The Cure for What you Crave

So the Cocoa Dolce gang put on a great show at the Chamber of Commerce mixer. Our table was beautiful and very well received. We were able to show off our award-winning chocolates and use the event to launch our new tongue-in-cheek 31 Day Cure for What you Crave. It's our way to offer our customers a healthy chocolate alternative. The AMA Journal has substantiated that 6.3 grams of bittersweet chocolate a day can reduce systolic and diastolic blood pressure when taken before bedtime.

It's difficult as a chocolatier to be innovative and take advantage of trends without making health claims or being blatant. I really try to be thoughtful about not only what we produce but also how we package and communicate an item. I've been trying to develop an product touting the health benefits of chocolate since we opened, but couldn't figure out the right positioning. That's one of the real challenges of successfully relating products in an intelligent but not too serious way.

I think that's one of the qualities that make us distinctive in the industry...the ability to create delicious chocolates with a sense of humor. So when we decided to move forward with the 31 days of chocolate, our designer Paul Fountain, took my initial instructions and ran with a design that was a very fun 'medicinal' look including a doctor's prescription and packaging that looked like a pill bottle. I really liked the idea, but I found over time of letting the idea ferment, it just didn't settle

So I began thinking about how else we could market the health benefits of chocolate and I came across this photo:
About the same time, Paul came back with another design concept for our new product. Here is the label he brought in...

Perfect! It's perfection when an idea gets its manifestation! And I love the edgy, fun approach. So now we just have to sell them!!

Until next time...stay warm and dry! I'll tell you about our most recent brush with Hollywood in my next posting.