A sweets factory, a move to Waldenbuch and a bar for the jacket pocket.

Ritter Sport began in 1912, when Clara and Alfred Eugen Ritter opened a chocolate and confectionery factory in Stuttgart-Cannstatt, the company’s own history says. Its first chocolate brand, Alrika — short for “Alfred Ritter Kannstatt” — came out in 1919, German Wikipedia says, citing the company; the workforce doubled from 40 to 80 between 1920 and 1926. Short of space, the firm moved in 1930 to Waldenbuch, a small town south of Stuttgart that is still its home.

The idea that defines the brand is credited to Clara Ritter. In 1932, the company says, she proposed a chocolate that would “fit in every jacket pocket without breaking” while weighing the same as an ordinary long bar. It was launched as “Ritter’s Sport Schokolade,” and the square format replaced the Alrika name.

The following years were difficult. The company says it had problems obtaining cocoa and other raw materials under National Socialism, and German Wikipedia reports that from 1935 it switched to cocoa-free sweets such as jellies and fondants. From 1940 production stopped entirely, and the company dates the return of unrestricted cocoa supplies to 1950.

The second generation, led by the founders’ son Alfred Otto Ritter, then narrowed the business. In the early 1960s he decided to concentrate on the Ritter Sport brand and the square bar, the trade magazine LebensmittelPraxis reported in 2015, and German Wikipedia adds that revenue tripled between 1960 and 1970. The firm passed 100 million Deutschmarks in sales in 1972, manager magazin reported in 2005. In 1978 the third generation, Alfred Theodor Ritter and his sister Marli Hoppe-Ritter, joined the advisory board.

A script, a square and a colour for every variety.

The Ritter Sport mark has changed little. German Wikipedia, citing the trade magazine Absatzwirtschaft in 2022, says the Ritter script has stayed essentially the same since 1919; beneath it, “Sport” has appeared in large capitals since 1969, and from 1987 the logo has sat on a white field framed by a square. The lettering is usually blue, the square white and the frame gold. The slogan “Quadratisch. Praktisch. Gut.” — square, practical, good — has run alongside it for decades.

Colour became the system. English Wikipedia says the bars were wrapped in brown cellophane from 1947 until 1974. In 1974 Alfred Otto Ritter introduced the “Bunte Vielfalt”, or colourful variety, which the company calls a market revolution, in which every flavour has its own colour: yellow for the cornflake bar and white for the yoghurt bar, for example. In 1976 the company introduced the “Knick-Pack,” a wrapper that opens by snapping the bar in half along a fold, which it calls an unmistakable part of the brand. English Wikipedia says the packs moved to recyclable polypropylene in 1991.

The square itself has been fought over in court. Ritter holds the shape as a three-dimensional trademark, and Mondelēz International, owner of Milka, spent years trying to cancel it. Mondelēz first won at the Federal Patent Court, arguing that German trademark law excludes shapes determined by the nature of the goods. In October 2017 the Federal Court of Justice ruled that Ritter could keep its protection for the time being and sent the case back, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported. Mondelēz then argued that the shape gave the bars substantial value; the Federal Patent Court ruled for Ritter, and in July 2020 Mondelēz lost its appeal at the Federal Court of Justice, the Stuttgarter Zeitung reported.

Ritter has kept defending the square. In 2025 it sued the Mannheim firm Wacker over an oat bar called “Monnemer Quadrat Bio”; the regional court in Stuttgart dismissed the claim in January 2026 and Ritter appealed, the broadcaster SWR reported.

Chocolate and documentation.

The seven brands in this group all make chocolate, and they come from two neighbouring countries: Cailler, Frey, Teuscher and Halba from Switzerland, and Ritter Sport, Niederegger and Stollwerck from Germany. Between them they show how differently a chocolate name can be owned and run, even in two neighbouring countries.

Some chocolate makers belong to larger businesses, from food groups to retailers that make their own chocolate for their own shelves, and their brand has to work inside someone else’s system. Others are family firms, where the founder’s name is still on the door and the identity is handed down through generations. And Germany has its own specialities alongside the chocolate bar, such as marzipan, the almond-and-sugar paste that some makers have built a whole tradition around. Read together, the guides show how such different businesses present themselves — on the wrapper, in the shop and online.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — who founded it, who owns it now, where its cocoa comes from and where its chocolate is made — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Still family-owned, now led by the fourth generation.

The company has been in the family since its founding, German Wikipedia says. It is Alfred Ritter GmbH & Co. KG of Waldenbuch, held through a family holding company, and in May 2026 two great-grandsons of the founders, Moritz Ritter and Tim Hoppe, took over as joint heads of management, the company and SWR say, after the departure of the chief executive Andreas Ronken.

German Wikipedia, citing the group’s accounts, says the chocolate is made at two sites: Waldenbuch and Breitenbrunn in Austria’s Burgenland, a plant bought from Mars Austria in 2019 together with the Amicelli wafer-roll brand — the company’s first factory outside Germany. Ritter produced about 70,000 tonnes of chocolate in 2020 and held 22.4 per cent of the German market for 100-gram bars, just behind Milka, the Süddeutsche Zeitung reported.

Its cocoa story runs through Nicaragua. The company says it supported a first cocoa cooperative there, Cacao-Nica, from 1990; in 2012 it bought about 2,500 hectares of land to plant its own estate, El Cacao, with 1.5 million young trees, according to German press reports cited by German Wikipedia, and the company dates the first harvest to 2017. Since 2018, it says, it has bought only Rainforest Alliance certified cocoa.

The business has also been under pressure. Handelsblatt reported in January 2026 that revenue reached 712 million euros in 2025 but the company made a loss, and in April 2026 that it was cutting jobs for the first time in its history. In November 2025 Ritter bought Creative Natural Products of Boulder, Colorado, the maker of Chocolove, the trade paper Rundschau reported.

For a design guide, Ritter Sport shows how a single shape and a colour code can carry a brand for nine decades. Compare Stollwerck, another German chocolate name, and Zotter, the Austrian maker whose wrappers are its signature. For this guide we use blue, white and gold with pack colours and a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Ritter Sport’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.