Podcast 64: Exploring Chocolat des Villages' Website

As promised in the last podcast, number 63, here is my English version of Chocolat des Villages’ website.  I am hoping to increase business.  I cannot ship from May 1 through October 1, but this web site will allow people to order product and pick it up at the store.  My goal is to increase my list of clients so that they will consider driving to Cordes and picking up their orders.

In the summer months, I also sell a lot of homemade ice cream and sorbets.  My goal is to develop knowledge of the brand, Chocolat des Villages locally and across Europe.

Enjoy!  Tom Neuhaus, Project Hope and Fairness

Before turning on this podcast, go to www.chocolatdesvillages.fr.  Then follow along in English.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 3:48

That was Prelude Number Four in Box Well Tempered Clavier in C sharp minor. Well, welcome to Prada to number sixty-four. And today I'm going to, as promised, uh go uh tell you where to find Chocolat des Village online and also run through the whole thing. It's in French, but then I'm I'm translating I'm talking about it in English. And you can follow along. Just go to Chocolat C H O L C O C H O C O L A T, no E day D E S Village Villages with an S.fr for France. Okay, I'm looking at the site, chocolate village.fr, and the first thing we see is a picture of Eugenie. Back in 2004, on my second trip to West Africa, I took a three-week period to visit three fair trade cooperatives in three cocoa growing countries Ivory Coast, Ghana, and Cameroon. My Ivorian assistant, Every Spnon, and I took buses to Badalawa and then to Gonate, located in the southwestern part of the country. My goal was to meet the leadership of the cooperative called Cavo Kiva, learn about their goals and aspirations, and during the ensuing 12 months, express my support by raising money for their mission. At that time, it never entered my mind that I would eventually develop a brand, start a store, and a website. Everast and I toured several farms, one belonging to Eugenie, who is on the first page, standing in front of one of her cocoa trees, and she's holding a ripe cocoa pod. This was one of the best photos I have ever taken, and unfortunately I lost the original, so I only have smaller versions. Eugénie lived in the village of Abikro. When I met her, she had lost her husband and was raising her family by herself. Fortunately, she had enough land and also she had the intelligence to manage her property well. In fact, she was doing so well that she had become vice president of the cooperative Kabokiva, which in the local language means let's work together. At the top of the welcome page called Paj. They can be purchased, however, online and then picked up in the store. Ice creams and sorbets are available year-round, but in the store only. The banner is removed by clicking on the ignore button. In the middle of the welcome page is a discover button, decouvrir. Clicking it brings up another page called Qui Somnu, Who Are We, which states nestled, and I am this is a translation, nestled in the heart of Cortes Your Ciel, Chocoladi Village is a lot more than just a chocolate salon. It is a commitment to only buy chocolate from Ivorian villages, especially from the cooperatives Scap and Canal SOCA, the first located in Pesouan and the second in Lakota. Ivorian cocoa farmers cultivate cocoa with care and passion, following the approach initiated by PHF, Project Hope and Fairness. Each tablet, truffle, brownie, or crystallized bean that we transform by hand into a luscious product from bean to bar is a gesture of concrete solidarity to those who grow the beans. Come savor our creations, often accompanied by coffee, tea, or hot chocolate. Here, pleasure makes sense. Under this paragraph are two red buttons, one for the association, L'Associacion, which gives the history of the association or nonprofit as well as data about it. The second red button takes the browser to Project Hope and Fairness, the American nonprofit that I founded in 2006, and which is currently run by the board. To the right is a video that was done by Jean-Joel Yao as an advertisement for Chocolat des Village in Ivory Coast. You can visit their website at chocoladevillage.ci. The first picture shows me learning to trier from the verb trier, which means to separate out the undesirable elements such as sticks, stones, underripe beans, and overripe beans. The rest of the pictures on the video are of customers and products. Scrolling down from Keisome page is another page entitled Our Values or No Valeur. There are four values listed in the four paragraphs. One, the first one called Direct Trade. Each product that you buy supports the cocoa of two Ivorian cooperatives, SCAP and Canal-SOCA. More than 200 families benefit. So that's a translation of what it says. So here's my comment about it. By the way, you might wonder why we work in Ivory Coast. Reading the history selection might give you a better feel, and we'll be covering that in the next podcast. The main reason was that since the early 20th century, Ivory Coast has been number one