Identity card

The magic of chocolate has long been at work in Switzerland. The Maison CAILLER in Broc, Gruyère, is one of the country’s most visited museums. It welcomes almost 400,000 visitors a year. This success is built around the iconic CAILLER brand, which has written some of the finest pages in the history of Swiss chocolate. With over two hundred years’ experience since François-Louis Cailler began producing chocolate in 1819, the company moved to Broc in 1898. The park project aims to offer families from all over the world a unique immersive dive into this world of chocolate. It will also encourage tourists to extend their stay in the green Gruyère region.

A park in and around
a real, working chocolate factory

The CAILLER factory in Broc represents 125 years of uninterrupted milk chocolate production in the Fribourg region. Today, the factory is probably the oldest chocolate factory in the world still operating. Its teams master the entire chocolate production chain, from the roasting of cocoa beans to the finished product. Furthermore, all the milk used by the factory to produce CAILLER chocolate comes from farms located within a radius of  30 km. The park will be developed in and around the factory, which will remain in operation and bear witness to the unique architectural and industrial heritage of the canton of Fribourg. It will enable visitors to experience real industrial chocolate production from the inside.

By the opening of the first phase, the park’s surface area will increase from 2,000m2 for Maison CAILLER today to almost 30,000m2.. The chocolate scenography, designed by BRC Imagination Arts and complemented by an attraction entirely dedicated to the Gruyère region, designed by Jora Vision, will offer visitors a memorable sensory experience. The park will offer a 4-6 hour journey of discovery through cocoa, its transformation into chocolate, and its encounter with milk from Gruyère pastures. The first phase of the park aims to attract between 700,000 and 800,000 visitors a year. In the longer term, with the opening of new attractions, the park aims to attract over one million visitors a year.

Accessibility

The project is part of a new generation of parks. It puts accessibility by public transportation at the heart of its planning. Thanks to its connection to the national rail network since 24th August 2023, the chocolate capital is directly accessible from Bern, the capital of Switzerland. With the station at the park’s doorstep, the project’s ambition is to attract most of its visitors by public transport (train, coach or bus), thanks to particularly attractive combined offers.

Step 1 Step 2
Phase 0 Phase 1 Phase 2 and 3 Phase 4
Individual motorised traffic 80% 50% 40% 30%
Public transportation 5% 25% 30% 40%
Tour operators (tourist bus) 15% 25% 30% 30%
Step
1
Step
2
Phase
0
Phase
1
Phase
2 and 3
Phase
4
Individual motorised traffic 80% 50% 40% 30%
Public transportation 5% 25% 30% 40%
Tour operators (tourist bus) 15% 25% 30% 30%

The opening of a multi-purpose paying parking lot in the Liaubon area, just outside Broc village and above the park, will relieve the local roads from the nuisance of traffic generated by visits to Maison CAILLER. Located in a tourist zone, the underground parking lot will meet the park’s needs and help to resolve the parking problems generated by the attractiveness of the Jogne Gorge for hikers. It will also serve as a park-and-ride facility for the population of the Jogne valley and the right bank of Lac de la Gruyère. The planned capacity is 450 spaces. The existing free parking lot on the plain in Broc will be closed.

Local and renewable energies

The park is developing a strategy to limit its climate impact. The mobility concept, which gives priority to public transportation, is an important part of this strategy. In addition, an energy concept has been drawn up by specialists of the Groupe E company. This concept foresees that the park will be able to run on 100% local and renewable energy. It will be supplied by the nearby Broc hydroelectric power station and other renewable sources, such as solar panels and wood energy.