Jerónimo Martins Shutters the 18-Store Hussel Chocolate Network by 27 April — Eight Permanent Staff Move to Pingo Doce After the 2024 Hussel GmbH Bankruptcy and the €893,000 Loss

Jerónimo Martins has wound down Hussel, the German-format chocolate-and-confectionery chain it ran in Portugal since 2007. An official confirmation reached the press desk on Monday 18 May: all eighteen Hussel stores ceased trading by 27 April 2026, and eight permanent employees have been absorbed into the Pingo Doce operações division. The closure is the cleanest example yet of the spillover from the 2024 insolvency of Hussel GmbH — the German parent franchise — into the Portuguese retail map, and it caps a financial trajectory that saw the Portuguese subsidiary post a 2024 net loss of €893,000, itself a 63.3% deterioration on the prior year.

The retreat lands less than two weeks after Jerónimo Martins SGPS posted a 6.8% Q1 2026 net-profit decline in its 7 May results release, and inside a sector that is watching mid-price retail formats fold as cocoa, sugar and rental costs reset higher.

The Closure Sequence and the Final Six Locations

Hussel's network shrank in two waves through 2026. The first tranche of mall and high-street closures completed before Easter; the residual six stores held on into April for clearance trading. The final closures on 27 April covered Amoreiras, Colombo and Vasco da Gama in Lisbon, Via Catarina in Porto, and the Cascais and Sintra units. The leases in these prime shopping-centre locations are now being marketed by CBRE Portugal and Cushman & Wakefield on behalf of the respective landlords; the Amoreiras and Colombo units have already drawn interest from international chocolate brands and one Portuguese artisanal player, according to two sector sources.

The Three Forces That Killed the Format

Jerónimo Martins's communiqué framed the closure as the consequence of a 'set of factors' whose 'lasting impact led to the understanding of an unsustainable situation without founded perspectives of reversibility.' Three structural drivers sit behind that phrasing.

First, the 2024 bankruptcy of Hussel GmbH, the German master franchisor that held a 49% minority stake in the Portuguese operation, dismantled the supply chain and the brand-licensing architecture overnight. Second, cocoa prices entered a structural bull cycle from 2024 as production failures in Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana — which together account for roughly 60% of global cocoa output — collided with European demand growth. London ICE cocoa futures peaked above $11,000 per metric tonne in April 2024 and remain at historically elevated levels in 2026. Third, prime mall rent and operating costs in the Lisbon-Porto axis have re-priced sharply since the 2024 retail-property reset, and a small-footprint specialist format simply does not generate the sales density required to support the new envelope.

What Happens to the 60-Person Original Workforce

The Portuguese Hussel subsidiary employed approximately 60 people at the start of the wind-down, most on permanent contracts. Eight have been absorbed into Pingo Doce — Jerónimo Martins's communiqué states that the priority was 'employment stability for employees within a group company in Portugal.' The remaining 52 received severance packages negotiated through the Código do Trabalho's collective-redundancy procedure; the per-head value has not been disclosed.

What This Means for Expats and Sector Watchers

• Chocolate shoppers in Lisbon and Porto: boutique Portuguese players — Arcádia, Imperial, Vista Alegre's Bombons da Fábrica line, and artisanal names like Bettina e Niccolò Corallo and Chocolataria Equador — pick up the residual demand. Expect price increases of 10-15% on premium boxed chocolate over the summer.
• For Pingo Doce shareholders: Jerónimo Martins is signalling that it will not subsidise loss-making perimeter formats to protect a brand portfolio. Q2 2026 results on 30 July will be the next read.
• For mall operators and retail-property investors: six small-footprint vacancies open across Amoreiras, Colombo, Vasco da Gama, Via Catarina, Cascais and Sintra; the re-letting timeline will be a leading indicator on Lisbon and Porto premium-retail health into H2 2026.
• For foreign-owned franchise operators: the Hussel case underlines the upstream exposure that the master-franchisor model carries — review the change-of-control and parent-insolvency clauses in your Portuguese-perimeter agreements.

Jerónimo Martins now keeps its Portuguese retail concentration on Pingo Doce and Recheio. The 18-store specialist chocolate footprint disappears from the Portuguese mall map.