What does the burglary at a leading Uccle chocolatier reveal about business security in Brussels?

Burglars broke into Jérôme Grimonpon’s chocolate shop in Uccle, according to a report published by La Dernière Heure on 26 August 2026, leaving the award-winning artisan questioning whether he can still trust Brussels

Place

Brussels

City-region in which the burglary occurred and whose business-security environment is examined.

Why it matters

City-region in which the burglary occurred and whose business-security environment is examined.

About

The City of Brussels is the largest municipality and historical centre of the Brussels-Capital Region, as well as the capital of the French Community of Belgium, the Flemish Region, and Belgium. The City of Brussels is also the administrative centre of the European Union, as it hosts a number of principal EU institutions in its European Quarter.

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Place

Watermael-Boitsfort

Neighbouring commune included in the joint police-zone burglary statistics.

Why it matters

Neighbouring commune included in the joint police-zone burglary statistics.

About

Watermael-Boitsfort or Watermaal-Bosvoorde, often simply called Boitsfort in French or Bosvoorde in Dutch, is one of the 19 municipalities of the Brussels-Capital Region, Belgium. Located in the south-eastern part of the region, it is bordered by Auderghem, the City of Brussels, Ixelles, and Uccle, as well as the Flemish municipalities of Hoeilaart, Overijse and Sint-Genesius-Rode.

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Place

Auderghem

Neighbouring commune included in the joint police-zone burglary statistics.

Why it matters

Neighbouring commune included in the joint police-zone burglary statistics.

About

Auderghem or Oudergem is one of the 19 municipalities of the Brussels-Capital Region, Belgium. Located in the south-eastern part of the region, along the Woluwe valley and at the entrance to the Sonian Forest, it is bordered by Etterbeek, Ixelles, Watermael-Boitsfort, and Woluwe-Saint-Pierre, as well as the Flemish municipalities of Tervuren and Overijse. Like all municipalities in Brussels, it is officially bilingual (French–Dutch).

Official site ↗View source record ↗

The break-in concerns a small but prominent Brussels food business rather than a large retail chain able to spread security costs across dozens of locations. Jérôme Grimonpon Chocolatier operates at 2 Avenue Coghen, with production and retail closely linked at the Uccle premises. Gault&Millau’s chocolatier guide identifies Grimonpon as its Brussels Chocolatier of the Year for 2026, an accolade he previously received in 2020. The guide describes an artisan working from cocoa bean to finished bar and sourcing distinctive varieties from the Solomon Islands, the Philippines and the Dominican Republic.

That production model makes the consequences of a burglary different from the loss of stock in a conventional shop. A specialist chocolatier may have finished products, ingredients, tools, machinery, packaging and customer orders concentrated in one place. Even where insurance ultimately pays, a forced entry can bring an excess charge, repairs, administrative work, disrupted production and lost opening hours. No reliable public estimate of those costs in Grimonpon’s case was available at the time of writing, and it is not known whether the shop remained fully operational after the incident.

La Dernière Heure attributed to Grimonpon the statement that he no longer had confidence in Brussels. It is a forceful personal assessment made after becoming the victim of a crime, not proof that every Brussels shopping district is experiencing the same trend. Yet it cannot be dismissed as an isolated expression of frustration. The local police zone’s 2024 report counted 152 burglaries in shops, up from approximately 118 a year earlier, alongside 15 armed robberies, more than twice the seven recorded in 2023. Police statistics cover the three municipalities together and therefore do not establish how many of those cases occurred specifically in Uccle.

The longer comparison also requires care. Federal Police figures show that recorded burglaries at Belgian businesses and shops fell from 7,165 in 2024 to 6,711 in 2025, a decline of about 6%. That national improvement followed 8,174 recorded cases in 2023. The Federal Police cautions that its categories include completed offences and attempts, and that figures should not simply be added because a single incident can fall under more than one crime classification. In other words, the national trend moved down while the most recently published local annual comparison showed a rise. Both can be true.

For an independent retailer, the economically important issue is less whether Brussels performs better or worse than Belgium as a whole than whether repeated security expenses become a permanent cost of trading. Better locks, reinforced glazing, cameras, alarms and higher insurance premiums absorb money that cannot be used for wages, equipment or product development. Those costs may eventually feed into prices. Customers encounter the effect through shorter opening hours, delayed orders or dearer chocolates; employees experience it through a less secure workplace and greater uncertainty after an intrusion.

The timing is uncomfortable for Brussels commerce. The Brussels Institute for Statistics and Analysis, or IBSA, reported that the region’s market activity grew by only 0.4% in 2025, while retail activity remained below its pre-pandemic level. IBSA also recorded 4,500 fewer salaried Brussels residents at the end of 2025 than a year earlier, a decline of 1.3%. A burglary does not explain those broader economic figures, but additional losses and security bills are especially difficult for small businesses when consumer-facing trade has yet to regain its former footing.

There is a wider contradiction here. Artisan chocolate is part of the commercial identity that Brussels presents to residents and visitors, but its most distinctive producers often remain small, street-level businesses. Visit Brussels included Grimonpon among the capital’s highlighted chocolatiers in 2026. Recognition can attract customers, yet it does not provide the security infrastructure or financial resilience of a multinational brand. The value of a neighbourhood shop also exceeds its turnover: it generates footfall, supports nearby traders and gives a shopping street a reason to be visited rather than bypassed.

Police and municipal authorities have a different responsibility from the victim. Their task is to investigate individual offences while judging risk from complete data, not from one highly visible case. The 2024 local figures justify concern, but they do not demonstrate an unchecked rise continuing through 2025 or 2026. The police zone has not publicly linked the Grimonpon break-in to a series, identified suspects or announced arrests in the material reviewed for this article.

The next meaningful developments will therefore be practical rather than rhetorical: whether investigators identify those responsible, whether stolen property can be recovered, how quickly repairs and insurance procedures are completed, and whether the chocolatier changes his security arrangements or business plans. For Uccle’s traders, the larger question is whether the local rise recorded in 2024 proved temporary. Updated municipal-level figures and a clear account from police would help distinguish a painful individual crime from a sustained commercial-security problem.