NAICS 31135Industry · 5-digitnational market

Chocolate and chocolate confectionery manufacturing

SoftwareDigital Shelf & Product Content Software 311 · Food Safety & Traceability Software 311

This industry comprises establishments primarily engaged in manufacturing chocolate and chocolate confectionery from cacao beans or purchased chocolate. — Statistics Canada, NAICS 2022A

Establishments · CanadaA: 234
Under 10 employeesA: 54%

Size and shape

How many businesses there are and how small they are. Fragmentation is the first thing an entrant — or anyone selling software into this industry — needs to know, and it is one of the few things that is actually measured.

Canadian establishments by number of employeesA

1–46829%

5–95825%

10–194821%

20–492912%

50–99156%

100–19983%

200–49942%

500+42%

Of 234 Canadian establishments with employees, 54% have fewer than ten — mostly small operators.

Where they areA

Quebec9038%

Ontario7632%

British Columbia3917%

Alberta83%

Largest four provinces by establishment count. Establishments with employees only — sole operators with no payroll are not in this table, so in trades and personal services the true number of businesses is higher.

How many new establishments are still tradingA

Manufacturing, US · opened 2020

86.2%

1 year

70.8%

3 years

58.4%

5 years

45.3%

10 years

opened 2015

Measured, not forecast: the share of US establishments opening in one year that were still active later. It counts good operators and bad ones together, which is exactly why it is the honest answer to “what are the odds”. It is for the whole sector rather than this market, and the ten-year figure comes from an older cohort because no younger one has reached ten years.

No US figure is shown. County Business Patterns is coded to the 2017 US edition of NAICS; this code either does not exist there, names a different industry, or is outside the programme's coverage (most of agriculture, rail, postal and public administration are). A figure is attached only where both the code and the title agree.

How businesses here compete

The structural profile of subsector 311, which every industry beneath it inherits. This is analyst judgment from how the subsector is organised — not research into this industry, and not a measurement.

national competitionhigh capitalUNVERIFIEDinherited from 311 Food manufacturing

Inspected facilities and a handful of buyers with listing fees. The reachable end is small-batch and regional, where the product can carry a premium the commodity line cannot.

Who sets the price: Grocery retailers, a concentrated buyer in Canada.
The software it runs on: Food-safety, traceability, recipe and batch ERP.

Market screens and studies

Market-entry records filed along this branch of the hierarchy. A record at or beneath this code is about this industry; one above it is about something wider that contains it.

Screened one level up. Nothing is filed at this exact code; the screen for 3113 Sugar and confectionery product manufacturing covers it.

Operating businessScreenedfiled at 3113

Craft Chocolate & Confectionery MakerOne thing must be true

binding constraint: willingness to pay

The pre-screen saw a craft-scale entry with the shape of the bakery record at 3118, and the counts support that there is one: 169 of the 330 Canadian establishments have fewer than ten employees [A]. The sugar end of the code is simply closed — Rogers Sugar is spending $280–300M to add 100,000 tonnes of refining capacity to a business that sold 781,454 tonnes in fiscal 2025 [A], and nobody enters refining beside that. Chocolate and candy are where an entrant can start, and the test is what making them earns. Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory is a long-established listed brand with its own factory and a captive franchise network to sell through. In fiscal 2026 it reported total revenue of $27.5M, down from $29.6M, and product and retail gross profit of $0.7M — after $0.1M the year before — with a net loss from continuing operations of $4.6M [A]. With the brand, the plant and the channel already in hand, manufacturing confectionery earned it almost nothing. The mechanism differs from bread. Confectionery is bought a few times a year as a gift, against a shelf price set by multinational brands that buy cocoa and sugar at scale, while the small maker buys the same world-priced inputs in pallets. The premium a customer will pay is real but seasonal and capped, and it is paid at the counter — so what works is a shop with a kitchen behind it, which is specialty food retail rather than manufacturing, and is won or lost on the lease.

NAICS 31135 vendors named11 sourced figuresOpen →

Filed above — wider than this industry

Operating businessScreenedfiled at 311 Food manufacturing

Consumer Packaged Goods Brand OperationStructure decides

binding constraint: entry cost

Shelf space is bought, not won. A new CPG brand pays slotting fees, funds trade promotions, carries the retailer's payment terms and absorbs returns before it learns whether the product sells, and co-manufacturing minimums put the first production run in the tens of thousands of units. The direct-to-consumer route that was supposed to bypass all of that now costs more in paid acquisition than the margin on a grocery-priced item supports. The product content software this industry buys is screened separately at the same code.

