Ritter Sport: Distinctive, Vibrant, Engaging And Sustainable. An interview With Nicole Miltenberger, Marketing Manager GTR On This Remarkable Company
10 minutes read
Introduction by: Peter Marshall
I am so pleased to present this profile of such a highly regarded, family-owned business that is so much an integral part of our global travel retail community.
PETER MARSHALL (PM): Welcome to Trunblocked.com, Nicole. Let me just go back a bit in time and start by asking: how was TFWA Cannes for you last year? What was new from Ritter Sport?
NICOLE MILTENBERGER (NM): As always, TFWA Cannes was a fantastic experience. There is an incredible sense of excitement when the world of travel retail comes together in one place. It provided us with the perfect opportunity to have valuable conversations and make contacts that drive business forward.
Last October we showcased some exciting new product developments. At Ritter Sport, we are known for our commitment to using high quality ingredients, for example our 100% certified cocoa, that most of our recipes are without added flavourings and we have more than 100 years of experience with chocolate. All of this not only reflects our values, but also ensures that our consumers have an indulgent and satisfying chocolate experience. Our diverse range of flavours is living proof of this, and we are constantly working to expand our portfolio with new and exciting options that elevate the taste.
One of the outstanding Ritter Sport mini launches last year was the new mini Salted Caramel flavour. With crunchy caramel pieces and a subtle salty note, it offers a perfect balance between sweetness and crunchiness, allowing consumers to experience true indulgence with every bite.
This exciting new flavour has been available from March 2025 in two of our best-selling formats in a new mix variety – the mini Tower pink and the mini Pouch pink, offering a unique blend of sweet, salty, fruity and crunchy flavours.
We are also updating our popular Vegan Tower, which has been part of our Travel Retail Editions range since 2023. So, from January 2025 this year we launched the Vegan Double Crunch 100g bar, which contains roasted corn pieces and cornflakes in creamy almond-based chocolate. This flavour combination is perfect for anyone looking for a vegan treat with the reassurance that the bar is made from 100% certified cocoa.
The new Vegan Tower TR Edition 5x100g then only contains flavours with ingredients including Double Crunch, Salted Caramel, Roasted Peanuts, Crispy Cookie and Crunchy Almonds.
At Ritter Sport, we believe that the best ingredients and high quality are a necessity so that our consumers can enjoy every moment of indulgence with a good feeling.
The main target group for these new products for travel retail is the ‘Conscious Hedonists’.
PM: Of course one of the key talking points is the launch of your great Ritter Sport ‘Start your love affair with the square campaign’ in 2025, featuring Don Choco the sloth, who happens to reside at the Ritter Sport Farm El Cacao. Great stuff – fun, inviting and excellent branding. Can you give us some background to this character?
NM: Don Choco, our brand ambassador, has a wonderful story behind him. Ritter Sport has been committed to promoting sustainable cocoa cultivation for over 30 years. In 2012, we went one step further by developing our own cocoa farm, El Cacao, in Nicaragua. The farm covers 2,500 hectares, where around half of which we grow cocoa in a sustainable agroforestry system, following the principles of integrated agriculture. The remaining area is untouched rainforest.
Don Choco adds a joyful and emotional element to our story, helping us to connect with consumers and communicate the core values behind every square of Ritter Sport. As a brand ambassador, he perfectly embodies our commitment to sustainability and quality. Don Choco loves Ritter Sport and his home, El Cacao, and he wants to share this love with everyone. That’s why he appears in the campaign as a ‘Love Singer’ and encourages consumers to fall in love with our chocolate.
To stay relevant and appeal to a younger audience, we need to rejuvenate the brand, and that’s exactly what this campaign aims to do. By putting Don Choco in the spotlight, we hope to appeal to a new generation of chocolate lovers and inspire them to experience the joy and passion that is in every Ritter Sport square.’
PM: Well, we should really talk about the campaign ‘Start your love affair with the square’, but let’s take a quick look at the ad.
NM: We are very excited about this campaign because it expresses everything we want to convey to our consumers with Ritter Sport: the joy of discovering and truly savouring the best ingredient chocolate. The idea behind ‘Start your love affair with the square’ is to invite people to fall in love again with chocolate that not only tastes delicious but is also made from the best ingredients.
