chocoMe Magazin 1ST ISSUE JUNE 2013
Three Years under the Spell of Chocolate
The First chocoMe Image Film The Berry Season The Treasure of North Italy We Conquered Spain chocoMe in Austria Whirlwind of Flowers
Three Years under the Spell of Chocolate In the morning of June 21, 2010, the first milk chocolate bar for commercial release slowly reached its final form in the mould. Along with the chocolate, the enterprise chocoMe, so far existing mostly on paper, also materialized: at once it became more than a golden-black logo and an imposing name registered at the registry court. A delicate, aesthetical chocolate bar embodied all I have been developing for months. It was the first time I felt I created my own dream job where I can engage in my passion: gastronomy, and I am able to finally create something concrete instead of writing endless presentations. In the past three years the first chocolate bar was followed by 600000 more. From the original, limited chocolate manufactory chocoMe moved into a building complex as big as 500m2, combined with a showroom. Throughout the years the brand collected numerous Hungarian and international prizes and honours, such as the Hungarian Quality Product Award and Niveau Award for Innovation, the MagyarBrands Award, the Website of the Year recognition, the Ernst&Young Entrepreneur of the Year – Emerging Entrepreneur Award, and many others. Our chocolates can be purchased from over a hundred of our reseller partners in Hungary, and we are proud to say that chocoMe is now available internationally in Spain, France, Monaco, Switzerland, Austria, England, Ireland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Australia, Denmark, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, the United States and Sweden, in more than 800 points of sale. And the list goes on: chocoMe will appear in two further significant markets in September. I feel uniquely fortunate and endlessly grateful for my family, colleagues, friends and partners, who through their support made it possible for chocoMe to become what it is now.
Mészáros Gábor chocoMe
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Handmade Masterpieces – The First chocoMe Image Film After a long period of preparation, two days of shooting and weeks of post-production, chocoMe’s first image film is finally finished! We aim for perfection – this is one of the greatest values of chocoMe. We do not use large-scale industrial procedures. So far we have created 600,000 chocolate bars, each of which was manufactured and packaged by hand. We wished to tell and show this artisanal attention to detail by guiding the viewer through the chocolatemaking process in this image film, drawing parallels between chocolate-making, jewelry design and the making of musical instruments. The most difficult part of the video shoot was placing gold flakes on top of the chocolate. The glittering pieces of gold flew around at even the slightest air movement. Therefore we had to seal the location almost hermetically, and hold our breath while sprinkling the slowly settling chocolate with gold flakes. You can watch it via the following link: chocome imagefilm
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The Berry Season At chocoMe, fruit toppings of all kinds are in season throughout the year due to lyophilisation (or freeze-drying). Still, seasonal red berries such as strawberries and raspberries are the ones in fashion in the summer. Walking on a strawberry field in the spring we saw that farmers surround the stem of the plant with straws, so as to avoid the fruit reaching the ground during its maturation period. This is where the fruit gets its English name from.
As part of the lyophilisation process, the fruit is freeze-dried, „shocked� almost immediately, within some hours after harvesting. Then it is placed into special, low-pressure chambers where the frozen water sublimes, leaving purely a fresh, succulent taste, vitamin C and antioxidants in the lyophilized strawberries. There is no need to add flavour enhancers, colourings or sugar (as in the traditional method of creating crystallized fruits), since only water is removed from the fruit, further components are left untouched, allowing the fruit to keep its quality for months, or even years. Our favourite strawberry creations are ones with a dark chocolate base, which counterpoints the sweetness of the fruit with its gentle bitterness. Depending on our current mood, we may enhance its succulence with mildly sour black-currants or sour cherry pieces.
The rich taste of raspberries brings along a handful of quality ingredients. It thrives in vitamin A, which is good for the eyesight, vitamin E, which keeps lust alive, and vitamin C with antioxidant qualities. Furthermore, raspberries are rich in fibres, which are preserved for long, well over their season after freeze-drying. Raspberries harmonize well with all three of our chocolate bases. We prefer them as toppings for white chocolate for aesthetic reasons: imagine the berries coated in creamy milk and lustful vanilla haze!
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The Treasure of North Italy: Piemonte hazelnuts chocoMe’s philosophy has been unchanged since the beginning: only perfection is good enough! This is the reason why we create and wrap all our chocolates by hand, and choose the best quality raw material. In June we switched our current hazelnut topping to Piemonte hazelnuts, favourite of chefs of Michelin-star restaurants and renowned confectioners. These hazelnuts grow only on the slopes of the Langhe-hills in Italy. The special soil, the air drifting in from the sea, carrying high salt content, and the never-ending sunshine chiselled the aroma of these hazelnuts to perfection. Their succulent, velvety, characteristically creamy taste cannot be mistaken for any other hazelnut kinds, and fits perfectly to all our three chocolates. Recommended creations:
F107
F110
MG109
MG114
MG115
P111
M102
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We Conquered Spain – Report from Salon de Gourmets This year, chocoMe Iberica made its second appearance at Madrid’s gourmet gala, the Salon de Gourmets exhibition. Our partner company supplies Spain – and soon Portugal – with our chocolates. At the exhibition chocoMe’s thematic creations were introduced on an 18m2 stand. These compositions were created with the help of a Hungarian sommelier to match Spanish wines and champagnes. They achieved great success among both the gourmet audience and experts. We have managed to make exclusive contracts with several wineries, who will offer their quality wines along with our chocolates, from autumn on. We also had meetings with representatives of the Ritz Hotel. There was an almost ever-present queue in front of the chocoMe stand at the exhibition. We also gained nationwide publicity with a small interview which was broadcast in the most viewed news show of the Spanish television. Not surprisingly, we preferred the stands of confectioners and sweets manufacturers at the more than 18000m2 large exhibiton. We tasted fantastic chocolate mousse-s with exciting, tonka bean or salt-ginger flavour, and caviar-filled macarons and chocolates with 80% cocoa content.
