Loacker Places a Small Bet on Chocolate That Isn’t

Loacker will invest €1 million ($1.2 million) a year in food startups, and its first bets include a Danish chocolate alternative made from brewery waste. The South Tyrol wafer maker, which posted €488 million in group sales in 2025, still says cocoa remains a key ingredient.

Endless Food Co of Copenhagen, whose powder is sold as THIC (once This Isn’t Chocolate), is one of two names in the opening slate of the new Loacker Investment Office programme. The other is Dr Taste, a Merano firm building a platform that tries to forecast how shoppers will react to a new bite.

A €1 Million Chip Against €488 Million in Sales

The group announced the corporate venture plan on 9 September 2026 at NOI Techpark in Bolzano. Andreas Loacker, vice president of the board of Loacker Group and of A. Loacker Spa, framed it as a family firm putting money into ideas that might pay off later, and as a way to pair factory know-how with startup speed.

The annual cheque is €1 million. Group sales last year were €488 million, of which €271 million came from exports and €88 million from Italy. The firm produced 1.05 billion pieces and sold 37,510 tonnes. That is the scale against which the new office is spending.

LOACKER’S 2025 SCALE VERSUS THE CVC CHEQUE

Michela Tamai, chief R&D officer, said Loacker will hand startups its know-how as well as cash. Alessandro Schena, open innovation manager, said the filter is values and the team: a solid idea with a strong group of people beats a dazzling idea with a weak one. Startups will be judged on industrial fit with A. Loacker and with AgroSelect Ingredients, the unit that buys and processes raw materials, including Dolomites Milk.

THIC Melts, Bakes and Tempers Like Chocolate

Endless was founded in 2022 by Christian Bach, Maximilian Bogenmann and Matthew Orlando, who had worked together at Copenhagen’s Amass restaurant. Orlando also cooked at Noma and The Fat Duck. The three sell THIC as a chocolate-like mass made from upcycled streams: brewer’s spent grain (barley left after beer), cacao shells, and oat-milk pulp. Those streams make up as much as 40% of some SKUs, then sit with wild-harvested shea butter and organic beet sugar.

The company is blunt about the kitchen, not the lab. Chefs copy ordinary chocolate steps, turning spent grain into a powder that can go down an existing line. Refining and conching make a mass that can be tempered and moulded. Endless says the result can melt, bake or temper like chocolate, with no palm oil and no extra additives.

THIC FORMATS ON THE LINE

• Drops and callets: Small pieces for baking and inclusions.
• Chips, chunks and blocks: The bakery cuts, already used in cookies, brownies and pain au chocolat.
• Powder: The industrial feed that slots into a chocolate plant without a new recipe clock.

That last point is why a wafer house would look twice. THIC is not a rival bar for the sweet aisle. It is a drop-in coating and inclusion for plants that already conche and temper. Bogenmann, Endless’s CEO, called the Loacker tie-up “an energising and validating moment” and said the startup wants to build inside the chocolate industry, not beside it. The two sides have signed a partnership covering technical work, product development and go-to-market plans. Endless brings its waste supply chain and Nordic customers; Loacker brings capital and a century of coating wafers.

While Cocoa Remains a Key Ingredient

Andreas Loacker did not present the cheque as a swap-out of the bean. He put the limit in one sentence, then described Endless as a line of work worth watching.

While cocoa remains a key ingredient for Loacker, we are interested in exploring innovative approaches that can contribute to a more resilient and sustainable food system. We see Endless Food Co’s technology as a promising area of innovation and are pleased to support the company with our expertise and strategic investment.

Andreas Loacker, vice president, Loacker Group

Cocoa prices hit record highs in 2024 after weak crops in Ivory Coast and Ghana, which together grow about 60% of the world’s beans. Makers shrank bars, stretched recipes and trialled cocoa-free coatings. Some later put more cocoa back as prices eased from the peak. Loacker’s line that cocoa remains a key ingredient fits that swing: the CVC is a hedge, not a rebrand.

Endless’s own pitch is climate as much as price. Early analysis on its site says THIC can deliver 84% lower greenhouse gas emissions than conventional dark chocolate. Cacao shells, which make up about a quarter of the bean and often go to waste or fertiliser, are being circulated back into the mass. Bach, a co-founder, treated Loacker’s interest as a verdict on where treats are going, not as a fad chase.

Loacker Group didn’t get to a century in confectionery by chasing every new ingredient trend. They got there by understanding their space better than almost anyone. If anyone knows where indulgence is headed, it’s them. That they’re betting on us to help take it there is one of the most validating things that’s happened for us yet.

Christian Bach, co-founder, Endless Food Co

Mars, Nestlé and others have already tested cocoa-free pieces in Germany with suppliers such as Planet A Foods. Loacker is later to that table and is spending less. The difference is the product it actually sells: cream-filled wafers that live or die on snap, melt and a chocolate note shoppers learned as children.