At Ritter Sport, we believe that good flavour starts with the best ingredients. That’s why every square is full of the best ingredients, with no added flavourings and cocoa from 100% certified sources. This commitment to quality and sustainability allows us to create chocolate that offers a rich, indulgent experience with every bite. We want our consumers to feel the taste with every bite and enjoy the thrill of discovering something new with each of our unique flavours.
So, take a bite and discover what true chocolate indulgence feels like. It’s not just about enjoying chocolate, it’s about experiencing the love and care that goes into every square.
PM: Well, that campaign really does bring out all the best attributes of your product. What has been the consumer response to ‘ Start your love affair with the square’ and how has it boosted sales?
NM: As a first step, we are currently introducing the ‘Start your love affair with the square’ campaign to our customers, and the feedback has been consistently positive. We have a soft launch planned for travel retail this year.
However, since the campaign has already been running in the UK market since April 2024, we have concrete insights from there. The response has been fantastic and has exceeded our KPI expectations. It has played a significant role in increasing listings and improving visibility at the point of sale, through elements like shelf talkers and digital screens. Most importantly, it has directly boosted brand awareness in the UK, showcasing the campaign’s effectiveness in engaging consumers and elevating the Ritter Sport brand. Moreover, different markets are also working well on a roll out. There has been positive market research results for the Nordics
PM: Just developing this, whenever any major brand creates a campaign like this, retailers normally support linked activations. What have you been doing or plan to do in-store?
NM: For the ‘Start your love affair with the square’ campaign, we developed a comprehensive package for in-store activations on two levels. This includes everything from small to large displays as well as a range of offline and online promotional materials. Our so-called WOW Promotion includes a tasting experience, a selfie station with our unique squared chocolate bar and a unique cocoa tree installation with an integrated screen. This interactive activation enhances the traveller’s brand experience at the point of sale.
These activations are designed to enhance the brand experience for travellers, making it more engaging, informative and memorable. By creating a deeper connection to our values and products, we aim to create a lasting impression that goes beyond a typical in-store encounter.
Of course, the level of execution will depend on the support of our retail partners, within a financial framework that is feasible for both the brand and the retailers. The first big WOW Promotion is happening now and runs from April to June at Frankfurt Airport.
PM: So back to El Cacao. As you’ve said, the name of the El Cacao farm in the campaign is the same name as your own farm. This links well to my next question on the sustainable actions that Ritter Sport is taking. First, please talk about your approach to sustainability and then walk us through the cocoa partnerships you nurture.
NM: At Ritter Sport, we respect and appreciate man and the environment: As a family business, we think long-term and are committed to leaving a world worth living in for future generations. That is why our entire business model is aligned towards acting in harmony with people and nature. We have defined clear goals and work every day to achieve them and continuously improve. These goals represent the ecological, social and economic aspects of sustainability and show how closely they are linked.
When it comes to our cocoa partnerships, we not only want to ensure transparent supply chains, but also build strong, collaborative relationships with the people who grow our cocoa. Every day these farmers work with passion and dedication to produce the best cocoa beans for our chocolate. To support them, we work with farmer organisations and individual farmers through dedicated cocoa programmes, creating a stable and reliable framework for the future.
Here is a snapshot of what our partnerships look like:
- There are 7 cocoa programmes supported by Ritter Sport
- More than 22,000 farmers are involved
- Over 18,000 tonnes of cocoa mass is sourced
- We have more than 30 years of nurturing cocoa partnerships
To give some concrete examples, we work on projects such as providing communities with clean water, diversifying farmers’ sources of income to reduce dependence on cocoa, and increasing productivity through composting as fertilisers can be expensive. We also provide seedlings for shade trees to improve the microclimate, invest in education and infrastructure and empower people through knowledge and resources.
These initiatives demonstrate our commitment to having a positive impact not only on the cocoa fields, but also on the lives of the people who farm them, ensuring a sustainable and prosperous future for all involved.
PM: Staying with this subject, what about bigger moves to becoming carbon neutral. Have you set a date?
