Oh, dear.
Oh, dear. Then again, it could explain a few things. I mean, most chocolatiers (not the same as a chocolate maker) use somebody else's chocolate to make their goodies, and if they are really good at it, that's fine. It's like a bakery using flour and butter and sugar that somebody else made. No big. Unless you claim that you are milling the flour, churning the butter, and doing whatever it is that you do to sugar cane to make sugar in addition to doing the baking but you aren't.
Apparently, they have recently sort of apologized and really may be bean to bar at this point, but now their product is not necessarily considered so good. With all the really amazing chocolate out there, including bean to bar chocolate maker chocolate from all over the US and the world, they have some major competition.
http://qz.com/571151/the-mast-brothers-fooled-the-world-into-buying-crappy-hipster-chocolate-for-10-a-bar/
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/12/mast-brothers-chocolate-scandal
http://qz.com/571151/the-mast-brothers-fooled-the-world-into-buying-crappy-hipster-chocolate-for-10-a-bar
Apparently, they have recently sort of apologized and really may be bean to bar at this point, but now their product is not necessarily considered so good. With all the really amazing chocolate out there, including bean to bar chocolate maker chocolate from all over the US and the world, they have some major competition.
http://qz.com/571151/the-mast-brothers-fooled-the-world-into-buying-crappy-hipster-chocolate-for-10-a-bar/
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/12/mast-brothers-chocolate-scandal
http://qz.com/571151/the-mast-brothers-fooled-the-world-into-buying-crappy-hipster-chocolate-for-10-a-bar
Don't give artisan products a bad name, dudes. I'm still running along behind the gravy train, and if the reason I finally manage to catch up is because stories like this wrecked it, imma be pissed.
ReplyDelete(But their story reinforces to me the importance of getting our branding on point, because seriously that seems to be more important than anything else in success.)
ReplyDeleteThey have been one of the biggest American "artisan" chocolate makers (ahem) for the last maybe 6 years? Definitely also trendy as heck. I probably tried them after they supposedly stopped using Valrhona, but I've never thought their bars were very good.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I like Askinosie better, and it's expensive. Scharffenberger isn't considered small anymore since they were bought by Hershey, but they still do the bean to bar thing and I like their chocolate, particularly for certain baking things.
In fact, there are a lot of very good American chocolate makers that would hold up well compared to a lot of really good chocolate from all over the world. I'd love to get my hands on some Domori from Italy, it's supposed to be amazing, but I think it's another case of is it still artisan if it can produce commercial quantities? I think that's kind of a lame question if the product and production are consistent and there's just more of it, but whatever.
Besides, somebody opened up a small, local, bean to bar place maybe 20 minutes from here and I've only tried one of their bars but it was excellent. Guess I'll just have to go over there and suffer through trying more.
Amy Young See? Expensive stuff in pretty paper is a thing. #helping
ReplyDeleteThose wrapping papers are seriously nice.
ReplyDelete