Bean-to-bar, or how to combine sustainability and creativity: The example of an iconic Austrian chocolate manufacturer

Bean-to-bar is a movement born in San Francisco (USA) in the first decade of the 2000s. For the chocolate industry, it is a kind of modern re-interpretation of the ancestral craftsmanship of the chocolatier-torréfacteur, who controlled the whole production process from the bean to the bar. The Austrian chocolate manufacturer and family business Zotter, established in 1999 in Bergl, in the region of Styria in southern Austria, is equally committed to the bean-to-bar concept. The purpose of this paper is to investigate Josef Zotter's bean-to bar philosophy and to understand the firm's founder's reasons for distancing himself from certain conventional sustainability certification schemes. The method is a case study following the principle of theoretical sampling, combined with a socio-semiotic study of the narratives of the company. The most significant findings concern the way that Zotter's model successfully combines sustainability and creativity issues, and how the company's commitment to sustainability outperforms traditional certification standards.