global grower of cocoa beans. In that time, it has used two resources to become number one: child labor, poverty in uh nearby countries and forests. Oh, by the way, it's three resources. Child labor, poverty in nearby countries and forests. For years, Molly and Burkina Faso, which are north of Ivory Coast, have supplied free child labor that makes Ivorian beans economically competitive. Every once in a while, the international media revive this age-old story. People say tisk-tisk, and then the situation of using child labor resumes. During the last 100 years, Ivory Coast has cut down 90% of its trees, and the soil that has that was enriched by being forest for thousands of years is now being used to grow cocoa, an understory tropical tree. The resource, however, is disappearing. Although there are some organizations that are working to apply the principles of agroforestry to reverse the problem by using tree trimmings as mulch to rebuild the soil and by planting trees such as leguminous trees that trap atmospheric nitrogen and return it to the soil. Getting back to the concept of direct trade, after World War II, fair trade became a popular way to earn a little more for the farmer. However, fair trade was mostly about brand manipulation, retaining the dominant situation of farmers selling beans for squat to giant corporations such as Cargill. Direct trade, when backed by chocolate-producing cooperatives, has the potential of bringing more money to the farmer than fair trade or conventional, as the farmer is higher up the value chain. The farmer actually makes the chocolate. The word artisan in French is more authentic than the American version of the world. An artisan in French is strictly someone who manufactures by hand. It states our chocolate arrives in untempered blocks of one kilogram directly from the villages. We transform it by hand into tablets, truffles, brownies, and crystallized beans without any industrial intervention. Right now, this statement is extremely accurate. The chocolate is currently made in the Canal Soka Cooperative in Lakota. This cooperative is 100% women-run, although there are several hundred male members who sell their beans to the cooperative. Jerome is the Chocolatier who supervisors. He has been working with Project Hope and Fairness for more than 15 years. Jerome mails me 30 kilograms of chocolate at a time in the blocks, and I melt those blocks and temper them and make things out of them. The third little paragraph is called Engagement Solidaire, Commitment to Solidarity. In keeping with the work of Project Open Fairness, we believe that enjoying chocolate should not be done to the detriment of those that produce it. Choosing to buy from us is making a committed choice. So that's the translation. And just a small comment from me. This means that the world is a small place. It is no longer okay to ignore the sufferings of others while enjoying your own personal life. We are all brothers and sisters on this planet. The fourth paragraph is called Ancage Local, Anchorage, Local Anchorage, located in the heart of Courtes-Urcielle, one of the most beautiful villages in France. And chocolate here for us weaves a link between Ivorian villages and our Occitan Terroir. And terroir is a French word meaning connection to the earth. And what's very Occitan around here is wine grapes and medieval towns. So I said between fields of wine grapes and medieval towns. And now my commit my comment. This statement transcends the individual and brings up the local community, whether it be in West Africa or in Occitanie. Again, we are all linked together, this time not just individually, as in paragraph three, but also as communities. Scrolling down from the Keisome New page, we reach La Boutique or the store. Four product categories are displayed: tablet, cornets, cacao, and gâteau. You can click on any of the pictures and see 10 tablettes, six cornets, two different cacaus, and three different cakes. Or you can click on the red button, voir tous les produits, meaning see all the products. Well, let's do that. Now we are in La Boutique and all 101 items are displayed on the left. On the right of the page are 17 buttons corresponding to 17 categories. These are displayed alphabetically. We're going to go through each one of them. The first category is accompagnement. In English, that would be accompaniments. For want of another name, uh I didn't really haven't come up with a better name than this, but at some point maybe I will. These are three, in this case, these are three chocolate items that I sell in the store. They're not uh available in boxes, but I sell them in little paper bags with labels. One of them is Mondian. Mondian means beggar. And it it comes from a long line of uh products that uh basically are made out of chocolate with uh nuts and uh candied fruit or dried fruit sprinkle over the top. Uh in this case, I have modified it to be a face with two eyes, uh two noisette eyes, and one candied orange mouth, having a little fun. Uh second one of the accompany accompagnement is a nougatine. Uh, nougatines uh traditionally were made out of um was a