's face it, the person you almost forgot. 

So how did Aladdin become the official Swedish Christmas chocolate box?

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The box was first produced by Swedish chocolate makers Marabou in 1939, available in three different sizes with a 500-gram box costing four kronor at the time.

Marabou were copying British confectioners Rowntree & Co, who had launched boxes of a variety of chocolate flavours a few years earlier and, with some clever marketing, were able to turn their ailing finances around. 

The first Aladdin boxes were filled with the company's 18 most popular individual chocolates (since Swedes are huge consumers of pick'n'mix, that data was readily available). With a simple design and fixed content, it lent itself perfectly to mass production, allowing for a low price point.

In 1957 the alternative chocolate box Paradis was introduced, with no dark chocolates since these became less popular with customers in the post-war period.

The contents has changed over the years, with fruit creams dominating at the start, to be replaced by many liqueur chocolates in the 1970s, and today nougat is the most popular flavour. In 2014, the three-nut and cherry liqueur flavours were ditched in favour of raspberry liquorice and elderflower (the latter was replaced by lime in later years) to a huge uproar and unsuccessful campaigns to bring them back.

While the exact selection might vary over time, there are two rules to be aware of if you'll be celebrating Christmas with Swedes and an Aladdin box. Firstly, never take from the lower of the two layers until the top one is completely empty (even if all your favourite truffles are gone) and secondly, don't take the final chocolate from the box.

Each day until Christmas Eve, The Local is looking at the story behind one surprising fact about Sweden, as agreed by our readers. Find the rest of our Advent Calendar HERE and sign up below to get an email notification when there's a new article.

 

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FOOD AND DRINK

OPINION: Are tips in Sweden becoming the norm?

Should you tip in Sweden? Habits are changing fast thanks to new technology and a hard-pressed restaurant trade, writes James Savage.

Published: 5 April 2024 13:59 CEST
OPINION: Are tips in Sweden becoming the norm?

The Local’s guide to tipping in Sweden is clear: tip for good service if you want to, but don’t feel the pressure: where servers in the US, for instance, rely on tips to live, waiters in Sweden have collectively bargained salaries with long vacations and generous benefits. 

But there are signs that this is changing, and the change is being accelerated by card machines. Now, many machines offer three preset gratuity percentages, usually starting with five percent and going up to fifteen or twenty. Previously they just asked the customer to fill in the total amount they wanted to pay.

This subtle change to a user interface sends a not-so-subtle message to customers: that tipping is expected and that most people are probably doing it. The button for not tipping is either a large-lettered ‘No Tip’ or a more subtle ‘Fortsätt’ or ‘Continue’ (it turns out you can continue without selecting a tip amount, but it’s not immediately clear to the user). 

I’ll confess, when I was first presented with this I was mildly irked: I usually tip if I’ve had table service, but waiting staff are treated as professionals and paid properly, guaranteed by deals with unions; menu prices are correspondingly high. The tip was a genuine token of appreciation.

But when I tweeted something to this effect (a tweet that went strangely viral), the responses I got made me think. Many people pointed out that the restaurant trade in Sweden is under enormous pressure, with rising costs, the after-effects of Covid and difficulties recruiting. And as Sweden has become more cosmopolitain, adding ten percent to the bill comes naturally to many.

Boulebar, a restaurant and bar chain with branches around Sweden and Denmark, had a longstanding policy of not accepting tips at all, reasoning that they were outdated and put diners in an uncomfortable position. But in 2021 CEO Henrik Kruse decided to change tack:

“It was a purely financial decision. We were under pressure due to Covid, and we had to keep wages down, so bringing back tips was the solution,” he said, adding that he has a collective agreement and staff also get a union bargained salary, before tips.

Yet for Kruse the new machines, with their pre-set tipping percentages, take things too far:

“We don’t use it, because it makes it even clearer that you’re asking for money. The guest should feel free not to tip. It’s more important for us that the guest feels free to tell people they’re satisfied.”

But for those restaurants that have adopted the new interfaces, the effect has been dramatic. Card processing company Kassacentralen, which was one of the first to launch this feature in Sweden, told Svenska Dagbladet this week that the feature had led to tips for the average establishment doubling, with some places seeing them rise six-fold.

Even unions are relaxed about tipping these days, perhaps understanding that they’re a significant extra income for their members. Union representatives have often in the past spoken out against tipping, arguing that the practice is demeaning to staff and that tips were spread unevenly, with staff in cafés or fast food joints getting nothing at all. But when I called the Swedish Hotel and Restaurant Union (HRF), a spokesman said that the union had no view on the practice, and it was a matter for staff, business owners and customers to decide.

So is tipping now expected in Sweden? The old advice probably still stands; waiters are still not as reliant on tips as staff in many other countries, so a lavish tip is not necessary. But as Swedes start to tip more generously, you might stick out if you leave nothing at all.

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