Patents on the soles of your shoes...: Oh, patents! Chocolat Menier (1)

For anyone who ever doubted the curative properties of chocolate, it took a pharmaceutical company founded in 1816 by Antoine Brutus Menier to open France’s first mechanized mass producing cacao powder factory in 1825. Indeed, the original Menier pharmaceutical company, founded in Paris, used cacao powder for medicinal purposes, together with other pulverized mineral and botanical substances.

Remodeled Noisiel watermill chocolate factory on the River Marne

The Menier factory, established in Noisiel, Seine-et-Marne (16 miles east of Paris), rented the hydropower of an old watermill, to boost the production of its pharmaceutical powders.

Indeed, the watermill factory in Noisiel, built on the River Marne enabled Menier to transition from hand and living horse powered grinding to waterwheel and dam power. The transition to hydropower, then estimated at approx. 32 horsepower, supplied the power that approximately 32 draft horses could not feasibly provide, on-site in Paris. Thus, increased production capacity in Noisiel enabled Menier to accommodate the expansion of the Menier drug company in Paris, while also launching the production of a non-pharmaceutical chocolate product, the first quality household chocolate bar, in 1836.

In turn, when the Paris Menier drug company was sold to the Pharmacie Centrale de France in 1867, the Menier company consolidated the cacao production side of the business. This coincided with the Menier purchase of cacao plantations in Nicaragua and the purchase and expansion of the old Noisiel watermill which had been used as the Menier plant. Jules Saulnier, an architect who later worked with Gustave Eiffel, was commissioned.

The Marne River watermill factory remodel (depicted in the above postcard) was integrated with what was also becoming a model labor town (familistère). Indeed, Menier also built housing, a school, a library, restaurants, a canteen, plus more in Noisiel, for its expanding workforce, called “the chocolates”. Beginning with nine workers and one foreman housed inside the old watermill factory, the Menier workforce culminated in 1914 with 2500 workers, housed in Menier residences, in Noisiel and vicinity.

In 1914, Menier was producing almost 7 (kilo) tons of chocolate per day. By then, the Menier chocolate company, managed by four generations of Menier sons and/or brothers, was also considered an empire with factories teeming in London (UK), and New York City (USA). Menier owned the complete vertical industrial process for chocolate production, from seed to finished product, including plantations, ships for importing, a railroad company for distribution, a sugar refinery and the Noisiel cocoa manufacturing plant, together with the offices compound and residences.

Menier household chocolate wrapper

During the course of its rise, the Menier chocolate empire collected numerous accolades. The original chrome yellow wrapper for Menier household chocolate displayed copies of the front and back of the first two medals awarded to Menier: a Gold Medal of Encouragement, awarded in 1832, and a silver medal awarded at the 1834 Industrial Fair in Paris, among many more to come. The elected mayor of Noisiel was also a Menier family member up to 1959, when the Menier company factory was sold, and the Menier family left Noisiel.

In 2018, the Noisiel Menier compound which has accommodated Nestlé, France headquarters, and its 1300 employees, since 1995, is apparently on sale, since Nestlé has planned to move closer to Paris. The Saulnier-remodeled old factory watermill (le Moulin Saulnier), remains the first factory listed as a historically significant site in France. Most importantly, to date, the 200-year old Menier quality household chocolate bars, wrapped in paper that still displays the front and back of the first two medals, awarded in the 1830s, continue to hold their own, on the chocolate market in France, and elsewhere.

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The Menier chocolate empire purchased technology to power its chocolate manufacturing processes, and the company patented its own inventions. In particular, Henri Emile Menier, grandson of the Menier company founder in 1816, patented two grinding machines, at the turn of the 20^th century.

Each of the Menier grinding machine inventions is recited in respective patent families that include FR (France), US (United States), GB (Great Britain) and CA (Canada) patents, listed below.

Menier grinding machine patent family (cone-shaped millstones)

FR332855 (A) ― 1903-11-10 - Broyeur à meules coniques opposées pour le broyage intensif des matières fluides, semi-fluides ou pateuses
US788113 (A) ― 1905-04-25 - Grinding-machine
GB190410166 (A) ― 1904-11-24 - Improvements in and relating to Grinding or Crushing Machines
CA87752 (A) ― 1904-06-14 - Grinding machine

Menier grinding machine patent family (stacked concave-convex millstones)

FR338809 (A) ― 1904-08-04 - Broyeur pour substances de toutes natures
US835286 (A) ― 1906-11-06 - Grinding-machine
GB190410180 (A) ― 1904-11-24 - Improvements in and relating to Grinding or Crushing Machines
CA87753 (A) ― 1904-06-14 - Grinding machine