Examining a Mast Brothers Assertion
Posted in:
Opinion
Clay;
To some degree you're right. I get a tremendous amount of press as well, have been on the front page of every local newspaper,front and center on regional television as well, and have had some of my recipes published - in all over 40 different media appearances/publications.
When you talk to people who areIN the chocolate industry, many people have heard of me. Chances are they haveread something I've written, or some review about me somewhere online. However outside of the chocolate industry it's a different story and there's a good reason: Almost nobody pays attention to traditional media these days. The proof is in the pudding so-to-speak.In the past 31/2 years, in spite of garnering 10's of thousands of dollars worth of free press in a community of a million people, less than 5% of our gross saleshas some from it - 5 % of over 52,000 transactions! What's even more interesting, is that in the weekly events I host in my shop, while everyone claims to love chocolate only 25% of the attendees have ever heard of Choklat. After 3 1/2 years of publiclykicking sand in the faces of every local chocolatier, only 25% of the population has heard of me!
Having said all of that, when you look at the size of New York, or even the US in general (10X the population of Canada), I think you'll find that very few people will have heard of Mast Brothers in spite of all the press they get, UNLESS of course, that person is IN the chocolate industry - and most people aren't in the industry.
I think their words will have more effect on those in the craft chocolateindustry, but based on the market research that I continue to do, their words will have a negligible effect on the general public - largely because they didn't hear what Mast Bros said in the first place, and secondly because a large portion of the general public simply doesn't care.
Now, having said all of that, I'm in no way diminishing what you offer here to the chocolate community. It's been a valuable resource for me, which is one of the reasons I keep contributing. However I think if you poll your thousands of members, I think you'll find that almost all of them work with chocolate in some capacity - they aren't just end consumers.
Again, I think it's great that we police each other in this industry, and this popular forum is a great way of spreading the word. However on the grand scheme of things, what we say here will have almost no effect on the general public - kind of like screaming in a vacuum.
I'm completely fine with agreeing to disagree on some levels, but would like to say that I vehemently agree with your stance on deliberate misrepresentation. I'm just trying to be pragmatic in my assessment of the level and scope of potential misrepresentation. Forexample: You have 5,000 members (I'm guessing). I'm also guessing (optimistically) that another 5,000 people lurk this forum. That's 10,000 people out of the 350 million people in North America alone - or about one person per city. How many of those people do you think will care enough about what Mast Bros (or any other chocolatier for that matter)say to be the town cryer and convince others to change their buying habits? Like I said.... Hardly a ripple to the general public - which is probably a good thing, as maybe what he said was a slip of the tongue, or he was a bit "enthusiastic" about his product. In the end is that one sentence any better or worse than the majority of chocolate shop employees who claim their owner makes chocolate in the back? What's worse?
Noka Chocolate is the poster child for this example. How many people in the chocolate industry would actually "Pay" for one of their outrageously priced and pretentious confections? Certainly not I or you! Yet they still do great business in spite of the negative comments available on the 'net. Most people don't know, and many don't care.
...just my thoughts.
Brad.
