Newtree | Choqoa

The “Salon du Chocolat” goes around worldwide with famous fairs in New York, Tokyo, Beijing, even Moscow, and next week shows in Paris with a 4 day fair, from October 29th till November 2nd. A one-way cacao Valhalla, the ultimate theme park, or eventual deception… I’m haven’t really got a clear view about what to expect from the 2008 “Salon du Chocolat“.

It is hard to imagine entering the halls in Portes de Versailles, that has more than of 12.000m² to offer for chocoholics, cacaophiles, and aficionados. I only know I’m going one day out of four, for the first time, and the plan is to discover more about artisan & origin chocolate explorations. With a vast range of all known top chocolatiers and artisan brands present at the fair, there sure must be lots of fun to share with other people.

The Paris team for the Salon conducted an amusing survey together with Le Figaro/Madame, on the French and their chocolate habits. Some fun facts:

Men and women, everyone prefers dark chocolate (50%), followed by milk chocolate (35%) and white chocolate (15%).
Solitaire or social? 24% of men do not share their munches … against 22% of women. Shared with family, between lovers, then friends, chocolate however still remains primarily a pleasure that is offered to and experienced together.
41% of women believe that eating chocolate gives them more pleasure than making love …
In buying habits, respondents like to buy their chocolate in priority from small but high quality artisan chocolatiers (48%) and in a much lesser extent from big industrial brands (23%).

I’ve been spotting the 400+ participants list, which includes some 140 chocolatiers, and I’m glad to see a whole range of favourites in place: Domori, Lindt, La Maison du Chocolat, Maison Bonnat, Michel Cluizel, NewTree, Phillipe Pascoët, Pralus and the Belgian new Zaabär too.
Some others to discover are: Nestlé, De Bondt and Cacao Barry (from Meulan). I’ll also seek after bars from Dagoba, and USA brands like De Vries, Scharffen Berger, Guittard, and maybe TCHO, although none of these are listed with a stand. Big misses are Amedei, Valrhona and German brands like Coppeneur.

I’ll keep you posted with writings later on!
Any other brands you think of are worth checking out?

The new Belgian brand Zaabär has not much ado with dark origin cacao, they mainly focus on flavoured bars, tempered chocolate with a variety of herbs and spices, very similar that other relatively new brand Newtree. However here’s a nice social marketing story worth a blog post for me.

A while ago I got invited to join a Facebook group from Zaabär chocolates lovers. Not sure how they found me, but most likely they must have been searching on location and interest. Wich is already interesting by itself.

Accepting the invite I discovered Zaabär is a new Belgian chocolate brand, launching from a shop in Brussels. Clicking along brought they have created a profile for ZaaBär, and also group “Zaabär chocolates lovers“, and even a fan page. This brand was not just getting on board and creating merely presence, but it also gave the impression that they knew what they were after: “Zaabär is new on facebook and would like to communicate with you.”
I was glad to discover this new brand, not only because of my addiction to chocolate – so they were spot on inviting me, but since I got to know the brand through a social network. Their recurrent activity on FaceBook kept getting my attention and soon I was wondering how far I could push this brand in reaching out to their people.

By inviting people to become fan, or friend with Zaabär on Facebook, the brand was continuously trying to enhance visibility and reach a.o. in the profile news feeds from people joining. After a couple of days when the fan groups started to get some base, I thought that in helping them to get this visibility the first members would deserve to be rewarded. So I posted a message on their wall asking to reward the Facebook members who are thriving their awareness by joining Zaabär. For instance by sending coupons or sample bars. In the end we got to know the brand, but it’s all about the product isn’t it?

Now that you’ve invited people to the “Zaabär chocolates lovers” group, why not send us a coupon or sample bar to really convince us why we should love Zaabar?

To my surprise (well, they had no choice …) they listened instantly to my suggestion, and posted an answer back on the wall:

You are completely right, Evert. Have a look on our events. We have created a special offer for our first Facebook movers. Be aware, first meeting tomorrow at 3.40pm to get 25€ free chocolates.

Isn’t this just wonderfull? Not only are they reaching out and listening to what people are asking. In their response they are clever enough to create the “Zaabär offer for first Facebook movers” event. Another Facebook tool allowing for another way to push trough the feeds. Spot on. This is how they are setting it up.

Saturday, at 3.40 pm, we offer 25€ of free chocolates bought at our Factory Shop. To get this offer, come exactly at 3.40 at our Factory Shop with three of your friends.

This offer is only aimed to our group members. Print the page of Facebook where you figure and give it to the shop seller or simply give you name.

Not sure if this isn’t too restricting but anyway that’s exactly what I did. Got down to Brussels, and discovered this brand and their bars in real life, collecting 25€ of free chocolate. And off course checked the secret of their potential success, with a very helpful and friendly shop manager showing me around – he even added me as a friend on Facebook, off course. He mentioned several people really reacted on their online Facebook announcement and came down to the store, a small step, but it was a first effective step! The Zaabär group now counts some 240 members and keeps updating its page with news, pictures and events, like the recent Zaabär Megastore opening.

As mentioned in the beginning of this post, Zaabär is offering sweets rather than chocolate, and that’s not really my cup of tea. But do check out Zaabär on Facebook, and share your comments on what you think or like about this.

(Note: I posted this story earlier on another blog, but re-edited it for Choqoa.com)