By Lorrie Baumann

The COVID-19 pandemic has vitiated the strategic advance of André’s Confiserie Suisse chocolates from its home base in Kansas City and into the national market, but René and Nancy Bollier are regrouping to dodge around the roadblocks that the pandemic has set in their path. René is the grandson of Master Konditor-Confiseur André Bollier, the André behind the business’ name, while Nancy is the company’s co-Owner and Director of Marketing and Wholesale.

Beginning with André’s Confiserie’s debut appearance at the 2018 Summer Fancy Food Show, the couple has been pursuing a strategy to grow the company’s production of fine chocolates to supply more than the two shops that the company operates in the Kansas City metropolitan area and that had become popular places for local residents to stop in for lunch and perhaps a purchase of pastries and chocolates to take home with them. While René was overseeing production in the André’s flagship 25,000 square-foot facility in Kansas City, Nancy had embarked on a complete re-branding of their product line that the couple introduced at the show.

Their presentation attracted the attention of a Whole Foods buyer who offered them a pilot test in three Kansas City stores. “They really gave us a great opportunity to present ourselves in those stores,” René said. That was followed last year by an expansion into 32 stores in Whole Foods’ Rocky Mountain region. “We got positive feedback from that with a lot of holiday items. All locations showed a lot of positivity to what we do, how we do it, the fact that we focus on quality in both product and on the packaging itself,” René said. “Getting the buyers from the individual stores excited about the brand has encouraged them to talk about the brand, to talk about who we are as a family – a third-generation business – and that has really promoted sales.”

There is much for those local buyers to discuss. André’s Confiserie Suisse was founded by André Bollier and his wife Elspeth, who immigrated to the U.S. from Switzerland along with their five-year-old son Marcel at the urging of André’s brother, who was working in Kansas City as a Swiss watchmaker. André set up shop making Swiss chocolates, but it didn’t take him long to discover that he’d launched himself into a market where there was no understanding or appreciation of Swiss confectionery arts. The couple set up tables and chairs in their shop that attracted luncheon customers in and spent the next 10 years educating, educating, educating.

In 1974, André’s son Marcel and his wife Connie joined the business. André’s daughter Brigitte and her husband Kevin Gravino opened a satellite shop in Overland Park, Kansas in 2002, and René and Nancy joined the family business that same year.

By the time Whole Foods came into the picture, they’d charted a path to placing their products in retail stores they didn’t own themselves, and when the COVID-19 pandemic made itself felt in the U.S., Nancy was already in talks with other retailers. The pandemic, though, created uncertainties with respect to André’s’ work force and supply chain that put those discussions on hold.
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Nancy has recently resumed those conversations with retailers who are seeing an increased demand for chocolate. “We are very focused on product, on customer service. Everything we do is what it takes to get a foothold in those markets,” René said. “Retail stores have become a very important part of our business, although online has been a driver during the pandemic. If you can get the products on the shelves of the stores that are necessary for shoppers to go into on a consistent basis, we have seen great success for that.”

René and Nancy are also thinking about how they might be able to expand their product line to include, not just chocolates, but also some of the other items that the company has been serving in its two Kansas City-area stores. Quiche, for instance, was a great success in Kansas City before the Kansas City stores were subjected to COVID-19 restrictions on their business, and the Bolliers are thinking about developing that for sale through the company’s online store. “This is a long-term pivot, and we need to make sure that we’re positioning ourselves well so that when these situations come around, we have the ability to sustain the business,” René said.

While they’re waiting for the pandemic to ease its grip, they’re also using the time to expand their relationships with the national market, marketing through social media influencers with a reach beyond the Kansas City area. “We can increase our brand awareness so that when we go to retailers they can see that we’ve already had some exposure in their markets,” René said. “That’s really how we’re trying to grow the brand, how we’re trying to position ourselves.”

Product development has also continued, proceeding from plans that had been adopted prior to the advent of the coronavirus. As part of a partnership with Sel des Alpes, the company operating the Bex Salt Mine, the last operating salt mine in Switzerland, André’s Confiserie Suisse recently released its Salt of the Swiss Alps + Dark Chocolate Almonds and Salt of the Swiss Alps + Chocolate Caramels. Andre’s also recently released its Extra Dark 80% Chocolate Almonds, which feature extra dark chocolate combined with fresh-roasted almonds and extend the line for Andre’s Signature Chocolate Almonds, the company’s best-selling product.

Around that, the Bolliers are also preparing for a busy holiday season. “We’re forecasting an exceptional holiday season. We count ourselves very lucky that we have a really loyal following in KC and beyond, and we saw that during Easter, Mothers Day, Valentines Day, and even Fathers Day – usually Fathers Day isn’t that big of a deal for us – we saw exceptional sales, record-breaking sales during those times, which I was not prepared for. I was concerned that, with the amount of job loss that we’re seeing in the U.S., that people weren’t going to purchase luxury items like chocolate, but we saw that people were looking for ways to celebrate others, celebrate themselves, looking for ways to put joy into their own lives as well as others’, and things like high-end chocolate are one way to do that,” René said. “I truly believe that if you produce something that is high-quality, and you have it packaged in a way that makes it look special, people seek that out and are willing to spend a little more on that.”

For more information, visit www.andreschocolates.com.