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Sissi Would Have Loved It Too - chocoMe in Austria chocoMe’s first export market became Austria, which happened much earlier than planned. The brand name was purposely created to sound good and be easily remembered in the language of any country. Gréta Sedon and Katalin Németh have been partners of chocoMe Austria since 2011.
What fields did you work at before chocoMe? Gréta: I worked for a luxury jewellery brand. I was responsible for marketing, business development and HR in eleven countries. Katalin: I used to work for multinational companies in different HR fields. Later, my interest for arts led me to a renowned gallery, from where I ended up at a jewellery company. How did you hear about chocoMe? Gréta: Through a good friend of mine, whose husband is friends with Gábor. How did you first meet the brand? Katalin: It might sound unbelievable, but I got my first chocoMe bar from a friend a week before we were contacted. It was a funny, but motivating coincidence! How did you find the first steps? Katalin: Naturally the beginning was full of excitement, since we did not know how the retailers would react to us, and their trust was necessary to be gained in the first round. The introductory chocolate tasting event was held in November 2011, which was organized for the press and our partners-to-be, and we managed to convince them of the quality there and then. All the invitees tasted our creations and we already received our first orders during that night. Were there any hardships at the beginning? Gréta: In Austria, regional and Austrian products play a dominant role. This proved to be the greatest difficulty of all. There are numerous great gourmet shops where we simply could not enter, since these dealers buy exclusively from manufacturers from their region, and they rarely change their philosophy. The most difficult part in obtaining partner shops is to make them listen to us or give us enough time to introduce the product at the first meeting or phone call. If we manage this, then we get the green light.
Which are the most popular creations? chocoMe is nicknamed “gift chocolate” in Austria, therefore creations with gold, flower and red fruit toppings are the most popular. Bars with crystallized violet petals are also popular for “historical” reasons: these were Empress Sissi’s favourite sweets. Now they are almost considered as Austrian souvenirs. Does the Austrian sense of taste match the Hungarian? Austrians like to choose creations with golden toppings as much as we do, but they are less open towards more exotic flavour-combinations, such as salty or spicy ones. What feedback do you get about the brand? So far we received exclusively positive and acknowledging feedback. Every time it is mentioned that ours is a Hungarian brand, the reply is a wide smile and amazement. People usually comment on Hungary not being famous for its chocolate, and so far no one has been biased.
Where do you stand on sales? Currently the number of partner shops is around thirty, about half of which are in Vienna. It is slower, more difficult to win over rural shops, due to local patriotism which I mentioned earlier. We strive to be present at more and more rural markets, which gains high interest and success most of the time. We already have recurring customers at many of these markets. In general, customers show detailed interest towards the creations, and they appreciate the product being high quality to the smallest ingredient.
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Caught up in the Whirlwind of Flowers and Flowery Creations Imre Móri, the first Hungarian reseller partner of chocoMe, is the owner of the IMORI flower and intérieur shops. He established a flower shop ten years ago in Duna Plaza, one of Hungary’s first malls, and more than a year ago another shop was opened in the newest of Budapest’s malls, Corvin Plaza. Móri’s enterprise started off as a flower shop, which was improved constantly throughout the years. Today, beyond flowers, the shops offer furniture, home décor, gifts, and, naturally, sweets. How did you get in contact with chocoMe? I have known Gábor as a customer before, since he was a frequent visitor here at the shop. It so happened that I was planning to broaden our selection with sweets at the time when the first chocoMe bars were being made. Gábor invited me to take a look at his newly launched chocolate manufactory. His enthusiasm fully convinced me, and I was proud to take part in introducing these new chocolate bars. Obviously, many have grown to know and love the brand since then. Where did the idea of distributing chocolate besides flowers come from? It is the customers’ needs that bring in new products, and chocolate was no exception. I wanted to offer them special sweets, ones that are not available on the shelves of multis but are hand-made, Hungarian products. I was further lucky to have known Gábor personally. What are the most popular creations, the best-sellers? Are flowers chosen to accompany the chocolate, or the other way round? However odd it may sound, aesthetics are also a valid point of view in buying chocolate, after all, there is a reason why chocoMe is so successful! The classy cover, the pretty and colourful toppings mean love at first sight. Creations with red berries are our most popular bars, just as the ones with violet and rose petals. The edible gold toppings create a generous amount of interest as well! ChocoMe creations are beautiful as they are, but they can be made more personal by a bouquet to pair the bar with. What feedback does the brand get? Is distribution going well? Our customers have grown to love chocoMe very quickly. Many know the brand well, they know it is a Hungarian product, and they heard about its international career. Customers happily greet new products, along with Valentines’ Day, Easter or Christmas variations. Nowadays more and more chocolate is bought on “flower days”, and the interest does not cease even in the summer heat. Our variety broadened from the beginning, so chocoMe is one of the most popular products besides flowers.
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chocoMe Kft. 1135 Budapest, Kisgรถmb utca 23. www.chocome.hu info@chocome.hu www.facebook.com/chocome.hu +361 789 5755