A visit to Trappist’s Parents’ Chocolate Factory, which is free to access, begins outside. Interpretation boards were installed at various locations on the site.

People will learn the amount of work over the years. We create more than 3 million chickens a year, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of figurines, and we make 150,000 boxes of chocolate covered blueberries, within six weeks. To do this, it takes about 30,000 pounds of hand-picked blueberries.Says co-owner Dominic Genst.

Co-owner Dominic Genst reports that the equipment has changed a lot at the plant.

Photo: Radio Canada

While touring the monastery, visitors can listen to an exploratory podcast. Ten places on the site linked to an audio story. Founding Fathers, desserts, dairy products and the monastery are some of the topics that are covered.

Once inside, gourmets will be able to see the store’s regional products. They will then be able to take a virtual tour of the production area on a touch screen. This space, due to sanitary standards, is not available to visitors.

Chocolaterie des Pères Trappistes produces several chocolate-based products.

Photo: Radio Canada

Improve the tourism offer

Dominique Genest started thinking a few years ago to increase the tourism offer for his organization. At the same time, he hopes to improve the offer on Lac-Saint-Jean and wants to convince visitors to stop there or extend their stay.

The goal is to have a more attractive attraction, which will make people passing through the area at Dolbeau-Mistassini or Saint-Félicien decide to wander around the lake, will decide to come here. We want to help all the other attractions at MRCRegional county municipality Maria Chapdelen has a supplementary offer with what is already there, explaining the one who expects to please the tourists at the end of their visit. It will leave people satisfied, full of chocolates and full of stories and facts that matter to our community.

Monastic past

In addition to developing tourism, the creation of the Economic Museum will highlight the spirit, values, and history of the chocolate factory established by the Trappist parents. The plant’s modern equipment meets current needs, but revenue comes directly from monastic knowledge. Moreover, one of the challenges for a manager is to get his organization to evolve while retaining the essence of what was created by the monks.

In the past five to six years, the traffic at the chocolate factory has increased, rising from 2,000 to 20,000 visitors per year. Business doubled. The company employs around 30 people on average annually.