This Black Friday, don’t be a turkey!

Black Friday, Cyber Monday and the like, do an amazing job of persuading consumers to “spend, spend, spend” on “amazing bargains”, “low, low, prices”, “once-in-a-lifetime deals”, etc.

At Cocoa Runners, we’d love for you to purchase, savour and share some craft chocolate. But, as in previous years, we won’t be cutting prices, offering amazing discounts, asking you to sign up for all sorts of loyalty cards, etc. over the next week.

Instead, we’ll be donating 5% of all sales this year to the same Ukrainian charity (The Prytula Foundation) we supported last year, selected by Tetyana and Raslan of Stranger Chocolate (and if you purchase any of Stranger’s bars, we’ll donate a further 5% of sales to this charity).

Sales strategies that rely on special deals, one-off discounts, etc. are not great for the consumer. They confuse low prices with good value. And they ignore all the other costs of misaligned taxes, environmental destruction, worker poverty, short-termism etc. that underpin so much of the junk food industry.

So this week, bear with us as we explore the bizarre weird back story of Black Friday (and its link to traffic nightmares) and explain why discounting is the opposite to our ethos of treating cocoa growers, farmers and makers with respect and transparency, and delighting in craft chocolate.

Craft chocolate in perspective

We firmly believe that even though craft chocolate bars cost a little more than £1/$1 bars of mass-produced confectionery, they still offer great value.

To put the price of a craft chocolate bar in perspective:

• The average price for a pint of beer in the UK is now £5.90, and in London some pubs are now charging over £9. You can purchase almost any craft chocolate bar in our library at these prices.
• In the US, the wine app Vivino analysed all its us consumer data and “found that a ‘good’ bottle of red wine (wines receiving 4 out of 5 stars from reviews) costs $32.48 USD on average, while a medium-quality bottle (3.6 stars out of 5) costs an average of $15.66 USD”.
• And as Shawn Askinosie, co-founder of Askinosie Chocolate, argues; “there’s not many instances where you can get the best of something for $10. And right now, in craft chocolate, you can spend $10 and truly get the absolute best of the best chocolate that there is in the world” …and you are helping save the planet, compensating farmers appropriately and transparently, plus getting amazing flavours.

Low prices versus good value

At the same time, nobody wants to pay more than they have to. Everybody loves a deal. And we all hate to feel cheated by purchasing something and then discovering it would have been cheaper to have waited a day.

But selling anything, including craft chocolate, based on special deals, limited-time offers, price promotions, etc. confuses low prices with great value. The discounts, bargains and “super low prices” of mass-produced confectionery on Black Friday (and many other occasions), ignore the real costs of commodity cacao, costs of misaligned taxes, environmental destruction, worker poverty, short-termism etc. that underpin so much of the junk food industry. And, to quote Shawn’s daughter, Lawren Askinosie; “when a product like chocolate is sold to the consumer for a dollar …almost always, someone is paying for it somewhere”.

So how did we get to this bonanza of bargains known as Black Friday? And what are the real costs behind these bargains?

The origins of Black Friday

Black Friday is intimately connected to the wonderful US family holiday of Thanksgiving.

Read more about Thanksgiving and how Turkeys shot to prominence →

As Thanksgiving became more and more of a national US holiday on the fourth Thursday of November (thanks to FDR in the 1940s), and more and more families gathered together, retailers saw the opportunity to have “national sales”. By the 1960s, the traffic on the roads in Philadelphia during these Thanksgiving weekend sales was so bad that local police and bus drivers coined the phrase Black Friday as shorthand for the terrible traffic jams, etc. And over the last decade, internet retailers have joined in the melee with the likes of Cyber Monday etc.

Price games and promotions

Retailers and makers have always used price as a key tool to acquire, and compete for, customers. Try finding any advert from any retailer next week which won’t be about prices. Indeed, think about any supermarket advert at any time which doesn’t focus on special discounts, price matching, etc.

This sort of price promotion is particularly important for mass-market confectionery and chocolates as they’ve always been an impulse or unplanned purchase. Special offers promotions, combined with carefully engineered positioning in stores (at the checkout, near the counter, etc.) etc. are the key sales drivers. Big chocolate makers’ R&D spend isn’t just on new products, much of it is also spent on secret ‘black stores’ where consumers’ reactions to different shelf layouts, special offers, endcaps, discount stickers and the like are carefully monitored and evaluated.

These special promotions (e.g., buy-one-get-one-free) and listings fees (i.e. payment for prominent positioning, and vending machine slots) are built into the list prices of mass-produced confectionery. That is to say, the list price of a mass-produced confectionery snack has in it a huge margin that pays for these special promotions’, endcap offers, etc. Makers (and retailers) anticipate that they’ll make most of their sales when they go on offer, and they price their regular prices accordingly. Or to put it another way, buying junk food when it’s NOT on special offer is paying an inflated price.

The overfocus on special deals at the likes of Black Friday has also trained savvy consumers to hold off buying e.g. a new TV, washing machine, or, Kindle, etc. until they receive news of Black Friday deals. Securing these bargains is designed to create a psychological boost with consumers feeling ‘smart’ and that they’ve ‘won’. They also play on the equally powerful fear of being ‘had’, even though this disincentivises customer loyalty, leading to all sorts of weird loyalty card incentives which further emphasise price and getting a deal. As a side note, these loyalty schemes here in the UK are now being investigated as being discriminatory to many consumers, and their complexity is accused of artificially raising real prices paid. And more and more savvy e-commerce shoppers are installing all sorts of price watch tools on their web browsers to ensure that Black Friday deals aren’t just reductions after summer price hikes.

Prices and value

Everyone wants low prices. No one wants to pay more than they have to.

But hunting for bargains can be stressful. All too often these lower prices are artificial; the result of, for example, inflated earlier prices.

More importantly, and especially in the case of mass-produced confectionery and junk food, over-focusing on lower prices ignores all the other costs of these products. So, yes, you may be able to get a great multi-buy deal and super low price on some mass-produced chocolate this Black Friday. But there are other costs of these mass-produced chocolate deals which are harder to quantify; such as the environmental impact of deforestation from growing bulk cacao in West Africa.

$1/£1 chocolate bars also ignore disastrous health consequences, and ever-escalating costs, from mass-produced chocolate whose primary ingredient is sugar.

And the devastating impact of low wages for West African cocoa farmers, coupled with a rush to the lowest possible price for commodity cacao, results in child and indentured labour.

A plea and potential solution

So what’s the solution? You won’t be surprised to hear; we think it’s craft chocolate. Try and avoid the temptation to purchase Black Friday deals on mass-market confectionery despite all the pressures of the upcoming few days. And when it comes to treats or Christmas gifts, think about gifting some in-person or virtual tasting kits for anyone curious. Or offer a gift that keeps on giving; a 3, 6, or 12-month gift subscription. And don’t forget our selection of Christmas truffles, boxes and bars.

So even if there is a Black Friday deal on something calling itself, for example, “finest Belgian chocolate treats”; please check the label. Make sure you know where the beans come from (down to the farm, fermentation centre etc.) and where the beans are turned into bars. And if you see ingredients you don’t have at home (like all sorts of artificial flavours, loosely described vegetable fats, tonnes of sugars etc.) think twice.

And to everyone celebrating Thanksgiving here are some bars and boxes to delight which are great value.

Keep savouring!

Spencer