Salted caramel, cassis truffle, princess nougat – everyone should find what they are looking for at the colorful selection at the “Chocion” counter in Ottobrunn. He can even have a good conscience when enjoying the delicacies, because all the chocolate there comes from fairly traded ingredients. This is particularly important to owner Andreas Mohrs. “I’d rather have a little less, but better chocolate,” says the 49-year-old, who has built up a second mainstay with his praline business. By profession he is actually a pilot for a major German airline. He and his team come up with all sorts of ideas for the customers. For Valentine’s Day, for example, there are hearts made of milk or dark chocolate, decorated with words like “I love you” or “I love you”.
The native of Munich got his sweet second job through one of his travels when he saw children carrying sacks of cocoa beans on a cocoa plantation in the Ivory Coast. More than two million children in West Africa are still engaged in slave labor, says Mohrs. He wanted to do something about this suffering. He is now doing this by only using cocoa beans directly from the producer for his chocolates and by paying the workers so that they can send their children to school. His company only uses milk from Bavaria, with the farmers receiving at least 40 cents per liter of milk. Mohrs has pralines and chocolate produced in his own factory near Rosenheim.
Even if he doesn’t stand behind the counter as often as he did last year when his employees were on short-time work due to the pandemic, the man from Ottobrunn is involved in all processes. He knows exactly how his pralines are made: first the shell is poured, then the ganache, i.e. the filling, is prepared and finally filled by hand with the piping bag into the cooled shell. In the end, everything is covered with chocolate and finally decorated with bittersweet stripes.
He and his team never run out of ideas. They are in the process of creating a tea praline for a tea manufacturer. Mohrs and his people are also happy to implement suggestions from customers. “As a small manufacturer, you can do something like that well,” he says. Only recently did he visit the International Sweets Fair in Cologne to get an overview of the latest trends and to collect ideas for upcoming events such as Easter.
Completely independent of the trend and season, the “Chocion” has a long-running favorite that is also Mohr’s favourite: the König Otto truffle, a dark or light cherry truffle, covered with dark or milk chocolate. “When you bite into it and the cherry mixes with the ganache, it’s a smile-inducing treat.”