Food & Politics Memo: It's Zen and the Art of Chocolate Making For City Council Member Turned Chocolatier and Confection Company Entrepreneur

Oakland, CA city council member Nancy Nadel shows off some of the chocolates that she has made from beans. Nadel spends her summers in Jamaica cultivating a cooperative of cacao farmers to supply her with fermented beans. (Photo Credit: Mike Lucia/Oakland Tribune)

From the Natural~Specialty Foods Memo Editor's Desk: Who says food and politics don't mix? Not longtime Oakland, California USA city council member Nancy Nadel.

Her honor, perhaps finding a lack of sweetness in her position as a local politician and lawmaker, decided to seek her sweet delights elsewhere: She founded a confections company, Oakland Chocolate Company, specializing in chocolate, and named it after the city she serves.

Nancy Nadel remains on the city council, she just added a second hat (well, a hair net actually) to her already busy life.

The Oakland Tribune newspaper profiled city lawmaker/chocolatier Namcy Nadel and her Oakland Chocolate Company in a recent article. We enjoyed the story, including the interesting juxtapositon of local politics, chocolate-making and small business building. We thought you would enjoy it too. Read it below:

Oakland council member finds her Zen in chocolate
By Cecily Burt
Oakland Tribune
October 18, 2008

After a grueling week immersed in the city of Oakland's problems, Councilmember Nancy Nadel unwinds in a unique way. She puts on a hair net, cranks up the reggae, and loses herself in swirling vat of warm, rich, dark chocolate.

Nadel has become a chocolatier in her (very little) spare time, launching the Oakland Chocolate Company with its roots in Jamaican soil.

"It's like my Zen," Nadel said last Sunday, the only day of the week she isn't buried in budgets and voluminous agenda packets or other issues affecting her West Oakland district. "The preparation and even the clean up, I get into it. When I give people my chocolate they are happier than when I talk about my progressive policies."

No doubt. But Nadel's progressive policies have a way of steering her life choices, and the decision to dabble in chocolate is no exception.

The story can be traced back to the last vacation Nadel and her late husband, West Oakland activist Chappell Hayes, took to Jamaica before he died. She has returned year after year during summer breaks from council business, staying with friends in the rural reaches in the parish of St. Mary on Jamaica's north coast.

Cacao farmers such as Steve Belnaviz eke out a living selling their just-picked beans to the government, which sends them to a state-run fermenting plant. Many of the poor farmers that Nadel met have land, but no money to harvest their cacao trees. Some have cleared the trees that shade the cacao to plant other crops.

"It's a beautiful place but it has the same kind of (economic) problems as Oakland," she said.

At first Nadel wondered whether she could help the farmers get better prices for their beans by helping them organize a fair-trade cooperative. The cooperative would ferment its own organic beans and sell the product in bulk to chocolate companies, basically removing the middle man. Then she thought, why not try her own hand at farming and making chocolate?

"As a city council member I've talked about sustainable issues and farming for a long time," she said. "My goal is to put my money where my mouth is."

So she took a weeklong class at UC Davis in chocolate technology and hasn't looked back. The Oakland Chocolate Company started small and Nadel intends to keep it that way for the foreseeable future, given the demands on her time.

For a time Nadel rented kitchen space at Brown Sugar restaurant on Mandela Parkway. But that arrangement required her to bring in her supplies and pack it all out at the end of the day. She recently subleased space from the maker of Barlovento artisan chocolates in Jack London Square. She bought a bigger machine for melting her chocolate and she can leave all her equipment, ingredients and finished products there.

Nadel is averaging about 200 pieces of filled chocolates or dipped nuts and fruits each Sunday, plus molded chocolate leaves and textured chocolate crunch bark. She eagerly gives visitors samples of nutty-tasting cocoa nibs to munch on as she describes how the milky white beans are harvested from football-sized pods that grow from the trunks of cacao trees, and then placed on trays and covered with banana leaves to dry and ferment.

It's taken years of research and outreach, but Nadel and her partners in Jamaica gathered with cacao farmers for the first time in February to discuss their plans for a cooperative and fermentary, and efforts to join the Jamaican Organic Agriculture Movement.

