Szamos: Success story from around the kitchen table

Nearly 100 years of traditions, 500 employees and 22 confectioneries: Szamos is a family enterprise where the 2nd and the 3rd generations work in close cooperation. Our magazine interviewed Gabriella Kelényi Szamos and son Kolos Kelényi.

Gabriella Kelényi Szamos
owner
Szamos Marcipán

Szamos is famous not only for its premium products but also for family members working hard for the business 24 hours a day. Where does this work ethic come from?

Gabriella Kelényi Szamos: – Working alongside my father as a child, we learned how to make marzipan roses. We loved to help because if we could sell the roses, we were given money to go to the cinema!

Szamos transformed into a Ltd. from a small business in the 1990s. Now you have 500 workers in Hungary and abroad. It seems that the 3rd generation also grew into living for the family business…

Kolos Kelényi
owner
Szamos Marcipán

Kelényi Kolos: – Las week my wife Zsuzsa and I started a new mini-project: we are making bread rolls and we received the first orders via Messenger from our friends. When I was a kid, it was my task to take marzipan orders on the phone…We are doing the same thing as 35 years ago, only the tools have changed. Plus Szamos not only manufactures but is also active in sales, hospitality, etc.

Where do you make the business decisions? At home or in the office?

K.Sz.G.: – For many years we discussed everything about Szamos sitting around the kitchen table. My other son, Ádám said once: the most important decisions about Szamos are made at the kitchen table – when my parents were still alive in their house, now at us. What is more, when we create a new cake or pastry, we test it in the kitchen – with the friends that we invited.

You are family and business partners at the same time. How do you get on?

K. Sz. G.: – Kolos is very much like me, so we are fighting a lot about business decisions, because of the generational differences. Ádám manages the finances of Szamos, so I only have family battles with him sometimes.

K.K.: – I spend a lot of time with mom, as we also live together. It isn’t easy to manage family and business affairs together. Luckily Szamos has become so big by now that each of us can be active in different fields of business.

Gabriella, how do you look back on the past decade? What was the best thing?

K.Sz.G.: – I had been with my husband Gyula since I was 18 years old, and every day was a happy one with him. He passed away a year ago. Gyula was Szamos marzipan himself. He was still alive when we founded a holding, currently, I am the CEO and I make all the brand-related decisions. I am 71 years old but I still work every day.

In the case of Szamos we can’t really talk about a generation change, it is more like the cooperation of different generations. How can you preserve the traditions of Szamos and modernise the company at the same time?

K. K.: – The world keeps changing around us. Consumption habits transform, so Szamos needs to innovate to keep up with the market. We have decided to keep the classic style shop interior because even young guests like that. Szamos is experimenting with low-sugar desserts, and our mousses and macarons also indicate the new direction. In the Szamos café close to the Parliament orders can be placed at the counter only.

K. Sz. G.: – This is also the place where there is a chocolate museum upstairs. The pieces exhibited here were collected by my husband.

…and your chocolate school is also there…

K. Sz. G.: – …which proved to be a very good decision as the museum is very popular! There are many course participants and several of them have opened their own chocolate shops. I am happy about this, because competition makes us work harder, too.

You sound like all of your decisions have been good.

K. Sz. G.: – I often think about how we have managed to come this far. My husband was probably right about this when he said: people can feel that we have good intentions.

K.K.: – During the quarantine we are living up in the Mátra mountains. With the help of online tools we can stay in touch with the managements of companies without any problem – this can work also because they know exactly what they are doing. In a two-week period we launched two projects: two small shops where you can buy bakery items and desserts contact-free, and a regional home-delivery service.

K. Sz. G.: – During the quarantine I am constantly in touch with our shops. Our life is all about Szamos. Right now the management is busy trying to find a way for lowering prices a bit, so that more people can buy our products more often. //