Did you know that today’s location of Mona Plaza was the site of the first Serbian chocolate factory?

At this very spot, chocolate, biscuits, and sweets, which used to make days sweeter to many Yugoslavs were produced since 1902. The sweet story was started by Kosta Shonda, tradesman and industrial who arrived from Greece to our capital in the second half of the XIX century. Kosta opened the first shop in the 1890s where you could purchase "Olga" – at the time the only milk chocolate in Belgrade. "Olga" was known as "the best of all chocolates".

Shonda family was comprised of great visionaries that excelled with their ideas. They built the "Koloseum" cinema on Terazije square, where today stands the "Zvezda" (Star) cinema, and they also gifted the goblet to the Yugoslav football association and were also the first to start printing and selling albums with cards of football players. Besides having a sharp sense of business and creativity, the Shonda family was characterized as being extremely humane. They were great benefactors, they collected goods for the poor, and helped the elderly in numerous ways. Unfortunately, after World War II, the Shonda family chocolate tale ended. Following the years after the war, the factory became a joint-stock company, and then got bombed. Almost half a century later, the chocolate tale got its deserved sequel.