Two brothers and a factory in their parents’ house.

Frey began in Aarau, the capital of the canton of Aargau, in 1887. English and German Wikipedia say the brothers Robert (1861–1940) and Max Frey (1863–1933) founded the general partnership R. & M. Frey on 17 December 1887, with the first workshop in their parents’ house. The Historical Dictionary of Switzerland (HLS) puts it slightly differently: Robert opened the chocolate factory in 1887 and brought in Max as a collaborator the following year, when the firm began generating its own electricity.

Both brothers came with experience. Wikipedia says Robert had trained with the Lausanne chocolate maker Amédée Kohler et fils and worked with chocolate machinery in Paris, while Max had served a commercial apprenticeship in Zurich. Their timing was good: conching, developed in 1879, and milk chocolate, developed by Daniel Peter in Vevey, were changing what Swiss chocolate could be, and Frey used electrically driven machines from the start, English Wikipedia says.

From 1900 the firm worked in a former cotton mill in Aarau’s Telli district, and in 1906 it became a joint-stock company, Chocolat Frey AG, the HLS says. The First World War, according to Wikipedia, nearly doubled turnover through exports to Germany, France, Sweden and later Britain; the slump that followed brought the company close to collapse in the early 1920s. Robert Frey’s son, also Robert (1901–1968), gradually took over the management and kept the business in family hands.

Migros, Buchs and the Swiss market.

After the Second World War the board began looking for a partner, Wikipedia says, and in 1950 the retail cooperative Migros took over the company, making Frey, by Wikipedia’s account, the oldest business Migros acquired. Migros already owned a chocolate factory, Jonatal, but Robert Frey junior stayed in charge.

The company then moved to a new factory in neighbouring Buchs, where Migros brought together all of its chocolate, confectionery and sweet production. Construction began in 1963; the HLS and Delica date the move to 1967, while English and German Wikipedia give 1966. Chewing gum followed in 1974, making Frey, Wikipedia says, the only maker of gum in Switzerland, and turnover passed 200 million Swiss francs in 1985. The site, German Wikipedia says, covers around 70,000 square metres with its own rail siding, and has drawn heat from a nearby waste incinerator since 1984.

Frey grew into Switzerland’s largest chocolate maker. English Wikipedia, citing the industry association Chocosuisse, gives it a domestic market share of 34.9 percent in 2013, and French Wikipedia gives 33.2 percent in 2019; in 2015 the company had a gross turnover of 396 million Swiss francs, German Wikipedia says. Much of its output has been sold through Migros or made as private label for other retailers, with exports bringing in more than a third of sales. In 2014 it bought a majority stake in SweetWorks of Buffalo, New York, including a gum factory in Toronto whose closure Migros announced in 2020, German Wikipedia says.

The Frey name itself returned to international sale in 2007, Wikipedia says, through airport duty-free shops and trade partners, and from 2008 Frey and its Migros sister company Delica were run by a single chief executive. The range, according to German Wikipedia, has spanned solid and filled tablets, bars such as Risoletto, Blox and Branches, truffles, pralines and seasonal Easter and Christmas lines. A visitor centre opened at Buchs at Easter 2014 and closed in August 2020, German Wikipedia says, its space turned into a multi-purpose building for Migros.

Swiss chocolate, documented.

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.

A unicorn from the family crest.

The company is no longer called Chocolat Frey. On 1 June 2021 Migros merged it with four other industrial businesses, Delica, Midor, Riseria Taverne and Total Capsule Solutions, into a new Delica AG, headquartered in Buchs, foodaktuell reported; Frey is now a Delica brand. German Wikipedia says the brand was repositioned before the merger, with lower prices, and that Migros began stocking Lindt and Toblerone in April 2021. The Frey web addresses now lead to Delica’s site.

Delica says Buchs is where its chocolate and chewing gum are made, and that its chocolate is made in Switzerland from Rainforest Alliance-certified cocoa. Since 2012, the company says, most of its cocoa beans have come directly from the Necaayo cooperative around Allakro in south-western Côte d’Ivoire, where it describes itself as the cooperative’s exclusive partner. Frey has made the small red-wrapped chocolates handed out by Swiss International Air Lines since 2015, Blick reported, with both logos on the wrapper; the contract was renewed in 2024, German Wikipedia says.

The mark itself is documented. According to Wikipedia, the logo carries a unicorn’s head taken from the Frey brothers’ family crest, with the family name and the line “Chocolat Suisse depuis 1887” set beneath it on a red ground.

For a design guide, Frey shows how a family brand can live on inside a retailer, carried by a heraldic emblem and a single colour. Compare Cailler, the Nestlé brand made at Broc, and Halba, the chocolate maker owned by Migros’s rival Coop. For this guide we use Frey red, cocoa and milk with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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