Specialty Food Magazine is the leading publication for retailers, manufacturers and foodservice professionals in the specialty food trade. It provides news, trends and business-building insights that help readers keep their businesses competitive.
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very happy in Switzerland. It's a beautiful country, number one, and everything works very efficiently. The quality of life is high, and you have everything you need in Zurich, the Manhattan of Switzerland. You can go 20 minutes and be out in nature, hike in a forest." In 2014, their youngest children, five-year-old twins, were about to enter the Swiss school system, and it tipped the scales. "We could debate it for the next 20 years or just make the move," he says. "Also, the business side was pushing us to come here." Moving Beyond Kosher Schmerling had always dreamed of creating something not limited to the kosher market. "I wanted to appeal to everybody," he says. "I'd been in the chocolate market for almost 20 years, so I was aware that the chocolate world was extremely competitive, and to come out with another chocolate bar was not good enough. I had to search for some- thing of extremely high quality with an authentic background story that would bring it together." MilkBoy's development turned out to benefit from his fam- ily's longstanding relationships with Swiss dairies and small farms, which generally have herds of 50 to 60 cows. European Union regulations and other factors were leading to a lot of consolidation. "The ones who didn't want to be part of a large dairy didn't see much of a future for themselves," he says. He heard of two young brothers in the Emme Valley (where Emmental cheese originates) who wanted to convert their family's century-old dairy into a microbrewery. It was called MilkBoy. Schmerling met with them and bought the brand. It was his voila! moment, the story he'd been looking for. A springtime custom in Switzerland is for 'milk boys' to lead cows in a procession up into the Alps where they roam freely and graze on lush grass for months. Villagers dress in traditional gar- ments and join in the celebration, called Alpaufzug (German for Alpine cattle drive). At the end of the summer is another festival when the 'milk boys' lead the cows back down into town. That story is retold on MilkBoy's evocative packaging, com- plete with cows, a goat, deer, mountains, pine trees, and chalets. Schmerling engaged a Swiss papercut artist to do the folk-art–style silhouettes that wrap around each chocolate bar. "The simple option would have been to restart this brand with cheese, but for me, my heart is much more in chocolate," he says. "I get much more excited about it." Creamy Swiss-produced milk is evident in MilkBoy's Finest Milk Chocolate, Finest Swiss White Chocolate with Bourbon Vanilla, and milk chocolate bars f lavored with lemon and ginger, or crunchy caramel and sea salt. Schmerling was aware that dark, milk- less chocolate also had to be part of the line to be considered among the top tier of small-batch brands. "Our first challenge was how do we reconcile a dark chocolate with a brand that's called MilkBoy?" he says. "How can we bring in Alpine f lavor?" He got the idea of adding essential pine tree oil to the blend. "It worked really well," he says. "If you close your eyes you can taste the Alpine air—earthy and refreshing." MilkBoy is sold in hundreds of outlets in the U.S., including specialty food stores and gift shops. Schmerling still oversees his family's kosher business in Switzerland even though he spends most of his time in Brooklyn building his artisanal brand. Not only Swiss ingredients but Swiss values are infused in MilkBoy chocolate. The brand is UTZ-certified, a European fair trade label. "Sustainability is something we care about, not because it's a trend, it's a real issue," Schmerling says. "It's important for the future of the cocoa farmers in West Africa and South and Central America. If people are paying $5 for a bar of chocolate, there's a disconnect if farmers only make a few cents. The Swiss people and our American customers care where the products are coming from." Schmerling has found other similarities between his life in Switzerland and new endeavors in the U.S. For one, he's discovered that New York City is not bereft of nature, surrounded by water and graced with Central Park and Brooklyn's Prospect Park. "It's not Alpine peaks," he says, "but for that I have a beautiful calendar of Switzerland on my wall." producer profile EMANUEL SCHMERLING, FOUNDER AND CEO Age: 43 Years in specialty food: 19 Favorite food: I can't go by a good- quality chocolate store and not stop to look at what they're doing—and try something. Least favorite food: I really hate airline food. Last thing I ate and loved: For our wedding anniversary, I had short ribs at a kosher restaurant in Manhattan called Mike's Bistro. They melted away. My wife had veal that was out of this world. If I weren't in the food business I'd be: Doing something challenging on a creative level. One piece of advice I'd give to a new food business: It takes a lot of patience and hard work so if you have a product you want to share with customers, you need to believe in it and believe in yourself. Julie Besonen writes for The New York Times and is a restaurant columnist for nycgo.com. 66 ❘ SPECIALTY FOOD MAGAZINE specialtyfood.com