Gourmet chocolates?

[reviewboy]

Hi Folks -

I just started reading this forum.

While there are some great reviews of specific chocolates, I wonder whether this is a post (that I missed) or a web site that has a broad view of the gourmet chocolates available including, hopefully, user reviews. 

In other words, I can't see the forest for the tree (yet).

Thanks in advance for any pointers.

[netbuddy]

Cacao is Cacao regardless of how much you pay for it.

What I mean by that is that some manufacturers exploit lack of knowledge and use image to promote, market and sell their goods that cheaper and  inferior chocolate can not meet the consumers expectations and other marketing @!*#. In other words, its all guff by them.

Basically your 99c chocolate candy bar is just as good ad the $99 box of Gourmet Chocolates.

[bounty hunter]

Cacao is Cacao regardless of how much you pay for it.  I don't agree

What I mean by that is that some manufacturers exploit lack of knowledge and use image to promote, market and sell their goods that cheaper and  inferior chocolate can not meet the consumers expectations and other marketing @!*#. In other words, its all guff by them.  With respect, what does that mean???

Basically your 99c chocolate candy bar is just as good ad the $99 box of Gourmet Chocolates. Again, not true

There are a number of varieties of cocoa bean and they differ markedly in quality.
More expensive chocolate on the whole is better, because it contains more cocoa butter and less veg oil.

[bounty hunter]

Reviewboy, look at http://www.hotelchocolat.co.uk

And...

http://www.lindt.co.uk/4442/4443.asp

[netbuddy]

@Bounty.

It was a bit of a generalization but designed to illustrate that Cacao is same despite paying 99c for a bar or $99 for a box of gourmet b******s.

I am aware of the many variety of the beans and nibs.

Advertisers, Marketers and such likes. They want your dollar, they will throw money at image as it is something that is known to work in all industry to work, its why Nike is where it is today... Image.

You present the right image, you can sell that bar, get that job, pull that girl. Having been in sales myself, I am a firm believer that a product of worth will sell itself, I am merely their to take the order. That is also the or was the philosophy of my father (RIP) who was senior sales exec for a chemical company (food additives, agro-chemicals & pharmaceuticals), he was directly responsible for 38% of all revenue that the company took and this was out of a sales force of 30 guys. He never sold the product, he sold himself (image) and if the customer likes you then you get the sale regardless of weather your product is cheaper or not.

Similar applies to adverts for what ever product you see on TV, if they woo you with it and it works, you buy it.

Chocolate is no different, same principle exists in that industry, a manufacturer making $99 boxes of chocolates are not going to tell you the truth, they will tell you what you want to hear and do it well within the realms of legality.

If you were to do a blind test of several chocolates and ask people which one they liked, 9/10 would most likely go for the cheaper chocolate even if they were not aware of it being chaeper and lower concentration of cacao.

I have tasted many types of chocolate and of varying % of the cacao. I used to get through about a pound a day (weight) of various chocolate bars.

If I had a choice between a bar of Green & Blacks or a bar of Tesco Organic Fair Trade... I would go with the fair trade bar because they are almost identical.

No disrespect intended but this is one thing that people should take note of.... Just because something costs allot does not mean it is better than something that is cheaper.

[bounty hunter]

I'm still not sure I'm with you on this. You seem to be talking about the power of marketing, rather than the relative value of different chocs.  Green and Blacks are better than Tesco Fair Trade, although the latter is OK.  Clearly though Lindt 70% is better than Yorkie and is more expensive because of the quality and type of ingredients.  Where I would agree is that packaging and marketing can inflate the price of chocs. 

[netbuddy]

I hear you, but at the end of the day, what sells is image.

What they use are the principles of Asymmetric dominance to lure you away from the bar that's cheaper (either their brand or a competitors) by making the bar they want you to buy (their own brand) slightly cheaper than the most expensive one on the market (eg the competitions).

It is one of the simplest ways of selling your product, the customer thinks that they are getting a better product for the their money but all they are getting at the end of the day is a bar of Chocolate.

[bounty hunter]

OK. I hear you too.  But, personally, I buy the chocolates, which taste the best IMO: Lindt, Green and Blacks, Chocolate Utopia and Hotel Chocolat.  Thorntons are far from cheap but I don't buy them because they taste awful.

[loulou]

I am happy with Roses or Milk Tray