Unwrapping Hipster Chocolate

Cheat!

Sony Music

True Crime, Tv & Film, Society & Culture

4.8 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 1 February 2022

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 2007, two Iowa-born brothers launched an artisanal chocolate company, Mast Brothers, out of an apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn—the hipster heart of the growing farm-to-table movement. Mast quickly became a well-known operation, partly because their focus was on creating quality chocolate that only required two ingredients: cocoa beans and sugar. And these speciality bars—hand wrapped in expensive, beautifully designed paper—boasted a $10 price tag. It was something people were willing to spend for a product that also came with a compelling origin story. But that all changed when customers started to question the narrative of what they had been sold. A Somethin’ Else production. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's 2015.
0:08.6	Food writer Megan Gillard moved from Texas to New York.
0:12.0	Her interest in food led her to the world of desserts and she started to get involved
0:16.3	in one particular suite most of us love to indulge in.
0:20.8	Chocolate.
0:24.2	When I was a youngster I just remember her she's milk chocolate and thought it was amazing.
0:29.6	It wasn't until I was an adult that I found out that according to some people it wasn't
0:34.5	the real chocolate.
0:36.4	I had no clue that there was a whole world of chocolate snobbery and this is the world
0:41.4	Megan found herself in.
0:43.4	And there's this real focus on flavor and quality and ethics.
0:47.1	It was the craft and artisanal food movement that had started a decade or more before and
0:51.6	it was starting to hit its stride.
0:54.9	Handmade, homemade, ethically created and consumed.
0:59.0	Modern's markets were all the rage.
1:01.1	People wanted to know exactly what was in their food and where it was coming from.
1:06.7	It's like they wanted the full story of how every item on their plate got there and
1:11.1	for chocolate it was no different.
1:13.0	As almost as if people were asking is my chocolate organic, grass fed and free range?
1:19.4	One of those hip artisanal companies was the mass brothers.
1:23.0	Rick and Michael massed.
1:25.0	Two brothers who had started producing chocolate out of their Brooklyn apartment in 2006.
	...

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