Lindt: "Everything is broken" - Edeka manager makes hard accusations against chocolate manufacturers
Created: 2022-12-24 06:18
By: Lisa Mayerhofer
Employees of the chocolate manufacturer Lindt destroy their own products in German supermarket branches - reports an angry Edeka manager.
(Archive image) © Oliver Berg/dpa
Employees of the chocolate manufacturer Lindt destroy their own products in German supermarket branches - reports an angry Edeka manager.
Munich – Sweets like chocolate are part of Christmas for most people.
That is why numerous chocolate manufacturers such as the Swiss company Lindt & Sprüngli offer a wide range of Advent calendars, chocolate Santa Clauses and pralines for the Advent season.
But what happens to all that chocolate when Christmas is over and the sell-by date is getting closer?
Edeka manager angry about destroyed Lindt chocolate
There are usually cheap discount campaigns to be able to sell the remaining chocolate - but Lindt seems to want to prevent that recently.
At least that's what Ehrenfried Schorn, manager of sixteen Edeka branches in northern Hesse, reports to the news portal
t-online.de
.
He recently received a visit from the Lindt & Sprüngli sales force - and they destroyed their own products: "They slashed all the chocolate and pralines with a box knife or a pen so that not only the packaging but also the goods were destroyed .
Everything is broken," he says on the phone to the news portal.
He sent
t-online.de
a photo of a Lindt chocolate bar with a cross carved into it.
You can't just destroy products like that, Schorn complains.
Schorn suspects sales interests behind the destructiveness
Lindt usually takes care of the shelf management in the supermarket branches itself. That is why a field service from the chocolate manufacturer checks the goods, refills them and sorts them out if necessary.
"If the Lindt & Sprüngli field staff sorted out products shortly before the best-before date, we have previously sold them at a greatly reduced price or donated them to the Tafel," says Schorn.
This is no longer possible because the products have been destroyed.
He suspects sales interests behind this process.
If a customer buys reduced chocolate bars, he will certainly not immediately buy more bars at full price, Schorn explains to the news portal.
Lindt does not want to comment on the specific incident
Lindt himself did not want to comment on the specific incident, but only made a general statement: "Lindt & Sprüngli only offers its consumers goods that meet the quality requirements.
For this reason, products that are no longer edible or salable are marked as not salable by the sales force and removed from the market.
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But according to Schorn, the chocolate destroyed in its branches was not "unsellable" products.
The manager told
t-online.de
: "Everything that was destroyed by us was at least a week before the best-before date.
So the argument doesn't work."