Debauve & Gallais is a French chocolate manufacturer founded by Sulpice Debauve in 1800. After his nephew Antoine Gallais joined the company in 1823, the company adopted their current name. In 1819 the company received the royal warrant as purveyors to the French court, and was the official chocolate supplier for Emperor Napoleon and of kings Louis XVIII, Charles X, and Louis Philippe I.
History
Sulpice Debauve (1757–1836), former chemist to French king Louis XVI, devised "the novel combination of cocoa, cane sugar, and medicine after Marie Antoinette complained to him about the unpleasant taste of the medicines she had to take." The queen was so pleased that she named those exquisite coin-shaped chocolates Pistoles.[1] Debauve continued to create a variety of flavored Pistoles for the queen. Finally in 1800, Debauve opened his first chocolate shop on the Rive Gauche of Paris, at Faubourg Saint-Germain.
In 1816, Debauve was appointed as the sole chocolate supplier to the French royal families. In 1819, Napoleon's official architects Percier and Fontaine designed the new shop, which is now classified as a historical monument, located at 30 Rue des Saints-Pères. In 1823, Debauve took in his nephew Jean-Baptiste Auguste Gallais (1787–1838), also a chemist, as an associate in order to create and distribute his dietary chocolates; known then as "healthy chocolates" they were made with almond milk