Chocolate from the weaving mill

The young Migros AG circumvented the boycott against it by helping to build a chocolate factory in Wald in the Zurich highlands. JOWA began supplying Migros with chocolate in 1931 and then later with sweets, ice cream and fresh pastries, too.

Gottlieb Duttweiler was forced to sell imported chocolate products to his customers because Swiss chocolate producers were boycotting Migros. Foreign chocolate in the birthplace of chocolate! Heinrich Spoerry, an entrepreneurial textile manufacturer, stepped forward to help extricate him from this absurd situation. Given the crisis in the textile industry and the resulting unemployment, Spoerry began producing biscuits in a disused mill and delivering them to Migros. The two men jointly established the «Jonatal AG chocolate factory in Wald», known simply as JOWA. The first chocolates, Finarom and Bonarom, the «people’s milk chocolate», were launched in January 1939. At only 25 Rappen, a bar cost half as much as a commercial brand’s bar.

It’s hardly surprising, then, that the factory in Wald was soon bursting at the seams. Production was moved to Meilen in 1941 and ten years later, JOWA built the first of many subsidiaries in Zurich-Albisrieden. At the same time, it handed over some of its chocolate production to Chocolate Frey, which Migros had recently acquired. This meant that JOWA could increasingly specialise in baked goods.