Unlocking Switzerland's Sweet Secret: Our Delightful Family Adventure at the Kambly Biscuit Factory. We discovered a really cool family activity this weekend.
Most of us living in Switzerland will be familiar with the delicious biscuits and savoury treats made by Kambly, but did you know that they are made in the canton of Berne? And that you can visit their premises and you can even get involved in a baking class?
We set off early on Saturday morning and headed to Trubschachen where Kambly is located. As soon as we left the motorway, we were immersed in magnificent Swiss countryside with traditional houses and lots of cows. The site is easy to find and there is lots of parking but getting there by train couldn’t be easier as there is a train station literally in front of the building (direct from Luzern and Bern)
The experience starts with panels outside showing the production steps of biscuit baking so you can begin to understand the process as soon as you arrive.
As you enter the building (which is accessible for pushchairs and wheelchair users), you are immediately greeted by the enticing smell of baking which gets the taste buds going for a bit of biscuit tasting.
We started by taking a drink in the coffee shop as we had arrived a bit early and took in our surroundings. The coffee shop part is light and open with lovely views and lots of tempting items on the menu. I took a Kamblycino which was delicious, served with a hearty chunk of chocolate on the side.
We met with Jan who is Head of Direct Sales and a member of the executive board, and Petra the Communication Manager who kindly explained a bit about the experience and showed us around the different areas of the site. We headed through the shop where you can choose from a huge selection of biscuits straight from the factory. Some of these are seconds with some imperfections sold at a lower price, and there are plenty of samples to taste too! Jude and Alba’s eyes lit up as soon as they saw all the biscuits and Alba was happy to have selected a jacket with big pockets to fill while we were there.
There is no entry fee to the Kambly Experience so you can stroll around at your leisure which we really liked, and we began by the very cool interactive wall where you can test your knowledge on the company. It was very interesting to find out about the export of their products which can be found all around the world.
We learned more about the history of the company from its humble beginnings, and we love the story of how it started with the founder selling his now famous Bretzeli biscuits door to door from a suitcase. Entrepreneurship at its best! There are lots of activity panels for the children to explore and learn about the company which they really enjoyed. Next we discovered the indoor play area where children can play baker and drive the Kambly train and there is also a really interesting film to watch with a display including some objects from the original workshop.
We had to drag the children away from all the activities to head to the chocolate counter where we could see delicious handmade chocolates being prepared before our eyes. Here we were meeting Marlise, the Master Confectioner who would be running a really fun workshop for us. The workshop only costs 10 CHF per person and ours lasted about 2 hours.
There is a lovely atelier space where we put on our aprons and washed our hands before getting to work. To start we prepared some little chocolate cakes which would make up part of our final design. Jude and Alba got really stuck into this and were both covered in chocolate within 10 minutes which is a sure sign of an enjoyable activity :-).
While the cakes were baking, we set to work preparing our chocolate tablets which would be the base of our creations, then we began modelling our marzipan animals to create a lovely woodland scene. Jude was quickly occupied in the production of snakes for his tableau while Alba created some snails, a cat, a mouse, lots of flowers and some toadstools. Elio was happily parked next to us and he enjoyed taste testing everything as we went along (he also got his own chocolate display to take home).
The next job was to assemble everything we had made on our chocolate tablets with some icing as “glue” and adorning the finished article with sprinkles and smarties, (although most of those got eaten along the way), before we wrapped them up carefully and popped them in a bag to go home.
We all absolutely loved our Kambly experience. Marlise is lovely. Really patient with the children, and she explained everything really clearly, giving demonstrations as we went along and I really enjoyed chatting to her too.
Although we were generously gifted lots of tasty treats to try, we couldn’t resist a quick tour around the shop to get a couple of sweet and savoury packs to give away to our community.
It was such a lovely way to spend a couple of hours, we all laughed a lot and it was great to find an indoor activity for the whole family for these day when the weather is getting cooler. I can thoroughly recommend it.
Discover lots of other events with Kambly such as Kambly Christmas Market, baking a gingerbread house (I love the sound of that one), baking and crafting for children... and many others.
Information
Kambly Experience
Mühlestrasse 8 3555 Trubschachen Phone +41 34 495 02 22 reservation@kambly.ch
For the same Kambly experience as we had, here are the Booking details
For children and young people from 6 to 18 years
Costs: CHF 10.00
Classes available every Wednesday and Saturday afternoon from 14.20 to 16.20
During the summer & autumn holidays the course takes place on additional weekdays