Delicious Deal: Hillwood Brings Läderach Chocolatier Suisse to Distribution Center in AllianceTexas

Hillwood's latest real estate deal is set to sweeten North Texas and beyond. Läderach Chocolatier Suisse, a 60-year-old family-owned premium Swiss chocolate company, will expand to AllianceTexas for their U.S. distribution center—allowing them to bring delicious freshness directly from Switzerland into retail stores across America.

Premium chocolates have one of the highest speed-to-market demands in the food and beverage industry, and Hillwood's Samuel Rhea says the deal gives "one of the world’s best chocolatiers" easy access to the unique multi-modal logistics platforms at AllianceTexas.

Talk about a sweet real estate deal!

Hillwood announced that Läderach Chocolatier Suisse, a family-owned premium Swiss chocolate company, will occupy a 42,282-square-foot distribution center at AllianceTexas in Fort Worth. The company will use the warehouse to distribute Läderach’s high-quality fresh chocolate to all retail stores in the United States.

“We are thrilled to welcome Läderach, one of the world’s best chocolatiers, to AllianceTexas and support their U.S. expansion with this new national distribution center,” Samuel Rhea, director of industrial leasing at Hillwood, said in a statement.

“Premium products like chocolate have some of the highest speed-to-market demands in the food and beverage industry, and with the amenities of AllianceTexas’ unique multi-modal logistics platform, we continue to see rapid growth in an industry segment that has a long history within AllianceTexas.”

Growing demand for “premium fresh chocolate”

Läderach expanded into North America in 2019 to meet growing demand for premium fresh chocolate, the company said. Läderach has 350 employees with a footprint of 40 stores from coast to coast in the U.S. and Canada, along with e-commerce. The company’s North American headquarters is in New York City.

Läderach has three stores in Texas — at Frisco’s Stonebriar Center and in Houston at The Galleria and Premium Outlets. To ensure the freshness and high quality of its chocolates, Läderach has complete control of the value chain — from directly sourcing the cacao to making the chocolate in-house in Switzerland and delivering it directly to its stores and customers, Hillwood said.

Alliance Northport 5 [Photo: AllianceTexas]

Hillwood said that Läderach will occupy Alliance Northport 5, AllianceTexas’ emerging industrial sector in Northlake, adjacent to Texas Motor Speedway. The company said that Northlake has become a sought-after destination for industrial end users, such as Walgreens, Crown Equipment, Smart Warehousing, and Mainfreight.

This sector has some of the lowest combined tax rates in Dallas-Fort Worth, the company said, and has direct access to Interstate 35W and State Highway 114.

“We are committed to meeting the growing demand for premium fresh chocolate in the U.S., and this state-of-the-art distribution center at AllianceTexas provides us with more speed and efficiency to continue to expand our 60-year-old family business in the U.S. and meet this ambition,” Nathanael Hausmann, president, Läderach North America, said in a statement.

“Chocolate is best experienced when it’s extremely fresh and can awaken the five senses — an experience we aim to create daily at Läderach.”

JLL’s Jeff Feste, Fred Ragsdale, Blake Rogers, and JM Priddy represented Läderach. Reid Goetz and Samuel Rhea with Hillwood oversaw the lease negotiations in the transaction, the company said.

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