um can't caramel with chopped uh almonds and or uh hazelnuts. But I've replaced both of them with ecla or cocoa nibs. So I have changed the nougatine, and then nougatines normally are not dipped in chocolate, but I have uh I I basically heat chocolate, I heat sugar up, make it melt, add hot cocoa nibs, uh roll it out on a s on a silicone pat, on a silicone um on silicones because it otherwise would stick, and then cut it into triangles and then dip it in chocolate. Very good, by the way. And uh the third uh accompagnement are um uh orangette, uh, which we call in English candied orange peels. Um they're very popular in northern Europe, especially Germany and uh Scandinavia. Um and these are uh and also in France. So anyway, I candy all my own orange, which is much better than what you buy, because if you buy candied orange peel, it's got glucose in it, and glucose, which keeps it uh moist and prevents crystallization, is gummy, and so it it damages the texture. I prefer to have a product that's more perishable but better tasting. Okay, so the second category is assortiment or assortments. There are six of these. Five of them are just made with truffles, and of the truffles, there are eight flavors, four that I call the classic flavors in that they are classically European: candied orange, coffee, hazelnut, and marzipan. The other four truffle flavors belong to the exploratory category cranberry, peanut, coconut, banana, and candied ginger. The sixth assortment contains seven bone bones, or in English we call them bonbons. Bone means good, and bon bone means good good. Bone bones are filled molded chocolates with um uh containing a cream, a fondant, or another chocolate. The flavors of this assortment are identified by the shape of the mold. The leaf shape is filled with a milk chocolate with chopped fresh mint. The raspberry shape is filled with a raspberry cream containing fresh raspberries. The lozenge shape is filled with ganache and soft caramel. The round shape contains peanut butter, the flour contains candied orange in ganache, the half walnut contains a jan douille, that is milk chocolate mixed with hazelnut puree, and crystallized hazelnuts. And the diamond shape is pure ganache. Ganache, by the way, is 60% chocolate, 40% cream, with a little butter added and uh sometimes some vanilla. Okay, so that's the second category. The third category is bars, B-A-R-R-E-S. Bar, or we call them bars. Uh, these are chocolate bars filled with fudge and with a flavor. There are six flavors: vanilla, coffee, candied orange, candied pineapple, hazelnut, and peanut. The vanilla and coffee are filled with vanilla or coffee buttercream, that is softened butter mixed with cocoa with uh confectioner's sugar and the flavor. Uh the candied orange and candied pineapple are filled with the candied fruit uh chunks in in a fudge. And then the hazelnut and peanut are whole hazelnuts or whole peanuts along with hazelnut butter and peanut butter and fudge. So that when you bite into a bar, um you basically get a very nice, moist, soft inside with lots of different flavors combining. Okay, so that's the third category. The fourth category I call big bar. It's a single word B I G B A R. The French call the Big bars plaquet. But we don't really have a word for it in English. So I just made up big bar. In default of so that's anyway that so they uh they come in uh three chocolates milk 55%, dark seventy percent, and dark eighty percent. The fifth category are brownies. These are made with village cocoa powder, and there are three flavors caramel, raspberry jam, and coffee with cocoa nibs. All three brownies are made with buckwheat flour and so are gluten-free. And by the way, guess what? In Europe now, people are very interested in gluten-free because people have become, as in the United States, many people have become sensitive to gluten. The sixth category is cacao, and in this category, there are just two items uh pure cocoa powder or a mixture of cocoa and organic. Our cocoa is not alkalized. That is, it has not been treated with alkali to remove the delicate fermented flavors as well as the nutritional value. You ask then, why do people bother to alkalize? And the reason is that when you alkalize cocoa, the particles fall uh come apart more easily, so that when you mix it into the hot milk, uh you don't get a sludge at the bottom. So ours is the traditional pre-World War II cacao with a little bit of sludge at the bottom, but it's good tasting sludge. It's not like you're eating off the bottom of a river. Uh well, that wasn't a very good marketing statement. Anyway, uh we go on to the seventh category, which is carré à déguste, tasting squares. Uh so these are little uh seven gram squares that are wrapped in colored foil, and our chocolate comes in five different chocolate flavors: milk 35%, milk 55%, dark 70%, dark 80%, and dark 100%. You may wonder what are those percentages about, and most people don't know, and so you're going to be uh one of the people who do know, because I'm telling you. Uh the the percentage refers to the amount of cocoa in the product. And cocoa, well by cocoa, I