Gervais (mark)

Gervais is the name of a mark of fresh produce belonging to the group Agroalimentaire French Danone since 1973.

Founded by Charles Gervais, the Gervais company amalgamated with Danone in 1967, becoming the group Gervais Danone then.

History

It is in the Pays of Bray, in Normandy, famous for its crémeux butter and its milk, with the right in the middle of the 19th century, in a small farm of Villers-on-Auchy, close to Gournay-in-Bray that Mrs. Héroult , farm of its state, manufactured, like all the other women of the area, a cheese with consistent paste which it sold on the markets neighborhood. Except that it had with his service a Swiss cowherd, which suggested to him making as in his country: to add cream to the paste before the malaxation of curd. And so the cheese of the " Héroult" mother; success had: the Swiss was born (it will take later the name of Petit Switzerland).

The success of the Petit Switzerland was still much larger when he was discovered by an agent of the Halles of Paris, Charles Gervais which smelled the good deal. And as the artisanal production was not enough to feed the market of the capital, Charles Gervais, associated with Mrs. Héroult for the occasion, took again a cheese dairy with its name, in 1852, with Tool bag-in-Bray. The first employees of the Gervais cheese dairy were first of all the Swiss ones, that it made come especially.

As of 1872 is born a second Gervais product, whose popularity will not be long in equalizing that of the Petits-Suisses: it is about the Carré expenses.

Charles Gervais had also included/understood the interest which it had to deliver of Swiss in a state of freshness increasingly more perfect. The railway line Beauvais-Paris hardly inaugurated, it set up a particular transport between Ferrières and Beauvais: the fast cars drawn by four horses, became famous.

Charles Gervais had also included/understood the importance of the marks and their identification. Soon, the label Cheeses with the CH cream. Gervais known as Suisses is printed on the boxes out of wooden, which already contain these small round cheeses. With the Station Saint-Lazare, hardly unloaded train, the Swiss Petits are charged aboard horse-drawn carriage, before being delivered in all Paris a few hours after having left the Pays of Bray. At the end of, the cheese dairy becomes a true factory.

In 1900, Charles Gervais opens a workshop with Clermont, where the boxes of poplar are manufactured. It also innovates by using packing of single use: a revolution for the time. The Swiss Petits are sold in a fine paper band and are placed by six in small wood boxes, each Petit Switzerland weighing 60 grams part.

Whereas the company is still very artisanal, the grandson of the founder, Charles Gervais, modernizes the factory completely and thus places the Gervais house at the avant-garde of progress in the Milk industry. A progress stopped Net by the bombs of the Second world war, which will be right of the Gervais factory in only 35 minutes. But it is without counting on the determination of Charles Gervais, who calls upon a brilliance architect to rebuild an ultramodern factory.

The successors of Charles Gervais will continue the development of the company, multiplying the repurchases and creations in all the Normandy.

In 1967 Gervais amalgamates with Danone, yoghourt manufacturer and becomes the group Gervais Danone.

Fusion with the group BSN, in 1973 (which will become in 1994 the group Danone) gave the international stature which one knows today.

Gervais of today

the factory of Neufchâtel-in-Bray produces more than 5 Swiss billion Petits each year, that is to say 75 000 tons of very confused produced fresh cheeses.
Gervais is a mark of the company Danone, itself belonging to the group Agroalimentaire Danone.

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