Bachmann Lucerne

Confiserie Bachmann traces to 1897, when Johann Bachmann took over a bakery inside Lucerne's city mill with his siblings Anna and Anton. A decade later he handed the business to Anton, who opened his own bakery in 1921; Anton's son Hans, the second generation, built out the operation in Lucerne's Wermelin district and expanded the range from bread into sweet pastry, earning the nickname "Wäsmeli-Beck" — the baker from Wermelin.

The third generation, brothers who rejoined the family firm in 1997 and took over management in 2006, opened the company's first branch inside Lucerne's Hotel Monopol under family member Raymond Bachmann, then expanded and modernized the business into what is now, by the company's own count, a five-generation operation. What started as one city-mill bakery has grown into a multi-award-winning Lucerne institution with 21 specialty stores, some with attached cafés, producing more than 500 different baked items fresh each day — including the Nussgipfel, the nut-filled croissant that remains one of its signature pastries. It's a rare case of a neighborhood bakery still run, five generations on, by the family that opened it.