Maybe Don’t Spend $10 On 1 Chocolate Bar

Maybe Don’t Spend $10 On 1 Chocolate Bar If You Don’t Want To Feel Cheated

Because there’s nothing hipsters love more than hating on other hipsters, the internet (hipsternet?) is abuzz with the news, courtesy of an intense four-part series of investigative journalism out of Texas followed by an incisive summary via Deena Shanker at Quartz, that the Mast Brothers, the artisanal Brooklyn chocolatiers, have broken our trust. They claimed their product is “bean-to-bar.” It isn’t. Or at least it hasn’t always been.

Shanker’s devastating conclusion: “Mast Brothers obscure the fact that they originally used remelted, mass-produced chocolate.”

Why is this story important? It’s Friday in December, that’s why.

As artisanal food surges in popularity, whether it’s chocolate, liquor or jam, the Mast Brothers’ story highlights how a company can have great success selling a product of dubious quality as something “artisanal” or “handcrafted” with beautiful packaging and handsome, bearded founders. … Mast Brothers have executed a brilliant marketing strategy, but don’t sell quality chocolate.

It’s a story that’s chock full o’ schadenfreude if you always thought it was silly that other people would pay $10 for one chocolate bar when Hershey’s Special Dark is available for far less. Now you can feel superior for never falling for their judge-a-book-by-its-cover nonsense.

Or perhaps it’s a story that leaves you devastated and outraged if you don’t like to support Hershey’s and had thought that Mast Brothers were a good, if pricey, alternative. In that case, here are some other good, ethical, fair trade chocolate-makers to consider.

Most people seem to be sharing-and-chuckling rather than sharing-and-crying, though, possibly because the stakes are so low. After all, the fact that some bearded capitalists are kind of phonies, and that they use the smoke and mirrors of lovely packaging and high prices to obscure the fact that they have a mediocre product, isn’t exactly Watergate. It’s more #LikeWaterForChocolateGate.

What concerns me more is what’s happening at, and going to happen to, Chipotle. Please find a way to remain reliable and delicious but still ethical-ish, Chipotle!

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