NAICS 3115 vendors named10 sourced figuresOpen →

Software serving this industry

The vertical software markets filed along the same branch — who sells to these businesses and who they would have to displace — and then the generic categories every business buys whatever it does.

Sold across the wider branch

Vertical softwareScreenedfiled at 311 Food manufacturing

Digital Shelf & Product Content SoftwareStructure decides

binding constraint: entry cost

Incumbent Salsify and Syndigo

The product is a retailer integration map, and it takes years and a partner team to build. Salsify raised about $200M at a $2B valuation on the strength of syndicating content to more than 1,000 retailers for brands including P&G, Coca-Cola, Mars and Kraft Heinz; Syndigo holds the other half of the same network. A new entrant must rebuild those connections one retailer at a time while each retailer keeps changing its content requirements — the same moat the EDI record at 419 describes, in a different format.

NAICS 3114 vendors named3 sourced figuresOpen →

Vertical softwareScreenedfiled at 311 Food manufacturing

Food Safety & Traceability SoftwareExecution decides

binding constraint: distribution

Incumbent Trustwell (FoodLogiQ + Genesis) and TraceGains

FSMA 204 gives the category a dated regulatory trigger, which is the strongest demand signal in this batch — but the buyer is reached through GFSI certifying bodies and third-party auditors, not through search or self-serve. That channel is owned by the auditors and by the incumbents who sponsor them, and an entrant with no audit relationship has no route in. Nothing is disclosed here. Every vendor named on this record is private, or sits inside a parent that does not break the line out, so no revenue floor can be built and the market size is genuinely unknown rather than estimated.

NAICS 3114 vendors namedOpen →

Catalogued categories — named, not analysed

Discrete manufacturing ERP SaaS 31-33

And what every business buys · 25 generic categories

Sold to every industry rather than this one, so they are filed against the software industry's own code. The same few vendors recur across most of them.

Who works here

The occupations employed in Manufacturing, most concentrated in it first. The share is measured against the whole sector, not this industry — the published cross-tabulation stops there.

Concentrated in this sectorA

Aircraft assemblers and aircraft assembly inspectors One industry 91.3%

Supervisors, assembly and fabrication One industry 88.3%

Machine operators and related workers in pulp and paper production and wood processing and manufacturing One industry 86.1%

Managers in manufacturing and utilities One industry 84.4%

Machine operators and related workers in chemical, plastic and rubber processing One industry 82.7%

Mechanical, electrical and electronics assemblers and inspectors One industry 82.3%

Machine operators and related workers in food, beverage and associated products processing One industry 79.1%

Machine operators and related workers in mineral and metal products processing and manufacturing One industry 77.7%

Furniture, wood, plastic and other products assemblers, finishers and inspectors One industry 73.9%

Machine operators and related workers in textile, fabric, fur and leather products processing and manufacturing One industry 70.8%

These jobs are mostly done here. An operator in this industry is competing for them against others in the same industry, not against the whole economy.

And the jobs every business has

Other technical trades Across the economy 20%

Technical occupations in electronics and electrical engineering Across the economy 16.3%

Shoe repairers, shoemakers and upholsterers Across the economy 15.2%

Administrative and financial supervisors Across the economy 11.6%

Technical inspectors and regulatory officers Across the economy 10.7%

Administrative services managers Across the economy 9.6%

Legislative and senior managers Across the economy 9.2%

Building maintenance installers, servicers and repairers Across the economy 8.3%

Financial, insurance and related administrative support workers Across the economy 7.7%

Technical occupations in computer and information systems Across the economy 4.8%

Found across at least fourteen of the twenty sectors. In a small establishment several of these are usually one person, or an outside provider.

All 162 occupations →

Inside this industry

2 rows sit directly beneath 31135. Each has a base report of its own.

Code	Industry	Establishments · CA	What is known
311351	Chocolate and chocolate confectionery manufacturing from cacao beans	81	screened at 3113
311352	Confectionery manufacturing from purchased chocolate	153	screened at 3113

Alongside it, under 3113 Sugar and confectionery product manufacturing

Code	Industry	Establishments · CA	What is known
31131	Sugar manufacturing	17	screened at 3113
31134	Non-chocolate confectionery manufacturing	79	screened at 3113