And it will be some time yet before a production-sized fermentary is established and the farmers can produce enough fermented beans to provide a steady supply to her company and other chocolate makers.

Still, the seeds are starting to take root.

"Two weeks ago was the first time I made chocolate from beans that I had picked, fermented and dried, and brought back 3,000 miles," said Nadel, sounding like a proud parent. "It's an incredible feeling."

A portion of the sales from the Oakland Chocolate Company will go to help build a production-sized cocoa bean fermentary in Jamaica.

To learn more about the company and the Jamaican farmers, or to order chocolates, visit http://www.theoaklandchocolateco.com/.

Small-Format Food Retailing Memo: 'How Sweet it is': New York City's Economy Candy; A Small-Format Urban Store With A Single Focus

Small-Format Food Retailing Special Report

It's a small-format store that's been around for 71 years. And it has a single category focus: candy.

From the most premium chocolate bars and natural and organic confections, to everyday candy bars, exotic brands and much more, Economy Candy on New York City's Lower East side not only is a veritable one-stop shop for everything candy, it's also a category killer of sorts, selling its huge selection of sweet treats at discount prices, hence the store's name.

The family-owned and run, narrow but long store with high ceilings--which also sells scores of varieties of nuts and dried fruits along with its candy massive selection--was founded in 1937 by current owner Jerry Cohen's father.

When the senior Cohen opened Economy Candy in 1937 it was the typical old-fashion candy shop of the era, consisting mostly of bulk bins full of every imaginable variety of candy, from jawbreakers to chocolates, along with selling boxed chocolates for the gift market.

Today the younger Cohen, Jerry, who runs the store along with his wife Ilene, son Mitchell and a few dedicated employees, operates what New Yorkers call the "Noshers Paradise of the Lower East Side."

Economy Candy, which is located at 108 Rivington Street in the Big Apple, is packed with every imaginable variety of candy. The Cohen's follow the old retailing strategy of stacking product high and selling it cheap, filling the store's long, narrow aisles with stacks of discount-priced confections, including ethnic candy items that appeal to Jews, Hispanics and others.

The family-owned store, which has loyal customers from multiple-generations, also sells a variety of specialty and natural foods items, including teas, coffees and other products a a sideline. Jerry Cohen (no relation to the Ben & Jerry's founder of the same name) understands complementary merchandising well.

What makes Economy Candy so popular and what has maintained an astounding level of customer loyalty is that adapting to today's market and customer hasn't meant abandoning its essential quality as a neighborhood candy store, Cohen says.

Commenting on his philosophy of constantly bringing in new items, Jerry Cohen says: "You need to have whatever it takes to get people in. Teas, sugar-free and low-calorie candies, gift baskets and hand-dipped chocolates are among the products that filtered in as the inventory has changed to reflect the changing urban landscape of today," he says about his philosophy and the store.

Economy Candy also keeps to its origins. Along with offering hundreds of varieties (maybe thousands) of packaged candies, the store merchandes scores of candy items in bulk, along with offering numerous varieties of dried nuts and fruits in bulk bins.

These items range from the basic nut varieties like almonds, walnuts and cashews, to more specialty varieties like Hazelnuts, all sold at value prices. The store also offers a variety of its own special nut blends, creating various combinations and selling them in bulk.

The same is the case with dried fruits. Among the varieties offered include: dried apples, blueberries, strawberries, cranberrys, tart cherries, dried cantaloupe and many others.

But it is candy that's at the heart--literally and merchandising-wise--of Economy Candy. upscale, downscale, premium, conventional, natural, organic (and candy brands that can't be found elsewhere) are shelved and stacked throughout the store. It's a shrine to the ingredient sugar. And speaking of sugar, walking through the store one can't help smelling that sweet scent no matter what part of Economy Candy you are in.

Service also is at the heart of Economy Candy. Knowing customers by name, letting them nosh on the sweet treats in the bulk bins as long as they don't make a meal out of it, and seeking out rare brands and varieties of candy for customers are all a part of the family-style customer service the Cohen family practices at their 71-year old small-format, value-priced candy store on the Lower East Side.

Economy Candy is an excellent example of how a small store with a single-minded focus, combining reasonable prices with category expertise and superior customer service, can not only survive but thrive, even in the biggest city in the United States.

