Although Chicago consumers may be disappointed about the Blommer Chocolate store closing in February, passersby of the iconic West Loop business will still be able to detect the familiar scent long after the store's doors have ben shuttered.
Blommer spokeswoman Stacey Kidd told Black Club Chicago on Friday that the company will still be manufacturing chocolate inside the building despite the retail operation coming to an end on Feb. 28. Having produced chocolate products since 1939, the family business on Kinzie Street will partially close in order to expand the entire operation.
“In the coming year, we will begin updating and refreshing the Chicago facility including several enhancements in and around the plant,” Kidd said early last week.
Japanese-based Fuji Holdings purchased Blommer and its West Loop manufacturing operations for $750 million in 2018. This allowed Fuji Oil to assume control of Blommer's operations in its three U.S. locations, as well as factories in Canada and China.
Blommer gained a degree of internet fame in 2014 when Chicago resident Ian Petchenik created an online Google map that highlights areas throughout the city where individuals can smell the chocolate each day. Petchenik designed the map after an out-of-town friend commented on smelling the chocolate during a visit and joked about creating a way for others to track the scent.
“More than three people looking at this to me is amazing,” Petchenik told DNAinfo in 2014. “I think a lot of people got into it because it's something that they experience every day, but no one has ever said where [exactly] you can smell the chocolate.”
Blommer is the third-largest industrial chocolate producer and the fifth-largest cocoa-bean processor in the U.S.
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