Today, we would like to turn our attention to the woman who is the heart of the Chocolate Museum: our managing director, Annette Imhoff.
The Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger recently dedicated a wonderful portrait to her, highlighting what it means to run one of Germany's most visited museums with such passion and vision. The article not only highlights her business success, but also her personal story and the commitment with which Annette honors the legacy of her father, Hans Imhoff, and carries it into the future.
Under the title "The woman behind the success of Cologne's Chocolate Museum," you can learn more about her journey, her visions for the Rheinauhafen, and why Cologne is the best place in the world for a museum of this kind for her—and for all of us here at the museum.
The director of the Chocolate Museum says that when her father really wanted something, no one could stand in his way. That was the case with the construction of the Chocolate Museum. Her father paid for the building out of his own pocket more than 30 years ago – it cost him 53 million German marks. In the fall of 1993, the museum opened after only 13 months of construction. In the decades before that, Hans Imhoff had collected all kinds of vending machines, scrapbooks, and archive material from his chocolate company Stollwerck. "That's how the idea came about: you could turn this into a museum. We thought it was complete nonsense," says Imhoff. "His wife, his children, his advisors – no one liked the idea. We thought he was out of his mind. It would be a huge loss-making venture."
In 1989, a trial run took place at the Gürzenich. To mark the 150th anniversary of Stollwerck, Hans Imhoff presented his collection to the people of Cologne. "My dad said that if 50,000 people came to this exhibition, he would build a museum," says Imhoff. "200,000 came, and they stood in lines around the Gürzenich."
Annette Imhoff joined the Chocolate Museum for the first time in early 1995, when she was 25 years old and about to finish her economics degree. At her father's urging, she became managing director. The museum was different then than it is today. "Originally, it was a branch of the large Stollwerck corporation, which handled everything from purchasing to human resources," she says. "If anything went wrong, someone from Porz would come and make sure everything was working again." She ran the Chocolate Museum for four years, but in 1995 she also became managing director of Larośe, while a site manager took over the running of the museum. Her father founded Larosé in the late 1970s. The company supplies companies with workwear, table linen, and other textiles and launders them for them.
"Larosé actually came too early," says Annette Imhoff. "The first few years were tough; I would have preferred to have had a little more experience. But I found this company so exciting, partly because it was far enough away from my father." Imhoff became an ambitious manager, built a completely new company organization, professionalized the business, and incorporated three competitors into Larośe in the first three years. From 1999 onwards, Annette Imhoff concentrated on Larośe. Hans Imhoff was so satisfied with his daughter's work that he transferred all shares in the company to her in 2002. In 2015, she finally sold Larośe to a competitor, as there was strong price and competitive pressure in the industry. The company was too small to survive in this environment in the long term. Most recently, Annette Imhoff and her husband and co-managing director Christian Unterberg-Imhoff generated more than €60 million in sales with Larośe and employed nearly a thousand people. The purchase price has been agreed to remain confidential.
The couple then moved into offices in the chocolate museum, not knowing exactly where they were headed. Annette Imhoff felt that the museum was showing its age. "Since the sale of Stollwerck in the early 2000s, the spirit of innovation had taken a vacation here," she says. "Not much had happened. Visitor numbers were good, but there was a great need to modernize the structures." The exhibition was also no longer up to date in terms of museum education. "My husband and I gradually tidied things up," says Imhoff. The exhibition has now been completely redesigned. Two years ago, the renovated, now interactive "World Tour of Cocoa" was opened, and just this summer, the new cultural history exhibition was opened at a cost of three million euros.
"In total, we have invested over twelve million euros in recent years." Today, the Cologne Chocolate Museum claims to be the world's most comprehensive presentation of the history and present of cocoa and chocolate. The café is also new. The shop will be modernized in January, and visitor toilets and cloakrooms will soon follow. "And then we'll be done at some point," says Imhoff. Until it starts all over again. "You can't imagine: 700,000 visitors a year really wear down a building."
But modernization also means optimizing processes. Since 2024, the Chocolate Museum has been the only museum in Cologne to offer time slot tickets in order to cope with the rush during peak hours and to spread out visitor flows.
Annette Imhoff has changed one more thing: "Today, there is significantly more chocolate to snack on in the museum. In the past, this was rather limited." One example is the "transparent chocolate factory" next to the chocolate fountain, which was modernized in 2020. Every day, 500 kilograms of chocolate roll off the conveyor belt in full view of visitors – and at one point, an interactive robot arm picks up a piece of chocolate from the conveyor belt at the push of a button and hands it to guests on the other side of the glass pane.
Annette Imhoff's husband recently stepped down from the management board. She has brought Dominik Schröder, a confidant from her Larośe days, on board and is pursuing ambitious visitor numbers: "Next year, we want to really step it up a notch."
"We have a culture and a history that I am proud of," says Imhoff. "It's still a little early to talk about succession, but of course we are starting to think about it." The fact that the Chocolate Museum is a family business is important. "You run a company more long-term when it's family-owned. Of course, we have to and want to make money, but I can make strategic decisions that may lead to poorer results in the short term. The next quarter is completely irrelevant to me."
I'm Astrid and I've been working in marketing at the Chocolate Museum for more than 10 years. It's one of the nicest places to work in Cologne and there are always great stories to tell about cocoa and chocolate. Where else can you get such a great view of the Rhine right from your desk?
