craftsmanship, consumerism, virtue, privilege, and quality

The only thing shocking there is that they were using the Gallagher brothers as style icons in 2007

The idea that someone would play fast and loose with the truth in order to enhance the price of their luxury-market products is far from surprising. It is the American Way. It's fine with me to expose them as frauds. That also is a fine old American tradition.

It's just that outside of the few people who pay super-premium prices for ultra-high-end chocolate bars, nobody else cares.

bushybearded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the chocolatey dynamo in the machinery of beans

i had one of their bars once, my wife included it as a stocking stuffer. i enjoyed it but i also don't have a refined chocolate palate.

their brand feels like part of this more recent movement, elevating this kind of food to artisanal status. for example god knows how many overpriced grilled cheese restaurants opened in the past few years around here.

Would rather have $10 worth of dairy milk than one bar of that, however nice the wrapping is.

I mean the bottom line for me is I think their chocolate is very tasty and different from other chocolate I've had, and I'm also very rarely going to spend $10 or even $5 on a chocolate bar. I rarely even buy a chocolate bar. As far as whether they're lying, I have mixed feelings about that sort of lie, because it's very part-and-parcel of story marketing. I mean the whole bushy beards, we brought cocoa beans on a sailboat stuff, it's the kind of stuff that, if you're the kind of person who wants to buy into it, you might suspend disbelief a little. It's a narrative, it's a fantasy, etc. A lot of luxury products offer that. A lot of "traditional" high-end chocolate makers also offer a semi-bullshit story about craftsmanship etc., it's just usually couched in terms like tradition, family, history, decades/centuries of experience, etc.

i think the bean-to-bar thing is a lot less of a gray area than you're making it out to be

In truth, despite their claim that they “had come up with how everything is done every step of the way,” the Masts picked up at least some of their knowledge on the thriving online community of chocolate makers that has existed for more than a decade. A public website, Chocolate Alchemy, is a hub of information, where chocolate makers could trade tips and advice for making small-batch chocolate.

Does the "authentic, artisan" thing lose some cachet in this era where you can learn all this stuff on the internet and not have to hunt down rare books or elderly craftspeople? Does it matter to consumers?

elderly craftspeople = traditional apprentice situation etc

i guess that's separate from the "wide-eyed, lone wolf / mad scientists" thing

i think the bean-to-bar thing is a lot less of a gray area than you're making it out to be

― call all destroyer, Friday, December 18, 2015 4:14 PM (28 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yes and no. It's still a story about how a thing is made rather than a property of the product.

linguistic turn gone mad

My favorite part of the story is the before photos of them. "BUSTED! Mast Brothers grew their beards and were not born with them."

Ppl judging on any aspect of process or back story will continue to be mugs and long may they remain so

i remember when i found out my favorite ice cream wasn't actually from sweden. broke my heart.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEJI4Ffr9xk

and then when i found out that Häagen-Dazs didn't actually mean Joyful Cream Bowl or something and was just a made up thing? i never trusted again.

let's not lose sight of the fact that allegations of virtual bean mistreatment have been made in this case

I lost any sympathy I may've had for the marks brother when I saw that picture of him wearing a T-shirt with his own name on it.

HD has a good story behind the name fwiw -
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%A4agen-Dazs#Origin_of_brand_name

Scott DFW from Dallas Food Blog previously took down NoKa chocolate, for similar reasons of style/packaging over substance, and deception around their chocolate-making process (plus in NoKa's case, an absolutely insane markup in their prices):
http://dallasfood.org/2006/12/noka-chocolate-part-1/

NoKa went out of business in 2011.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBb9O-aW4zI

http://www.inc.com/magazine/201604/stacy-perman/shinola-watch-history-manufacturing-heritage-brand.html

lol

I didn't even know they made watches, I'm only familiar with their notebooks

those watches are really good looking though imo

you look like a man who would appreciate those watches, treeship

https://www.facebook.com/QuiltedNorthern/videos/1074861349222581/?fref=nf

these artisanal joke videos are definitely getting old, but are always kinda funny too.

That one is funnier than a lot of them tbh.

some of those shinola watches are nice, some look a lot like fossil watches, which I hate

you mean the company where shinola's boss man used to work? :)

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-12/this-25-year-old-is-turning-a-profit-selling-pencils

apparently she had $80k lying aruond to invest in pencils at the age of 25 lmao

Artists still use pencils and are pretty particular about them.

But they likely buy them at art stores.

art stores get it all confused, they think it's about the art, when it's really about the pencils

"Demand is sometimes more than Weaver and her staff of four (all millennials) can manage, she says. "

http://www2.iaapa.org/industry/funworld/2015/jan/features/millennials/images/techsavvy.gif

increasingly accepting that my 1981 birthdate might accurately tag me as millennial

I get that many people have a reason for liking pencils of various sorts, or even fetishizing them, I just don't understand the concept of needing, in the 21st century, to buy them from a pencil store. I don't even think there were specialized pencil stores in the 19th century.

i have made dozens of dollars selling boxes of old pencils on ebay

so, like, $36?

Recently, I was talking to a friend of mine, a visual artist with a keen interest in fashion, about some issues that are close to the ones raised in this thread. I pulled up the NYT piece about the Best Made axes, which he hadn't heard of, thinking it would be good for a laugh... but my plan utterly backfired, as he thought the axes were awesome & well-designed, and said he would love to carry one around as part of an "urban lumberjack" look (v_v)

excellent

the long-standing local art store here closed its doors a few years back, leaving a pretty big hole in the art supply market. i'm sure people would like the pencil store, but they really just keep getting enthused any time there's a rumor dick blick is going to open a shop in town

I remember seeing an article about that pencil shop when it first opened and thinking "This is the dumbest thing ever -- oh fuck, it will probably succeed."

xp that the one downtown, mh? that was indeed a bummer. i loved going there when i was a kid to… look at the pencils

"the art store", it was near downtown, then later moved to a suburb when a bank bought the property, then nothing

talking about des moines, btw

Pearl on canal closed a few years ago iirc, if that's what you're referring to.

oh, lol nm

It seems like art supplies are for some reason a thing that buyers still want to engage with in person more than other products. That's my impression from the artist I am married to, anyway.

it's like holding a knife (sometimes, because it is a knife): you don't wanna buy that shit over the internet, you gotta hold it and test it out

the balance and whatnot

yeah I can see that, same thing is true with p much any musical instrument related thing, including guitar picks and drumsticks.