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Irony here is I only ever interact with these brands at discount food stores. These fancy 'animal/nature' packaging & highfalutin language says to me: "we tried to sell fancy chocolate to niche competitive markets as artisinal; our high markup to make up for low volume". https://t.co/0yWMbj5vtM
Fun watching new brands of chocolate enter the store shelves, and inevitably end up being undersold and liquidated to discount stores. I suspect the average consumer only tries them because of the novelty of the packaging. The high cost seems to be artifact of branding churn.
1. Chocholate production growth2. Cheap wholesale Choch market3. New choco retailer4. Costly brand generation5. Noveltly Costly Choch spike sales.6. Investors thinks branding = king.7. Retailer eventually flounders.8. Wantrapenuer + gap in market = gets funded.9. Goto 3
Food industry has an insatiable hunger for investors and expensive marketing. It's really not that dissimilar to the growth fetishes of many silicon valley style startups. You can trace it back to invention of boxed/canned goods & the unique formation of grocery norms in America.
You can trace all of that to the way food norms arose thru British colonization. offshoot of spice/tea & goods trade driven by insatiable appetites of the Victorian/Edwardian rising middle class.There seems to be an echo of this as wealth normalizes around global trade.
If you want to build a global shipping network, don’t drum up the men to gather goods, divide the jobs, and give tax breaks. Instead, invest in boat building companies, while marketing to the populace's desires for the vast and endless goods trade.