Groundbreaking ceremony and a world record

The new bakery of the Konditorei Speck on the Industriestrasse in Zug is planned to open in May 2022, and the ground-breaking ceremony for this took place on Monday. The confectionery company can also celebrate a world record – the largest cherry cake in the world

2020 has been an eventful year for the Konditorei Speck (Confectionery Speck) in Zug: not only did they celebrate 125 years since the foundation of the company, but they also produced the world's largest Zug Kirschtorte (cherry cake) to mark this occasion at the beginning of the year, which Guinness World Records has recently confirmed. The ground-breaking ceremony for the new production site in Göbli, which will be put into operation in May 2022, was held on Monday,. From then on, the smell of the traditional Speckli almond pastry will probably be noticeable in the mornings there.

It was a cool autumn day yesterday morning in the industrial area in Zug, but Peter and Walter Speck and their team nevertheless had beaming faces as they symbolically dug their spades into the frozen earth. This site has been in planning for two years, and the first big physical step has now been taken. The need for a new building had become clear, because no further expansion was possible at the existing locations.

"In addition, we would have had to shut down production for three to four months in the event of an extension,. We didn't want to let our customers wait that long for their morning Gipfeli/croissant," says Peter Speck, smiling. At the new Göbli site, everything can now be adapted to the needs of the bakers, and the working hours in particular. Due to the larger working area, the nightly shifts in the bakery will probably disappear almost completely.

Office space and apartments are also being built
A café and a shop will also be part of the new location, from which visitors can gain direct insight into the production of the goods via a glass pane. "This is a special feature of the building. You can see into the room from the outside as well as inside, a total of three sides. The building facade on the ground floor is largely made of glass," explains Dan Semrad of the CSL architectural firm, which designed the building.
Around 50 employees will work here in the future, on a total area of 2,000 square metres. But it’s not only the production and the cafés that will receive a new home here: office space or a doctor's practice could be accommodated on the first floor, and fourteen furnished studios will be built above it, for whom tenants are still being sought, as Peter Speck points out. In total, the construction will cost CHF 17 million.

Photo 1: Brothers Peter and Walter Speck (second and fourth from left) with their team at the ground-breaking ceremony.
Photo 2: Peter Speck hovered over the cake for the construction.

 World record attempt has been recognised
At the same time as the ground-breaking ceremony, the Speck brothers announced that the world record attempt to produce the world's largest Zug Kirschtorte (cherry cake) had now been officially recognized. After a thorough examination, Guinness World Records has given the Zug confectionery the record.

The giant cake weighed a total of 241 kilograms: 18 kilograms of butter, 23 kilograms of flour, over 900 eggs and almost 100 litres of cherry liqueur (Kirsch) were used. "We are very pleased and honoured that the record has been recognised. If we do something, we do it right, and this record attempt cost us a lot of effort," says the Speck brothers.

For the test to be recognized, the processing had to be filmed, the Food Inspection authority had to accompany the undertaking, and the certification had to be successful as well. On Saturday, January 25, around 3,000 onlookers in the Metalli could watch Peter Speck temporarily hover over the cake, for example, to lay the Japonais base or to spread the buttercream over it.

The production actually started three days before the public event, however: in total, the production of the cherry cake cost 55 hours. The world's largest cherry cake was part of the 125th anniversary celebrations.