COMPANY PORTRAIT
Artisan rarities
O L D R E C I P E S , G E N T LY M A N U F A C T U R E D A N D I N A T R E N D - S E T T I N G C O N C E P T – C O N F I S E R I E B O S C H
I S A S M A L L A R T I S A N B U S I N E S S T H A T S U C C E S S F U L LY B R I D G E S T H E G A P B E T W E E N T R A D I T I O N
AND MODERNITY
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Bosch sells its specialties in a small shop directly at the production site
Managing Director Wolfgang Hellstern with the day’s finished Wibele
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are also only a few manufacturers of Wibele, for example
Café Bauer in Langenburg, 70 km from Heilbronn, Germany,
which a­ lready filed a patent in 1911 for “Genuine Wibele”.
Nowadays the biggest supplier of wibele is the Confiserie
Bosch GmbH in Uhingen, Germany. The company has produced the pastries since 1911; Bosch, with 25–30 employees,
brings approx. 400 kg of Wibele onto the market every day.
According to Managing Director Wolfgang Hellstern, the
world’s smallest sponge cookie is sold equally in bakeries
and confectioner’s, famous delicatessen stores and selected
full-range retailers as well as in the specialist trade, airport
catering and hotel industry for EUR 2.99 per 150 g. Bosch has
put the words “Manufactured for Enjoyment” into its logo, and
the company also lives by that. Hellstern gives the following
explanation: “We are and remain a top-class confectioner
with specialties made from carefully selected raw materials.
We don’t go by the price, but by our unmistakable products
– 90 % of which are no longer produced by anyone else!”
Wibele – this is a sponge dough cookie originating
from and popular in the Swabian region which is produced in proven tradition and with artisanal skills. Being best
compared to Russian Bread, they are whipped up as a batter
and pressed out through a press with a die-plate containing
small openings measuring only 1–2 cm onto a tray below it.
This forms approx. 400–500 small Wibele per standard tray,
which are dried at 45 °C for 30–45 min. Finally the small
pastries, which look like two droplets joined together, are
baked for 15 min until golden-yellow and are packed.
The manufacture of the sponge cookies is laborious, they are
still produced mainly for this region, and are almost unknown outside of Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria. There
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The confectioner offers a range extending from classical Wibele and jelly products
to chocolate pralines
BAKING+BISCUIT ISSUE 02 2014
This way of thinking has predominated especially since
Wolfgang Hellstern replaced Walter Bosch as General Manager
in 2010. The businessman, who is also the proprietor of his
own Edeka stores, believes in the concept of uniqueness, and
consequently he arranges the production of unmistakable
specialties: from nostalgic sugar bunnies, drawings and
pictures of which were found from the 1950s and 60s and
revived, through brandy-filled candies with a sugar crust – a
process which according to Hellstern is impossible to re­
produce industrially – to coconut flakes and praline tongues.
The raw materials are selected with the greatest care, some
of them from wholesalers in Hamburg but some, such as the
flour, are supplied by a mill in the same town. Hellstern says
COMPANY PORTRAIT
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Many products are still packed and weighed out by hand
And where does the company see itself in 5–10 years? In
the first place there is continuous investment in the production area. The location, a building that is over 100 years
old in which production takes place on three floors, ceased
providing any more space long ago. Even some of the machines are from the years before World War II. “We can’t
go on like that in the long term. We will need to devote part
of our energy to this area. However, in other respects we
have progressed well in the past few years, and we want to
expand on that.” +++
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that candies of this type must also be produced by artisan
staff, because processes using automated machinery cannot
reproduce most of the the delicate working steps with sufficiently high quality. The packaging must also be attractive,
and consequently retail bags in sizes from 40 g to 200 g
have been available since last year. Previous to that all the
products were stocked loose in 2.5 kg containers in bakeries
and were weighed out by the sales staff. Marketing them in
bags and cartons opens up new distribution channels for
the confectioner, and exports to the Netherlands, Austria
and Switzerland are also picking up slowly. Today 130
products are produced, among which the classical Wibele
are still among the strongest. However, 1-2 new or even rediscovered products emerge every year in the small company.
Currently a “German Jelly” is available in black, red and
gold colors to match the football world cup. Candied slices
of lemon and orange, which are put together to form a
whole fruit, have been manufactured since as long ago as
1964 and are very popular. This means Bosch are not the
cheapest, but Hellstern says: “The reawakening of quality
awareness is also occurring in Germany, and there is a customer base that is willing to pay the price for a premium
product.”