A few weeks ago, we visited the Frey Chocolate Factory with some friends and had a wonderful time.
Now we have visited a few chocolate factories already – all throughout Switzerland but this one has to be my favourite!
For me and for the boy, it was probably the most comprehensive journey through the entire chocolate production process, from the cocoa beans to yummy dark brown bars of chocolate, which we all love.
Each group of visitors was given a batch name and can enter the factory when your batch was called – ours was named Lucky 🙂 We each received a headset attached to a device which gave us a choice of languages and all we had to do to listen to the description of a particular exhibit is to point the device at the infra-red spot and push the button.
Most of the exhibits have a hands-on part. One of my favourites is this one which shows chocolate packaging design through the years, from the 1900s onwards. We could also take home a sample of the current packaging of one of their current popular chocolate.
There was also a cute giant box of chocolate where people could get in, dress up as a praline and take photos.
The kids liked the little digital game where they threw bars of chocolate via a motion detector.
And no visit to a chocolate factory would be complete without the tasting of the delicious brown stuff 😉 There was a whole conveyor belt full, along with 2 chocolate fountains where you can cover fruits with liquid brown gold – YUM!
i did not order it but there was the option get a photo of yourselves taken and printed on a chocolate bar. There was also a short quiz on a computer we could take to find out our chocolate type. We each got a computer print-out of the results and a custom chocolate recipe for our chocolate type.
Tobias got The Stylish and a Chocolate Cupcake recipe. i got The Curious Gourmet and a recipe for Fig and Chilli Chocolates 😉
There was one down side – they played this video which was screened on their big wall in the room about every 20 minutes or so and that messed up things if you were in the middle of listening to an exhibit.
Other than that, it was a great visit. i highly recommend visiting the Frey Chocolate Factory. The plus is that all their chocolates are fair-trade!
syc
trippingdifferently 