The Second Cheque for a Taste Forecast

Dr Taste is based in Merano, in the same South Tyrol province as Loacker’s Auna di Sotto plant. It is building a predictive platform that folds together neuroscientific readings, sensory tests and market data. Loacker says the tool is meant to help food firms see how consumers will respond, try new product ideas, and tidy up recipes already on sale.

Putting that lab on the same first slate as a spent-grain chocolate is the structure of the bet. A coating that can run on current kit still has to taste like a Loacker wafer once it is on the shelf. The group listed “balanced nutrition without compromising on taste” among the jobs of the new office. A Merano model that scores a bite before a plant trial is cheaper than a failed launch in Italy, the United States or Saudi Arabia, the three largest sales countries on Loacker’s own list, ahead of Israel and China.

Loacker said the programme will back high-growth startups and named four areas of fit: new natural ingredients, nutrition that still tastes good, circular uses of by-products, and supply-chain data. Dr Taste maps onto the last of those. Endless maps onto the first and the third. Neither one, on its own, changes the coating on a Quadratini. Together they give the R&D bench a new mass and a way to ask, in advance, whether anyone will still call it chocolate.

180 Danish Stores Already Bake the Powder

THIC is already in commercial kitchens. Endless supplies chips that go into cookies for every 7-Eleven in Denmark, a 1:1 swap across 180 stores. Bakeries around Europe use chips, chunks and blocks in pain au chocolat, cookies and brownies, and keep their usual bake times. Chefs have put the same cuts into ice cream, sauces and ganache. German cereal maker Barnhouse has used it in granola. Danish foodservice distributor Dagrofa has listed it for canteens, hotels and restaurants.

WHERE THIC ALREADY RUNS

• Convenience: Cookie chips in all 180 7-Eleven Denmark stores.
• Bakeries: European shops using chips, chunks and blocks on ordinary recipes.
• Foodservice: Restaurants and, in Denmark, a national wholesaler list.

Endless raised a separate €1 million in a 2024 pre-seed round led by Nordic Foodtech VC, with EIFO and Rockstart taking part, to scale production and a pilot plant. That round is not the Loacker CVC. The South Tyrol office is an annual programme that also has to fund Dr Taste and whoever comes through the next call. Public posts about the deal have been thin, which fits a family cheque of this size. The industrial reading is simpler than the press-release language: spent grain can ride a tempering line when beans are dear, and a wafer maker can test that without building a new factory.

A Family Firm That Turned 100 Last April

Loacker is still the company Alfons Loacker started as a pastry cook. Plants sit at 1,000 metres in Auna di Sotto on the Renon plateau and in Heinfels in East Tyrol, Austria. Third-generation leaders Andreas Loacker, Martin Loacker and Ulrich Zuenelli, the executive chairman, run the group. The CVC sits inside that same family perimeter, not in a Silicon Valley sidecar.

FROM A BOLZANO BAKEHOUSE TO A VENTURE OFFICE

1. 1925: Alfons Loacker founded his bakehouse in Bolzano in 1925 and sold the first packaged Bolzano wafers.
2. 1974: Production moves to Auna di Sotto at 1,000 metres, the site that still heads the group.
3. 1999: A second plant opens at Heinfels, also at 1,000 metres.
4. 3 April 2025: The firm marks 100 years.
5. 9 September 2026: Loacker Investment Office names Endless Food Co and Dr Taste as the first CVC names and sets a €1 million yearly budget.

Armin Loacker’s line, still on the company history page, was that you get the best only if you use the best. The venture office now has to decide whether “the best” can include barley mash and cacao husks when the bean is scarce or costly. Circular work is not new inside the group: the CVC brief cites reuse of whey permeate from Dolomites Milk as the sort of by-product play it wants to see again.

Startups Can Apply From Mid-October

From mid-October, other startups can read the brief and apply on loackergroup.com. Loacker said it will offer money plus factory skill, market knowledge, development capacity and access to its corporate network. Scouting will keep going in the background. The first two names show the range it already likes.

WHAT THE OFFICE SAYS IT WILL FUND

• New natural ingredients: Materials, or naturally derived compounds, that lift the sensory profile of wafers and chocolate pieces.
• Swaps for sugar and milk: Natural stand-ins for traditional bulk ingredients.
• Lighter recipes: Fewer calories, fewer allergens, or different fats, without giving up taste or texture.
• Circular streams: Uses for by-products such as whey permeate from Dolomites Milk, and now spent grain and cacao shells.
• Data and kit: Traceability, automation and robotics on the line and in the farm-to-plant chain.

Endless still has to prove THIC at Loacker volumes, which run to tens of thousands of tonnes a year, not bakery pallets. Dr Taste still has to prove that a predicted liking score matches a real wafer launch. Neither task is done because a CVC slate was read out in Bolzano.

For now the wager is on the table in the form Loacker chose: a million euros a year, a powder that is honest about not being chocolate, a lab that scores taste, and a public reminder that the bean is not leaving the recipe.