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My spouse works at an artisanal chocolate factory in Raleigh, NC[0]. From experience, there is a huge difference in quality between small batch chocolate bars and bonbons vs mass manufactured. Even with small batch, there's a difference between buying it in a store vs buying it fresh from the factory.
That said, I don't think that difference is worth an extra $290. Once you're over the $5-to-10 per bar mark, there's diminishing returns on quality (for me at least.) Anything over that and you're paying for the story and branding. A $7 single-origin fair trade bar tastes the same as a $300 one, and in both cases, they're probably sourcing from the same farmer.
The fact that it's possible to charge this much for certain food & drink is both embarrassing and fascinating to me.
On one hand, anyone who's spent the time to cultivate a preference can tell some bit of difference between "crappy" beer/wine/coffee/chocolate/etc. and "the good stuff". On the other hand, taste & smell in particular are so adjusted by expectation, visual presentation, and of course stories of bespoke products from old-world artisans.
But even if you're aware of all that, I'm the first to admit it's easy to get enveloped in the more "objective" ways to put food & drink on a magical pedestal (especially those with psychoactive properties like alcohol, caffeine, & other drugs). Learn how different hop varietals contribute different alpha-acid concentrations that affect the taste and smell of beer, or the flavor profile of coffee roasts, or the THC/CBD ratio of marijuana strains...
It's not that it's all bullshit, there's some truth there for sure, it's just interesting to me when I find myself geeking out about these things. I don't (think) I fall for stories behind products, but there are many ways humans essentially get lost in, for lack of a better word, the "magic" properties of substances we ingest.
I see it as a kind of glitch of the human mind that's both life-enriching and, sometimes, to the detriment of our wallets.
If you like chocolate, too, there is a charming company called Chocosphere: http://chocophere.com that sells a pretty wide variety of bars and also has subscription options. Their website is a bit 2005, but the product is good.
It's been a long day and I don't know why I even clicked the link. But, after doing so, I wanted to mention that I really like the website. Whoever made it did a good job. It's probably as informative and easy-to-use as a site like that would ever need to be without being filled with useless, time-wasting fluff. Like I said, I've had quite a day and figured I'd end it by saying something positive. Even if it's just to my screen.
The website lists the address as "327 W. Davie Street, Sweet 100"
Is that a typo or someone being cute? :-)
(I live in Raleigh and hadn't heard of it so I looked it up.)
So, I assume Videri does small batches, it's all about quality, and doesn't put the usual industrial crap in its products.
If that's so, I would love to buy chocolate from them. I only suggest to price the 3-pack lower than $20 (if a single is $7, a 3 pack should be closer to $16-$17).
What types of difference in quality do you see? I'm not a chocolate connoisseur but it is interesting. I do pay premiums for coffee and cigars though. :)
apologies if this is a silly question but you said "per bar" a few times. i just checked your spouse's shop and a bar is 1.4oz (38g). That is quite tiny and equals roughly USD18 per 100g. In Europe I am more used to people comparing the 100g price, bar price doesn't matter that much. Is it common to ignore the weight of the bar in such comparisons?
There is often a large discrepancy between what something costs to produce, and what a consumer is willing to pay.
Love Videri! Used to work across the street, they used to host great wine and chocolate happy hours.
So disappointed Videri doesn't ship to Canada, it looks very good.
I once read the same applies to wine. The quality difference of bottles over $20 can't be tasted.
You can make your own chocolate.
Get some raw cacao beans, roast it in the oven, break the shells, grind it to a paste, adding as much sugar as you like. Not the same as a bar, texture-wise, but pretty damn good.
The first time I tried it was in Mexico at a chocolate workshop. The instructor got freshly roasted beans, ground it on a stone along with other ingredients that I got to pick - Sugar (common), pepper (uncommon), Star Anise (uncommon) and eat the buttery thick paste.
These guys seem to know what they are talking about : http://chocolatealchemy.com/how-to-make-chocolate-the-comple...
Is there a word for people who are extremely skeptical of expensive things? Maybe I'm just cheap, but my attitude is simple - unless you can show me an objective benefit, I ain't paying for it. When I see a "story" driving a product like the article mentions, I often react in total disbelief or outright disgust, it's something that quickly sends me to a competing product.
The audio industry is particularly bad with this kind of thing, only a few people actually looking at numbers and doing blind ABX tests.
I wonder if there’s a rule of thumb for pricing the ideal item. Like: double the cost of the cheapest equivalent and you have a good quality pair of boots.
For example: you can get cheap boots for $80, that will fall apart in a year. Double the cost: $160, and that might yield an okay pair of boots that would at least last 5 years. Etc.
"Cheapskate"? ;)
Bean to bar seems like a profitable, growing niche. I have friends who produce very high quality truffles and have been toying around with the idea. Two interesting things I've learned is 1) how many newcomers there are to the bean to bar scene in the US and 2) how small the universe of serious chocolate producers (from a truffle perspective at least) actually is.
Obligatory link to friends shop: http://www.mokayagr.com/
LOCATION:
638 Wealthy [sic] Street SE
Grand Rapids, Michigan 49503
616.551.1925
As someone who fancies good chocolate, I haven't really found an incredibly high correlation between cost/satisfaction past the 4 dollar per bar mark. The only real exception to that is exceptionally fresh chocolate that's been made only a few feet away from where I'm buying it, but there's nowhere like that local to me.
What are your favorites? I find that the sweet spot is closer to $10-12 a bar, but that's NYC prices so maybe it's just difference in local costs.
