Know-how, capital and a chocolate factory in Zagreb.

Kraš traces its history to 1911, when the Union factory opened in Zagreb. The company says it was founded by Julije König, who brought “his knowledge and experience in making sweets,” and Slavoljub Deutsch, who brought “his capital.” Kraš describes Union as the first industrial chocolate maker in south-eastern Europe, and says that in 1913, only two years after opening, it was granted the title of royal court supplier to the court in Vienna and Budapest. Both are the company’s own claims.

The company’s timeline, which Croatian Wikipedia follows, sketches Union’s growth between the wars. Soft caramels and desserts followed in 1920, and the chocolate works and sweet lines were modernised in the 1930s, when, the company says, Union began writing its first advertising slogans. In 1935, according to the timeline, a schoolboy who later became the children’s writer Ratko Zvrko came up with “Bilo kuda Ki-Ki svuda” — roughly “wherever you go, Ki-Ki is everywhere” — for the Ki-Ki sweets; Croatian Wikipedia says the line is still popular across the region. In 1938 Union began making thin 15-gram chocolate bars, which the company counts as the forerunner of its children’s bar Životinjsko carstvo.

A second Zagreb firm, Bizjak, began making rusks, biscuits and wafers in 1923, on Savska cesta, Croatian Wikipedia says; English Wikipedia also names Bizjak as one of the two factories behind Kraš. During the Second World War, the timeline says, Bizjak worked without a break, supplying both civilians and the army.

A new name in 1950, and the sweets that made it.

In 1950 Union, Bizjak and a number of smaller Zagreb confectioners were merged into one company and named after Josip Kraš, a trade-union activist and communist who, English Wikipedia says, was killed by the Ustaše in Karlovac in 1941 and was later proclaimed a People’s Hero of Yugoslavia. The new company was socially owned, the Yugoslav form of public ownership.

Its best-known products date from the following decade. Bajadera, a layered nougat with almonds and hazelnuts, had first been packed inside boxed assortments; English Wikipedia says it became a separate product in 1954, and in 1997 it received the Izvorno hrvatsko (“Authentically Croatian”) label from the Croatian Chamber of Economy. Croatian Wikipedia says it was the first product to carry that label. The newspaper Novi list marked its 70th year in February 2024, reporting that Kraš keeps the recipe secret.

The thin bars became Životinjsko carstvo — “the animal kingdom” — in 1956, when, the company says, the first album was printed: each bar came with a picture card of an animal for children to collect and paste in. The timeline counts the 1.5 billionth bar as made in 2012. The chocolate-covered tea biscuit Domaćica followed in 1957; Croatian Wikipedia credits its creation to Petar Tutavac, describing it as the graduation work of the first trained biscuit maker in Yugoslavia, citing Večernji list.

Packaging and display were part of the story. The company opened its first shop, the Kraš Bonbonnière, on Ilica in central Zagreb in 1952, and says the striped 505 s crtom sweets won an “Oscar” for their packaging in 1959. In 1972, by the company’s account, Monde Selection awarded a gold medal to Griotte, one of its boxed assortments. Other launches on the timeline include the Kraš Express cocoa drink in 1978, which the timeline says arrived in the shape of a locomotive’s chimney; the Nugatini hazelnut spread in 1986; and Bananko, a banana-flavoured foam stick covered in chocolate, in 1991.

After a flood in Zagreb in 1964, the biscuit and wafer works moved to a new plant at Ravnice, the company says, and in 1999, the company says, production that had been scattered across Zagreb was brought together there. In 1996 its chocolate bars were gathered under a single brand, Dorina.

Food brands of Eastern and Central Europe.

The seven brands in this group all make food, and they come from Poland, Ukraine, Russia, Austria and Hungary, Croatia, the Czech Republic and Serbia: Sokołów, Roshen, Krasny Oktyabr, Kotányi, Kraš, Hamé and Bambi. Food brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from family firms that still carry a founder’s surname to names that now belong to much larger food groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a corner shop to a supermarket shelf.

A food brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single product than by a pack, a name and the meal or treat it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its factory or grown far beyond the town where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its food is actually made and packed.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its food is made and how its packaging has changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

From social ownership to the Pivac group.

Kraš was turned from a socially owned enterprise into a joint-stock company in 1992, and its shares trade on the Zagreb Stock Exchange. English Wikipedia, citing the weekly Globus, says it lost two-thirds of its market after the break-up of Yugoslavia. It expanded again within the region: in 2003 it took over Mira of Prijedor, a biscuit and wafer maker in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and in 2011 it bought Karolina of Osijek, a biscuit and wafer maker founded in 1891, which, English Wikipedia says, was fully integrated into the Kraš group in 2021. In 2012, citing the news agency HINA, English Wikipedia says it was Croatia’s second-largest food exporter after Podravka.

Control changed in 2019. On 23 November 2019 the meat processor Mesna industrija Braća Pivac bought 18.45 per cent of Kraš from Kraš-ESOP, the vehicle for employee shareholders, and became the majority owner, the Pivac group announced and Poslovni dnevnik reported. Alongside the share purchase the parties signed a social-partnership agreement with the food-industry trade union, in which Pivac committed to further investment, to protecting workers’ rights and to keeping production at the existing sites. As of July 2020 the Zagreb Stock Exchange listed MI Pivac Brothers with 52.86 per cent and Kappa Star with 30 per cent, according to English Wikipedia.

The company’s own pages and the group structure listed on Croatian Wikipedia put its factories in Zagreb, at Ravnice, in Osijek (Karolina) and in Prijedor (Mira), with sales companies in neighbouring countries. Its slogan is “Okus koji spaja generacije” — “the taste that connects generations.”

For a design guide, Kraš shows how a regional confectioner can carry a slogan, a collectible card series and a praline across three political eras. Compare Wawel, the Kraków chocolate maker, and Roshen, another large Eastern European confectioner. For this guide we use a praline red, cocoa, nougat cream and foil gold with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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