Candrian Catering
| Candrian Catering AG | |
|---|---|
| legal form | Corporation |
| founding | 1979 (sole proprietorship) 1999 (AG) |
| Seat | Zurich , Switzerland |
| management |
|
| Number of employees | 1180 (2010) |
| sales | 146 million CHF (2018) |
| Branch | Gastronomy, hotel |
| Website | www.candrian.com |
The Candrian Catering AG , based in Zurich is a Swiss catering company . It is mainly active in the city of Zurich and in 2011 operated a total of 31 restaurants , eleven take-aways , a catering service , a wine shop and two hotels . She is also involved in the luxury hotel Suvretta House in St. Moritz . The group of companies employs around 1180 people and in 2010 generated net sales of 114 million Swiss francs.
history
Martin Candrian laid the foundations for Candrian Catering in 1979 when he took over the lease for the “Bahnhofsbuffet Zürich HB” from his father Rudolf Candrian. Back then, the “station buffet” comprised all the restaurants in Zurich's main train station .
Martin Candrian comes from a traditional restaurant family. His maternal great-grandfather, Anton Bon , is considered to be one of the pioneers of Swiss tourism at the end of the 19th century and owned various hotels, including the luxury hotels Park Hotel Vitznau in Vitznau and Suvretta House in St. Moritz. This family tradition went on for generations, including to Hans Bon and later to his son-in-law Rudolf Candrian.
In 1921, Hans Bon succeeded in taking over the restoration work in Zurich's main train station from the SBB as a general tenant. He brought the family business relatively unscathed by the global economic crisis and the Second World War . After his death in 1950, Rudolf Candrian took over the majority of the family business. Rudolf Candrian defended the new tender for the lease for the "Bahnhofsbuffet" in 1955; in return, he handed over the management of Suvretta House to his brother Albert Candrian.
Martin Candrian joined the family business in 1975 under the management of his father Rudolf. With the new tendering of the lease for the “station buffet”, the generation change in the family business was initiated. Against a now very broad field of competitors, the Candrian family was able to defend the lease again in 1978; With Martin Candrian, the third generation finally took over the management of the station catering in 1979.
The construction of the underground floors of the main station, which also began in 1979, caused inconvenience for the next 20 years, and with the opening of the store floor in 1990, the retailer Migros and other snack bars also sold drinks and small meals in the middle of the station. In order to better distribute the business risk, locations outside the main train station were also considered under Martin Candrian. The renovation of the station finally paid off, it allowed the establishment of additional work rooms for the station catering and the integration of a central catering business in the main station.
Therefore, in mid-1999, Martin Candrian combined the previous activities in the newly founded "Candrian Catering AG" with headquarters in the main train station. The previous sole proprietorships "Restaurants Bahnhofbuffet Zurich HB", "Bahnhofbuffet Zurich Enge ", "Restaurant Rapido" and "Gasthof zum Hirschen am See" in Meilen and the shares in the "Aktiengesellschaft Suvretta-Haus" were brought into the company.
In May 2000 Martin Candrian founded the subsidiary "Candrian Seafood AG" as a Swiss franchisee of the German North Sea fast-food restaurant chain and opened the sea buffet branch in the main train station in October 2000 and a smaller store branch in December in Winterthur. In November 2001 a store branch was also added in the main train station .
Further steps out of pure train station catering were taken in mid-2002 with the complete takeover of "Hotel Montana Zürich AG". With the second hotel, after Hirschen am See , which was taken over in 1986 , the bistro / bar “Le Lyonnais” was added. Also in the city center, near Paradeplatz , the bistro "vis-à-vis" was added with the adjoining Le Café am Talacker. The greatest media coverage, however, triggered the takeover of the Brasserie Lipp, which opened in October 1990 in the building of the Urania observatory in Zurich .
Additional branches in the North Sea were opened in November 2002 on Rennweg in Zurich - and thus well outside the vicinity of the train station - and in December in Bern train station . In March 2003, the sixth North Sea branch at Zurich Airport followed , which was opened in the food court of the newly created Airport Plaza shopping area - it was to remain the last.
When the Urban Entertainment Center Sihlcity was opened in March 2007 , the Imagine restaurant in HB received an offshoot in the Wiedikon district . Due to the high costs, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) gave up its newspaper printing press at its headquarters next to the opera house , which was last actually operated as a show printer ; In addition to the conversion of the rooms for the retail trade, the conversion for a combined restaurant and bar in the NZZ building also took place. In the competition that the NZZ carried out for this, the concept presented by Candrian was ultimately convincing: in October 2008 the Brasserie Schiller and the Goethe Bar were opened.
The expansion to Basel began in 2007 when the Basler Kunstverein re-tendered the lease for the Kunsthalle restaurant . After it was certain that Candrian could take over the lease, the "Restaurant Kunsthalle Basel AG" was founded at the end of 2007 and the operation of the restaurant, the Kunsthalle Bar and the Campari Bar was taken over on July 1, 2008.
Meanwhile, the North Sea branches, which were unable to gain a foothold outside the main train station and the airport, developed well below expectations . As a result, the three branches on Rennweg in Zurich, in Winterthur and in Bern were closed again; At the end of 2009, “Candrian Seafood AG” was merged with the parent company and dissolved.
In July 2010, the old core business was expanded in Basel and since then the Brasserie Basel has been operating in the Basel SBB train station , in addition to the three snack and take-away bars Hallo , Blueberry and Le Central . The takeover of the Zum Braunen Mutz restaurant on Barfüsserplatz , which was reopened in March 2011 after a ten-month renovation, was also in preparation .
After 32 years as managing director, Martin Candrian handed over management of the company to Claudio Bieri on July 1, 2011. Reto Candrian has been CEO since September 2014.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Silvio Margadant: Bon, Anton. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
- ↑ Silvio Margadant: Bon, Hans. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
- ↑ Ernst Morgenthaler: Rudolf Candrian-Bon, 1953. Retrieved on October 19, 2019 .
- ↑ Benno Gasser: The king of train station restaurants prefers to eat lentils with mustard sauce , Tages-Anzeiger , May 10, 2011
- ↑ Martin Candrian: "It must be" in: Bilanz 13/11 of July 6, 2011