Lessons from the store's merchandising and operations, category expertise, affordable pricing, superior customer service, and more, are valuable to food and grocery retailers of any size and format. We also think there's room in the retail space for more small-format, single-focus (with some complementary categories of course) stores.

And such single-focus, category killer stores don't have to be huge warehouse stores. Rather, like Economy Candy, they can be smaller footprint stores, as long as the format and execution at retail are done in a superior way.

Economy Candy is a sweet case study in doing it all well from a merchandising, operational and customer service perspective.

Confectionery Category Memo: Fashion Designer Giorgio Armani Creates and Sells a line of Decadent, Premium Artisanal Chocolate Eggs for Easter

What does high-end fashion designer GiorgioArmani have in common with Easter. Hint: It has nothing to do with designer Easter Bonnets but everything to do with designer, chocolate Easter eggs.

The Armani fashion house has decided to cash-in on the soaring, high-end, gourmet and artisanal chocolate segment of the confectionery category by creating and introducing what Georgio Armani calls his Spring 2008 chocolate collection.

The collection features Armani Dolce Easter Eggs, which are three varieties of decadent chocolate eggs in dark, milk and white chocolate. The premium, artisanal chocolate Easter eggs even have the fashion house's distinctive Armani "A" logo embossed on each egg.

Each of the designer chocolate eggs is wrapped in a package befitting what one would expect from one of the world's most high-end fashion houses. The Armani Dolce Easter Egg comes packaged in sugar-blue colored mattelic paper with a sky blue ribbon. These designer chocolate eggs aren't for children's Easter egg hunts though. Rather, they're for a special someone; especially a special someone who loves Armani.

In addition to the individual Dolce Easter eggs, Armani also has a second item in his Spring 2008 premium chocolate collection. That item is a hand-carved chocolate Easter Dove made from a full kilo of super-premium chocolate.

Armani is keeping distribution of the decadent chocolate Easter Eggs and the Easter Dove exclusive. High-end, upscale retailers can't order them to sell in their stores even if they want to. Rather, Armani is only selling the chocolate Easter delicacies at its various Armani retail stores. The chocolate eggs and Easter Dove are currently being offered for sale in the stores and are available until May 9, according to an Armani spokesperson.

The chocolate segment is the hottest and fastest-growing of the many within the overall confectionery and candy category. And within the chocolate segment, gourmet, artisanal, organic and Fair Trade premium chocolate products are leading the segment. There's a consumer flight to premium quality, and even the top-selling organic and Fair Trade chocolate brands are premium as well as having the other attributes.

Chocolate makers and marketers have been responding to this consumer flight to premium quality chocolate--and pushing it along as well--by introducing a record number of products in the last two years. In fact, chocolate candy--lead by premium quality--was the leading category globally in all food new-product launches between October and December, 2007, according to the market research firm Productscan. That's a 28.7% increase over the previous year.

Additionally, the premium chocolate candy segment had consumer sales growth of over 20% in 2007, compared to the previous year. Premium dark chocolate, milk chocolate, organic and Fair Trade chocolates lead this sales growth. Sales growth for 2008 is expected to be even higher.

With such rapid sales growth in the premium chocolate category, it's no surprise fashion designer Armani decided to create and put his famous logo on a line of decadent chocolate Easter Eggs, as well as the hand-crafted Easter Dove.

The process of an artisan crafting a fine premium chocolate product is similar to the process a fashion designer uses to create a woman's dress, shoes or a man's suit. It's mostly a creative art but science is involved as well. Looking at it that way, artisanal chocolates are actually a rather logical line extension for a creative artist like Armani. It's also a good extension of the brand we believe because there's a logical mental connection in consumers' minds between high-quality clothing--and designers--and high quality confections.

After all, the best artisanal and gourmet chocolate makers and marketers use branding strategies similar to the best fashion designers. These include using the confection makers personal name often, just like fashion designers do, using high-quality packaging, and getting well-known celebrities to try, enjoy and endorse their respective products.

We aren't sure if Armani makes and sells designer Easter bonnets. However, if he does, an Easter gift of an Armani Easter bonnet and set of Armani premium chocolate Dolce Easter Eggs could be a big winner as an Easter gift this year.