NM: We have set ourselves clear and ambitious goals for climate protection, and we aim to achieve them through a three-step approach:
- AVOIDANCE. Avoidance means planning with foresight to prevent emissions from occurring in the first place. We are gradually transitioning to renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar power, because the best emissions are those that are not produced at all.
- REDUCTION. Where emissions cannot be completely avoided, we aim to reduce them as much as possible. This often starts with small measures, such as converting all our production and administrative lighting to LED. Additionally, we support employees who travel to work by public transport by covering their ticket costs.
- OFFSET. Unfortunately, not all emissions can be entirely avoided or reduced. That’s why we offset the remaining emissions (Scope 1, Scope 3, and those we can influence) using Gold Standard climate certificates, like those generated from our climate-positive El Cacao cocoa farm.
Through AVOIDANCE, REDUCTION, AND OFFSETTING, we have been producing in a climate-neutral manner since 2019 and have been able to call ourselves a climate-neutral company, in terms of our balance sheet, since 2020.
¹By compensating unavoidable emissions (Scope 1, 2, and 3 influenceable) with Gold Standard climate certificates.
Our goal is to achieve a 42% reduction of emissions by 2030.
But offsetting is only a temporary solution. Our focus is on preventing emissions entirely, for example, through decarbonisation. This is why we have set ourselves an ambitious target and joined the Science-Based Targets initiative (SBTi). Based on scientific calculations, as I said, we have committed to reducing our emissions by 42% by 2030, in line with the United Nations’ 1.5-degree target, to which we are fully committed.
Our journey towards climate neutrality didn’t start yesterday. More than 20 years ago, we began exclusively using green electricity and today we continue to set ourselves new and challenging goals.
As this is a complex topic, I invite you to learn more about our efforts on our newly relaunched sustainability website or from our annual sustainability report, which we publish voluntarily. You can find more information at www.ritter-sport.com/sustainability.
PM: So, what learnings from your sustainability journey can you share with the industry?
NM: Becoming a sustainable company doesn’t happen overnight. Sustainability is a conviction, not just a marketing tool. It takes time, investment and extensive coordination as the sustainability landscape is constantly evolving. Many legal requirements can change quickly. However, every effort is worth it, as even small changes in daily practices can contribute to more sustainable actions.
PM: Now, as a business you are in the habit of launching highly colourful variations of your product line. How have the recent additions been performing?
NM: Our recent product launches in 2024, including the limited Summer Edition, the Fruity Mix Pouch and the updated flavours in the Vegan Tower, have performed well overall. Each of these innovations serves a specific purpose within our portfolio. The Summer Limited Edition, for example, was designed to create seasonal excitement and attention with its unique flavours and appealing design, while the Fruity Mix Pouch and new vegan options address growing consumer trends and preferences.
These innovations are critical to keeping our brand dynamic and to be appealing, especially to younger and more diverse audiences. Even if they don’t all become big sellers, they play an important role in refreshing our image and expanding our reach. It is important to harmonise these new offerings with our core range, which remains the foundation of our success.
PM: A more general question now: what do you see as the key trends in the confectionery category now?
NM: One of the key trends is the shift from product to creating memorable brand experiences that foster deeper customer loyalty. Consumers today are looking not only for high-quality, indulgent treats, but also for emotional connections and memorable experiences with the brands they love or will come to love.
Of course, with the rapid development in AI, virtual reality (VR) and other digital technologies, there are more ways than ever to create or enhance these brand experiences. Whether through personalised recommendations using AI, interactive virtual tastings or gamified shopping experiences with VR, brands can engage with consumers in completely new and innovative ways.
Another important trend is the focus of travellers on sustainability and transparency. Consumers are increasingly aware of the environmental and social impact of the products they buy. This means that brands not only need to demonstrate good taste, but also ethical practices and sustainability efforts throughout their supply chain.
PM: And one last question, Nicole. What are the two most important things you now want to communicate to the industry?
NM: Healthy co-operation between retailers, brands and airports. And a differentiated view of the budgets of large companies and medium-sized companies – especially family businesses.
