Nestlé's Bespoke Chocolate

Nestlé has long been known for making chocolate treats for the common man. Think Kit Kat or Crunch bars. But demand for pricier premium chocolates is growing faster than that of plain old candy. So the Vevey (Switzerland)-based company has devised a novel strategy to move up the value chain: customized confections. Internet shoppers in Switzerland and Liechtenstein can now order a taster pack from Nestlé’s Maison Cailler line of expensive Swiss chocolates. After nibbling the samples of five kinds of Ecuador-sourced chocolate with various cocoa content, consumers complete an online survey to determine their “chocolate personality.” They then can order larger boxes of the candies, marrying their favored chocolate with preferred fillings ranging from peppercorn and vanilla to raspberry and verbena.

The bespoke chocolate experience doesn’t come at Baby Ruth prices. A 16-piece box of the Maison Cailler chocolates costs 26 Swiss francs ($28.30). That’s just 128 grams of chocolate, or slightly more than 4 ounces, so these custom sweets price out to more than $100 a pound. Yet such luxe pricing can succeed even amid the economic downturn, says Laurent Freixe, head of Nestlé’s European business. “It may sound counterintuitive, but what’s happening in the [financial] crisis is a quest by consumers for value, for more-affordable product, but also for products that overtake their expectations.”