Nestle to launch online ordering service

Nestle SA (NESN), known for mass-market chocolates like the KitKat bar, is trying to get a bigger piece of the growing market for fancier sweets, Bloomberg reported.

Internet shoppers in Switzerland and Liechtenstein can order a Maison Cailler taster pack with five kinds of chocolate. After completing an online survey to determine a “chocolate personality,” recipients get a bigger box with flavors and cocoa content selected for those particular taste buds.

Luxury products can succeed even amid the economic downturn, said Laurent Freixe, head of Nestle’s European business. Global sales of premium chocolate are growing faster than the overall market and may be worth about $8 billion a year, according to market researcher Mintel.

“It may sound counter-intuitive, but what’s happening in the crisis is a quest by consumers for value, for more- affordable product, but also for products that overtake their expectations,” Freixe said. “And what is squeezed in the middle is mainstream products.”

More than 20 years after Vevey, Switzerland-based Nestle started selling the Nespresso capsules that helped create the luxury home coffee market, it is applying a similar approach to chocolate.

The venture may help Nestle in the premium segment, where rival Swiss brand Lindt & Spruengli AG has prevailed, with sales rising twice as fast as the market in 2011.
While Maison Cailler is starting small, the approach has served Nestle well in the past.