The 19th century was the age of development. It witnessed great changes in chocolate production, in particular the switch from drinking to eating chocolate. Automation brought down the price, and far more people were able to afford it. After decades of gradual evolution, the Swiss chocolate industry took off in the last years of the century. The number of workers in the industry increased more than ten-fold between 1888 and 1910.

The boom affected manufacturers in different ways. Many of the established companies started looking for outside sources of capital and/or merging with each other. Other manufacturers simply went bankrupt. Although as consumers we may not realise it, most of today's familiar brands are all produced by a handful of parent companies, like Nestlé or Kraft Food.

The process of amalgamation which started around this time did not happen overnight. To take just one example, Daniel Peter, the inventor of milk chocolate, turned to external partners for finance in 1896; his company then linked up with Kohler in 1904, and Nestlé took a share of the capital of Peter-Kohler in 1905. Peter-Kohler joined up with Cailler in 1911. Nestlé, though not a manufacturer itself at this time, was very much involved in the chocolate business: it not only provided the milk but also marketed the products of Peter-Cailler-Kohler. Not surprisingly, it took over the company entirely in 1929.

Some of the major manufacturers kept their independence for much longer; Suchard and Tobler did not merge until 1970; now, after a series of further mergers and takeovers they are part of Kraft Foods.

On the other hand, Lindt-Sprüngli is still family-run, more than a century after Chocolat Sprüngli of Zurich bought the business of Rodolphe Lindt of Bern. (Lindt was a bachelor and therefore had no heirs.) Sprüngli paid the huge sum of 1.5 million gold francs for the trademarks and recipes.