Business Profile: Traditional Greek Confectionery
Established 87 years ago in the Northern Greek town of Xanthi, Paparaskeva is a confectionery unique in many ways.
It has its own brand product, carioca, invented by its founder and now internationally renowned; and it is the only business of its kind in Greece with particular baking processes. But most of all, it is founded on one tradition respected to this day: “Our store must always have our own people”, as the third generation owner of the business, Dimitris Papagianopoulos, explained. This applies everywhere: from the store, where family members will sell and wrap the sweets, to the factory, where most of the bakers have been with the company for 25-30 years; and the new store recently opened in Athens, managed by the original owner’s grandson.
All in the family
George Papaparaskeva, a refugee from Eastern Thrace, opened the confectionery in Xanthi in 1926. He is the first who established the carioca sweet, in 1930, with a chocolate recipe of his own inspiration, thanks to his experience as a confectioner and creativity. He also introduced Saragli sweets in confectioneries, previously exclusively handmade.
Tradition is more than just a word for this confectionery when it comes to the sweets recipes as well. Founded almost century ago, it developed, grew successful and maintained it around one product perfected by George Paparaskevas, a baker by profession: the carioca. Carioca reigns over other sweets offer Paparaskeva’s offer of sweets expands today over four categories with around 30 different products for each: chocolates, pastries, pretzels and syrup cakes. Carioca remains the star to this day, with over 1.5 million tonnes sold each year in Greece, and all over the world, with orders coming from Australia, China, USA, Cyprus and
Germany. The confirmation comes from other local confectioneries which manufacture and sell their own version of the product as well. It represents roughly 40% of the store’s total sales, while 10 years ago this percentage was as high as 60.
Business “recipe” – Ingredients for use:
• up to 5 tonnes of chocolate per month
• 20 tonnes of nuts per year, and 20 tonnes of other dry seeds
• 12,000 fresh eggs used monthly
• approximately 4 tonnes of sugar per month
• 100 kilograms of flour every day
• 26 tonnes of butter made in-house every year
• custom made, 4.8% fat milk and chocolate with 60-65% cocoa concentration
Made of sponge cake with different kinds of chocolate, selected nuts and laced with glossy bittersweet chocolate, the cariocas are shaped into semicircle pieces individually wrapped. Each piece weighs approximately 40 grams and they are made in sets of 7 kilograms, with approximately 25 pieces per kilo. The recipe is handed to every generation of owners, but the secret shared freely is the raw materials used: fresh eggs and milk from Xanthi, carefully selected nuts from the Thrace mountains, and custom made (rich in cocoa) chocolate. The nuts are purchased whole, regardless of almost doubling the price of this ingredient. The butter used is made in-house, and in this respect it is the only confectionery in Greece doing so, to ensure freshness and quality.
87 years in the making
The confectionery stands today in the original location, where it first opened in 1926. The production unit expanded over time, from behind the counters to the entire floor above the store, and it is now a stand alone factory with a surface of 1,200 m2, outside of town.
The methods of production have remained the traditional ones, despite the state of the art, modernised utilities and production lines, to fully respect the recipes accuracy: the scales used are customised to display weight using an “oká” as measurement unit (ancient; approximately 1.25 kilograms).
The Business of Home-made Tastes
Having started as a business consisting of 10 people, Paparaskeva employs today 42 bakers and 12 sales people in Xanthi, and six more in the new Athens store, opened at the end of September 2013. The motto of the family enterprise remains. It managed to expand during crisis and it was a long time coming project, with minimum investments. The factory equipments can double the current production capacity, using the same number of employees.
The factory is in use for two years, it produces the sweets for both stores and it is equipped with nine fridges (all with different temperatures settings, freezing capacity and remote temperature control via satellite) and a cooling room, four ovens and three production lines. One of the fridges is permanently set at -40°C so it can instantly freeze the base of cakes. Two types of ovens were picked for their baking needs: with air and with plates, the latter for traditional cookies.
“Our store must always have our own people”
Dimitris Papagianopoulos
View all pictures: Confectionery Factory
These equipments produce up to 100 tonnes of cariocas in the busy month of December alone. Christmas is worth 2 tonnes in these cakes, and they are being delivered twice per day.
The factory receives organised school visitors regularly, and the bakers happily demonstrate manual decoration techniques using sugar paste, as 95% of all the sweets are decorated this way.
The senior confectioners, Arsenis Giorgios and Imam Sehmi, attend deco seminars periodically, some of which specifically targeting a single type of shape, like little animals, or flowers. The creative anniversary cake has an impressive portfolio, evidence of work done with true passion.
Paparaskeva reflects the Greek version of one of the industry trends identified by Europain, in all aspects of their business venture. As the Chairman of the French National Bakers’ and Pastrymakers’ Confederation, Jean-Pierre Crouzet, announced – “bakers and pastrymakers have become local businessmen”.