How the new Farmer bar is made

Before entering, I must remove my jewellery and swap my pencil for a metal biro. This can't splinter if I drop it, and if it unexpectedly falls into something, metal detectors will spot it. We are at the Farmer production plant in Meilen (ZH), where the very first bars of the new vanilla and raspberry-flavour variety are being made.

The idea for this new combination arose at a Farmer workshop at which fans of the bars could submit and then vote on ideas for new creations. Although the vanilla and raspberry entry didn't top the online poll, it proved so popular that the mixture of raspberries, vanilla and white glaze can now also be found on Migros shelves. The winning creation, combining dates, almonds and pistachios, has been on sale at stores since the summer of 2024.

Sugar adds a crunchy bite

Our tour of the production plant begins at the stainless steel vats. "This is where the syrup for the bars is boiled," explains Marcel Bosshard, the project manager for the development of new varieties at Migros Industrie company Delica.

The syrup is used to keep the ingredients stuck tightly together. Sugar adds a crunchy, crispy bite too. Cereal bars contain significantly less sugar than they used to, explains Marcel Bosshard, who started his career as a baker and confectioner, before training as a business process specialist. This reduction involved a lot of trial and error, he says.

While the syrup is simmering away, I spot two large containers; one filled with chopped oatmeal, the other puffed rice. These ingredients are mixed with the warm syrup and then transferred to a conveyor belt. A levelling roller is then used to squash the mass into an even layer, a bit like flattening dough using a rolling pin, only on a much larger scale.

Five hundred bars a minute

A machine then sprinkles a carefully dosed amount of crumbled dried raspberries on top. This ensures that each bar is covered in exactly the same amount of fruit. In the next step, the 80cm-wide mass is cooled and sliced into 25 bars, each 10cm long and just over 3cm wide.

The machine that moves the bars from one station to the next appears to be operating at a leisurely pace. But looks can be deceptive. "We produce up to 500 bars a minute here," says production manager Elisabeth Beckhoff.

Every now and then, an employee picks up and weighs individual bars to check whether all the settings are correct. The conveyor belt goes around a bend to the next station, where the undersides of the bars are briefly dipped in a bath of white glaze. Surplus glaze is allowed to drip off.

Any residual excess is removed by a machine to ensure the bars have a perfect shape and don't get 'chocolate feet'. The system performing this procedure has a charming name: the 'de-tailing wave'. "You just made that up," Elisabeth Beckhoff jokes. "No," replies Marcel Bosshard with a smile, pointing to a sign on the machine that confirms its name.

Famous throughout the land

The further we go on, the louder it gets. We eventually reach the packaging station, where all employees wear noise protection equipment. The systems operate at high speed around the clock. A packaging machine wraps individual bars in film and seals them, before sorting them into boxes that will eventually end up at Migros stores.

Staff rarely need to intervene – unless, for example, the film fails to wrap around the bar properly. Luckily, that doesn't happen very often. A total of seven people working in three shifts ensure that everything runs smoothly.

The output is impressive: Delica produces about nine million packets of Farmer bars a year. It's therefore hardly surprising that eight out of ten people in Switzerland know these sweet-tasting bars. Perhaps the new vanilla and raspberry bar will now become their favourite.