Corporate or Artisan?
The chocolate grinding process. Photo © Amano Artisan Chocolate
After eating at least 1 or two pounds of chocolate by myself over this holiday break, I realized that I had hardly given thought to the processes and “art” behind chocolate making. I happened to watch this little segment about a local artisan chocolate shop, Amano Artisan Chocolate. In a video interview for Park City Television, Art Pollard of Amano chocolate makes a statement about the fact that there are less than twenty boutique chocolate shops in the United States. This really struck me, considering how much chocolate the world pounds down on a daily basis. Is there really such a small niche for the artisan or have the chocolate giants (Hershey’s, Nestle, etc.) figured out how to make their chocolates just as good? I can definitely enjoy a plain bar of Hershey’s chocolate, but in direct comparison to a good sample of an artisan chocolate, Hershey’s mediocrity is amplified.
This seems to be the general state of most products in the United States. It has been much harder to survive as an independent, small craftsman, than to be part of a giant corporate conglomerate. However, lately it seems that the trend is reversing. Perhaps we are fed up with the mediocre quality of most of the products we consume.
On the other hand, most small artisan shops don’t suffer from the corporate dilemma. This doesn’t automatically mean that their products are excellent or even above average. It only means that the potential to be truly excellent isn’t already blocked by a 10 foot thick concrete wall of corporate bureaucracy. I’m sure that in the range of small artisan chocolate shops there are probably those whose quality is below that of the corporate producers. The small artisan shop can’t compete on quantity and they don’t have the massive corporate backing to run big advertising campaigns. However, the one thing that the small artisan shop seems to have is the potential to be truly excellent. They can innovate, they can demand the highest possible quality, and they can bring the one element that seems to totally missing from most of the products we consume—a genuine love and passion for the products they make.
Photos © Amano Artisan Chocolate
Nice blog John! You are right; small shops are always great because they can be innovative and don’t have to follow corporate rules. There’s a place in Park City that makes up new flavors all the time just to try them out. I love stopping by and grabbing a few pieces.
Chris, good to hear from you. I do have to correct you, and say that small shops are not always great. In fact, the small shops can be the absolute worst. The argument that I’m making is that the small shops have the potential to be great and are not trapped in mediocrity like corporations. However, I think that the potential for small companies to be down-right horrible is just as large as their potential to be great.
A good post. However, I have to disagree to some extent. Being from the UK, I have access to corporate-made chocolate that is excellent (Green & Blacks, Lindt, Divine, Thorntons). In the US, I actually couldn’t eat Hershey’s etc. because it was so crap. Even our ultra-corporate supermarket own-name chocolate was better!
Corporations aren’t automatically producing bad products, but they will only spend as much as they have to. If there’s a market for chocolate as cheap/poor quality as Hershey’s, then that is what they will sell. In Europe, the demand for good-quality chocolate is higher – nobody would buy Hershey’s when they could have Lindt!
On the whole, I would say independent shops have a better chance of doing it for the love/art rather than the money, however.
I can agree with your point: corporation are not always mediocre, in fact they can be very good, and there are large corporations who consistently produce high quality. There are also things that large corporations can do that are very difficult for independent shops. I think I meant it in a more general way. There’s a few great books by Clayton M. Christensen ( (The Innovator’s Dilemma & The Innovator’s Solution) which address the dilemma that corporations face in regards to innovation, if you are interested in the topic, these two books are excellent and highly recommended.
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