Houston Chocoholics

According to the Houston Business Journal’s February 15 – 21, 2008 issue, Houston, Texas and Louisville, Kentucky, are tied for fourth place for chocolate candy sales based on market size. Per The Nielsen Co., both cities purchased 21% more than expected during a study that ended the week of February 17, 2007.

Hot Chocolate for Life

After sharing a portion of my cake my friend made with the baking chocolates from our shelf clean out a few weeks ago, my husband gobbled the small piece in no time. He was disappointed that he didn’t receive a larger piece of cake. Personally, I was thinking “you better be happy that you received that piece because I could have eaten the entire thing.” Keeping the cake in my lunch box for the rest of the work day was very difficult. It required immense will power…I could have eaten the entire piece, but I didn’t have milk at the office. Milk was required to enjoy the full experience.

I told my friend about my husband’s experience with her cake and a few days later she made Frank his own cake. The wonderful bundt shaped cake came with its own little “Happy Birthday” sign. Although his birthday had passed, he could care less.

Now this cake was a white cake with chocolate frosting, while the first cake was a dark chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. Once Frank dived in, he declared “She gets hot chocolate for life!”

Cocoa Academy

Barry Callebaut, a Switzerland based producer of cocoa and cocoa based products for over 150 years, is making strong headway in the US market by acquiring Food Processing International cocoa factory in Eddystone, PA. This past December Barry Callebaut signed a supply agreement with Hershey’s for production of 80,000 tons of chocolate per year in a newly constructed plant in Monterrey, Mexico (the home of La Popular Sweet Chocolate). With numerous confectionery companies seeking to outsource the chocolate production aspect of the business, Barry Callebaut definitely is capitalizing on this trend.

Recently, Barry Callebaut announced the creation of its 10th cocoa and chocolate academy in their future North American headquarters based in Chicago, Illinois. With academies in Europe, Canada, Singapore, China and India, the Chicago base education center will be their first in America. The training center is designed to educate and demonstration the how to create and work with chocolate.

Friends with Benefits

Being a friend of a person who owns a store dedicated to cocoa has its occasional benefits. One of them is that when it is time to clear out the “Best Due By” inventory (products that are just before or past the “Best Due By” date). I usually give family and friends all of these wonderful products. I always fell bad not donating the Best Due By inventory to a food bank. However, I feel visitors to a homeless shelter or food bank deserve the good stuff too. So, I donate overages or slow sellers to charity.

When products were donated last year to a children’s school that was collecting hot chocolate for the homeless, I received the cutest picture from the children as a thank you. The weather has been quite crazy lately and everyone, especially a homeless person could use some hot chocolate or cocoa.

For this past delivery, friends with benefits received two types of 100% Unsweetened Cacao. One was in bar form and the other in shavings. I personally prefer the shavings since it requires less work when preparing to bake or cook with it. Next on the list were two drinking chocolates and a hot chocolate from Belgium.

One of my friends used the last round of “Best Due Inventory” to create a dreamy chocolate cake. It was brought into the office today to share with the rest of the company and it was gone real quick. She used 100% cocoa to make the cake but she was disappointed when it didn’t come with a real deep, dark color. Now she wonders if certain restaurants, chefs etc use food coloring to make a chocolate cake that nearly black color you see on occasions. Personally, I could care less because that cake was @#$ good!

Got Cocoa!

Thomas Jefferson said, “The superiority of chocolate, both for health and nourishment, will soon give it the same preference over tea and coffee in American which it has in Spain.” Although we have yet to truly reach that point with modern day hot chocolate surpassing tea and/or coffee. However, the tide may be changing? According to the International Business Times, the demand for cocoa for a March delivery increased “3 pounds, or 0.3 percent, to 1,120 pounds ($2,187) a ton after posting 17 percent gain last year.” On the other hand, coffee delivery for “March declined $23, or 1.1 percent, to $2,024 a metric ton.”

The value of the dollar vs. the euro plays a role in this equation as well…but I really don’t understand all of that extra stuff. All I care about is… Got Cocoa!

Expensive Cocoa Beans

Chocoholics beware! The price of cocoa beans and milk has gone up substantially, therefore so has the price of our hot chocolates and chocolate bars. One of the big boys, Hershey’s lead the price increase race on wholesale prices on their chocolate products and other companies have followed suit. This is the second price increase in a year which means customers will be paying much more for chocolate products. Hershey chocolate doesn’t have a high enough cocoa content for me (except for their Special Dark Chocolate and Cacao Reserve; but other companies already have my loyalty) . However, they own Scharffen Berger and Dagoba Organic chocolates. Both make are absolutely wonderful cocoa powder, hot chocolates and baking chocolates. The two companies were acquired a few years back and are being folded into the “Hershey” way.

Although I am going to age myself, I remember when candy bars were 25 cents! You can probably get something from McDonald’s $1 menu for the same price of a candy bar is now. At least you can justify that cocoa is good for you and that is why you MUST have a candy bar. But everyone knows you have to buy the dark chocolate to receive the true benefits of cocoa.

I personally was a little shocked that the increase was so swift. I went to purchase inventory of a very popular hot chocolate and it went up by $15.00 a case and the selling price by $3.00. Geez!