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Published: 10 August 2021
If there is one image which sums up Easter, it’s the Lindt gold bunny, and while this classic icon is timelessly elegant on the outside, on the inside it’s changed with the times - for the better.
Lindt is actually Lindt & Sprüngli AG. It was created in 1899 out of a merger between top-class chocolate maker Lindt and famous confectioners Sprüngli & Son. The Lindt Company was famous for the invention of the ‘long conche’. This was a machine which stirred chocolate continually, thus producing a much finer consistency and also letting undesired aromas evaporate into the air.
Lindt was also one of the first chocolate makers to add cocoa butter back into the chocolate mass and his long conche made sure that it was distributed evenly throughout the liquid chocolate. These two procedures turned chocolate from something hard, chewy and quite difficult to eat into the melt-in-the-mouth, smooth and delicious product we know today.
This laid the foundations for Sprungli to turn a tasty treat into an art form.
Lindt has always been a premium brand and as such it has always paid a great deal of attention to presentation. Even its standard bars are packaged to highlight their quality and really have a presence on a shelf.
When Lindt produces special items for special occasions, you can be sure that they will be as gorgeous to the eye as they are to the mouth and nothing demonstrates this better than the famous Lindt gold bunny.
The story goes that back in 1952 one of the Lindt Maîtres Chocolatiers was looking out of the window of his home with his 6-year-old son when they spotted a real-life rabbit. The boy was delighted to watch it hopping about and started to cry when it left. Inspired by the boy’s reaction, his father crafted a rabbit out of Lindt’s finest milk chocolate, wrapped it in a golden foil and put a red ribbon with a golden bell around its neck, so it would not get lost.
Now, over half a century later, the Lindt gold bunny has become one of the classic symbols of Easter and its arrival is as eagerly awaited by adults as it is by children.
Over recent years, there has been increasing concern over the plight of small-scale cocoa farmers, who are the backbone of the chocolate industry. Lindt has moved to address this through both commercial and charitable initiatives. The commercial initiative is the Lindt & Sprüngli Farming Programme.
This programme has been operating since 2008. It pays a price premium for the cocoa beans used in Lindt chocolate and this extra money helps make it possible for farmers to apply good agricultural, social, environmental and business practices to their production process and also provides funds to develop rural infrastructure.
The charitable initiative is the Lindt Cocoa Foundation. This was founded in 2013 and aims to promote social and ecological sustainability right from the very starting point of the chocolate production chain.
If you would like to find out more about our Lindt products, browse our range of Lindt easter chocolate and Lindt advent calendars or contact our team today who are happy to help!