I haven't even thought of "fresh chocolate" before reading these comments. What is it about fresh chocolate that's better?
Is it just me, or does the whole thing have a whiff of NōKA chocolate? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noka_Chocolate
What about it makes you think they're frauds?
> From there, Toth suggests placing a square of chocolate into your mouth, breaking it into small pieces with your teeth, and letting it melt. No chewing.
This is some 'shaken but not stirred' nonsense. How do you break something into small pieces with your teeth without chewing?
It's not that hard. This isn't something invented by Toth but is rather just a standard part of chocolate tasting.
You don't need a $300 or even $10 chocolate bar to benefit from this technique - it brings out the flavors of a $3 Trader Joe's 85% cacao Colombian bar just as nicely.
A buddy of mine has a theory that every great product needs a gimmick. It needs something that makes it seem like it stands apart from similar products.
Going to sell a pen? No! Sell a pen that appeals to someone's sense of a adventure, even if it (and the person buying it) will spend its entire life sitting on the desk at the office.
That is the whole no-chew thing - the gimmick.
To me the most interesting thing here is that there's a market for $300 chocolate bars.
Entrepreneurs are often reluctant to charge more for their products in the early days, and articles like this show that customer interest doesn't require low prices. If you can demonstrate value and differentation, people will pay more than you might expect. Sometimes much, much more.
As someone that once owned an artisan chocolate factory, based on what I can see, I can make and sell this chocolate for around $5-6 wholesale. Meaning if I can unload 30,000-50,000 bars to Safeway.
Before Hershey, chocolate was a luxury good. And of course modern chocolateries exist on a spectrum from gift for grandma to luxury item.
I mean I get where they’re going [edit: and they have a good story] but this is within an order of magnitude of what already exists so the setup is a little flat IMO.
atlasobscura.com seems to mostly be click bait and paid placement these days, and it consistently gets spammed to social media platforms. I wish there was a way to filter out certain news sources from the feed.
Reasonably priced chocolate by people that want to make a change and help the people harvesting get a fair share of the profit that come to mind are “Tony Chocolony”, “FairAfric” and “Madécasse”. I really like how the individual pieces of tony chocolony bars are very unequally devided...
Another article points to the fact that they also play the scarcity card and limit the supply per year. 574 bars, at $300 a piece actually limits their profits significantly (even if they do manage to sell all 574, after marketing and expenses- distribution, packaging)... just how much of a business is this? Is it worth it for the team behind To'ak? And wouldn't scaling the number of bars made, in time, diminish their value?
From how I see it, the long term strategy would have to be to develop the brand name, then sell more bars at a lower price, and then ALSO create an extra-premium bar at an even larger premium price. It all leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Can't help but think of the movie "Sour Grapes" that shows "wine connoisseurs" completely fooled by some fraudulent mixes:
https://decider.com/2016/12/06/sour-grapes-on-netflix-wine-s...
Follow-up: How would you sell a $50 cheese stick?
These idiots have no idea about quality. It is conspicuous consumption. [0]
[0] https://www.eater.com/2015/12/23/10657022/what-the-mast-brot...
A joke I heard as a child had a salesman explaining that a jacket was made of wool from a rare breed of mountain sheep, hand spun by artisans in their homes, and then woven into this cloth. "It is a beautiful yarn." he finished.
"Yes," said the customer, "and you tell it so well too."
The said supreme quality products are made and marketed as such solely by people who understand the basic rich person need to have something to differentiate themselves from the economic classes lower than themselves. If there were no products, houses, cars, wines, restaurants, shoes, suits, hand bags, airline class, hotels, etc. that help a class to differentiate itself from the the lower one - what's the point of making money your only and sole objective in life?
Charge $300 for it and customers will perceive it as better-tasting even if it's exactly the same.
(OK basically what they quote Christopher Olivola saying)
I rarely eat chocolate. But I admit to having been curious when I found out that CNN travel guy Anthony Bourdain and his NY chef friend Eric Ripert came out with their Good and Evil bar.
Its made from rare Peruvian Pure Nacional dark chocolate. Despite what I thought was an outrageous price of $12.95 it sells out almost immediately. Perhaps it's a bargain after all?
It is all in the marketing like name brands and generics.
I cut chocolate out of my diet for health reasons. I used to buy it 50 percent off after each holiday but gave up on that as well. I'm trying Apple Sauce instead and other healthy alternatives. I am trying to give up soda as well.
The most expensive chocolate I've bought were $2 truffles. I like chocolate, but personally paying <$5 for a chocolate bar I can still get chocolate that, to me, seems really good.
I guess I'm not the target demographic.
First taste of chocolate in Ivory Coast - vpro Metropolis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEN4hcZutO0
The Youtube channel 'Worth It UK' reviewed this recently.
I really feel that any article that quotes the founding story of a startup/company/product is just being plain lazy and it's an instant turn off for me.
if anyone is interested in a more thorough review of the bar and the various the aspects of aging and how they affect the flavor and aromas here's a link to our guide for premium chocolate
https://www.c-spot.com/chocolate-census/daily-review/?pid=24...
So in short, you sell it by flattering the supposed palette of the mark outrageously, exclusively price it, and include a backstory. It’s the the chocolate bar for people who want to know the name of the chicken they’re about to eat. It’s the candy for people who think that vodka tastes better out of a $200 bottle.
In short, status signaling people with more money than sense.
Ask Apple.