Vancouver’s chocolate sector is a realm of high passions and high risk.
“Chocolate, they say, is the most craved food in the world,” Purdy’s Chocolates COO Peter Higgins said.
So strong are customers’ passions for their favourite varieties, he said, that when Purdy’s replaced a champagne truffle with an ice-wine truffle, a die-hard champagne truffle fan tracked down Higgins’ home number and called him up.
“She said, ‘You discontinued my champagne truffle,’” Higgins said. “It was sort of, ‘How dare you?’”
Yet for all their fans’ zeal, local chocolatiers say succeeding in Vancouver’s chocolate manufacturing and retail market involves navigating a competitive highly seasonal business whose challenges have been exacerbated by soaring cocoa prices and the lingering effects of the recession.
Success, they say, requires a strong business sense and great chocolate.
Charlie Sigvardsen of the eponymous Charlie’s Chocolate Factory launched his business 40 years ago, after writing a bachelor of commerce thesis on the marketing and sales of chocolate at the University of British Columbia (UBC).
Over the years, Sigvardsen said, he’s watched the players in Vancouver’s chocolate market come and go. The survivors, he said, are those who carefully establish a market niche, focus on a quality product and move with the times.
“Things change; you’ve got to change with it,” he said. “If you don’t change, you’re gone.”
Sigvardsen said his business established a niche by buying up a company to create custom moulds for chocolates, often in the shape of company names. This customization option, he said, has helped the business attract large corporate customers such as Telus Corp., UBC and Simon Fraser University.
Artisan chocolatiers such as Thomas Haas and Chocolate Arts serve a sophisticated market. Thomas Haas has supplied the White House and various five-star hotels – and says that its market niche requires an extremely high-quality, fresh product.
To achieve those ends, company owner Thomas Haas said his business, with locations in North Vancouver and Kitsilano, makes chocolates in small, largely handmade batches of 250 pieces per variety every week.
But Haas noted that the seasonal nature of the chocolate market – which peaks at Christmas, Valentine’s Day and Easter – makes it tricky for chocolatiers to achieve the steady year-round business that enables a business to keep truly fresh chocolates on its shelves. That, he said, presents a challenge for newcomers to the chocolate trade, because smaller-scale production quickly drives prices into a prohibitive range.
“You can’t make 20 varieties of chocolates and 30 pieces of each, because it would cost $5 a piece,” he said.
Besides differentiating their businesses, local chocolatiers say it’s important to keep current with trends, all while producing lots of the classic flavours that continue to have the broadest appeal.
On the trend front, Higgins said healthier chocolate is continuing to gain traction in Vancouver. That trend, he said, includes a continual shift toward antioxidant-rich dark chocolate and, within that, a shift toward higher-cocoa concentrations. He said Purdy’s top-selling dark chocolate has 70% cocoa, up from the standard 54%.
To capitalize on the healthier chocolate trend, Higgins noted that Vancouver’s largest chocolate chain has introduced products such as a 70% dark chocolate blueberry and almond bar and a bar with super-fruit goji berries.
Chocolatiers also point to customers’ demands for ethically sourced cocoa, local food products used in the chocolates and a growing desire to customize their snacks and chocolate gift boxes.
On the flavour front, however, local chocolate manufacturers note that while Vancouverites may try exotic or faddish chocolate flavours, their core loyalty remains with the tried and true flavours such as caramel, coffee and peanut butter. Chocolate Arts proprietor Greg Hook noted, for example, that an American interest in smoked bacon chocolate hasn’t taken off here.
Haas said his business reserves just 20% of its production for what he deems “the explorer” versus 80% for more classic flavours – though he comments that even his more exotic creations eschew shock-value ingredients like wasabi, olives and goat’s cheese.
But while the recession has forced local chocolatiers to fight for new efficiencies in their businesses, and while cocoa speculation means that chocolatiers have to watch the market closely before they place orders with European suppliers, there’s still optimism in the sector for the future of Vancouver’s premium chocolate market.
Higgins said premium chocolate consumption in some areas of Europe is still double that of North America. He credits that to a higher awareness of premium chocolate across the Atlantic – an awareness he hopes to see grow further in Vancouver.
“I think there’s a lot of opportunity yet.”