mean cocoa butter, chocolate, and or cocoa powder. So if you add you add all those three together and divide by 100, and it gives you the percentage. So in milk chocolate, that's 35%, it's going to have a whole lot of um sugar and milk powder. Uh whereas in a dark, there's no milk powder, uh, 70% would have 30% sugar, 80% would have 20% sugar, and dark 100% contains no added sugar. Um, these little tasting squares are perfect for serving with coffee, tea, or a liqueur. Um, so you could serve it with an espresso, with americano, with uh a cappuccino, with um uh any other milk, uh milky coffee product with teas, uh herbal teas or regular tea, um, and then all kinds of liqueurs, including cognac, armagnac, kirchwasser, or grappa. And uh having these little tasting squares is the perfect light dessert for the end of a heavy meal. Uh the next category, number eight, is chocolat en gros. That means bulk chocolate. Uh, and so you'll see when you look at them, uh click on them, the pictures, you'll see that uh these are between 500 and 800 gram bars. And they come in dark 100%, dark 80%, dark 70%, milk 55%, and then pure cocoa butter. Uh this is a section that I envision would be particularly of interest to restaurants and bakeries, or people small startups. The next category is cornets. Uh, this is a cornet shape. Uh, it's a plastic uh shape uh that uh filled with 100 grams of product, and inside these cornets are six different fruits or nuts. There's candied orange peel in dark chocolate, candied orange peel in milk chocolate, coconut cubes in dark, dried bananas in dark, crystallized hazelnuts in dark, and crystallized pistachios in dark. The next category are Febre à Déguste. That means tasting beans. I use uh coffee bean molds uh to mold to make a small teeny tiny bite-sized chocolate. It's really smaller than bite-size, but it allows you to get flavors without you know eating a lot of calories. Uh okay, and then I put them in they're in 60 gram in uh craft paper bags, 60 grams in a bag with windows. And the flavors include dark chocolate, milk chocolate, dark chocolate with cardamom, dark with praline, dark with orange peel, and dark with toasted almond. So these are perfect, just like the little squares, uh, for going with coffee, tea, or a liqueur. Fev confit, that is candied beans, um, I buy fermented dried cocoa beans from the village, and uh they're peeled by hand, and uh I get them then without the the papery outside, and I boil them in a sugar syrup until the sugar crystallizes and produces a crunchy crust around each bean. Uh when cool, I toss the candied beans with melted chocolate and then with cocoa powder. There are three flavors nature, no added flavor, cardamom and powdered ginger. The next category are gâteau or cakes. I make two, at this point, I am making two American style cakes and one Swiss style. Um, all three of the cakes are gluten-free. The American style cakes are carrot cake and chocolate cake, and the Swiss style cake has a strawberry mousse in the middle with sliced strawberries on the sides and a rich chocolate miroir glaze on top. You'll see they it's quite attractive looking. Um, then besides gâteau, gâteau sec, that is dried cakes. Uh, the French have a category called gâteau sec. They're basically, we would call them pastries. Uh so and I guess we would call them cookies, actually. Uh, and so there are five of them that are shown on the website, two of which are gluten-free and three of which are not. The two gluten-free cookies include an orange chocolate hazelnut cookie made with buckwheat. Of course, all of my gluten-free are made with buckwheat. All of all of gluten-free products. Uh, and the other one is chocolate meringue. Well, that's um made with egg, whites, and sugars. So there's no flour normally added to a meringue. Uh, so that's what it is. It's uh a meringue with cocoa powder in it, and then chocolate spread over the flat side. Um, then three gluten-containing cookies, because you can't make these without wheat flour. Uh, two palmiers, one just the buttery, the traditional buttery, crispy palmier. Um, and the other one is a cinnamon palmier. And then the other cookie, the third of the gluten-containing cookies, is a speculose. That's a Dutch cookie uh made with a uh spicy um cookie dough, and it's dipped in white and dark chocolate, very attractive looking. Those are the gâteau sex. The next um category is glass a sorbet, that is ice creams and sorbets. As you may know, ice creams contain milk products, sorbet's do not contain milk products, at least a sherbet does, but a sherbet is not a sorbet. A sorbet is made with sugar and water and fruit. Um, none of my ice creams or sorbets contains any kind of thickener or emulsifier. Um in the ice creams, there's vanilla, chocolate, hazelnut, and coffee. And the sorbet, there are five different sorbet: strawberry, raspberry, lemon, orange, and chocolate. The chocolate sorbet is made with 100% dark chocolate and is wonderfully intense. I serve the ice creams and sorbets in the store in dishes or in my own homemade cones. So I bought a little waffle maker and I make a waffled cone, uh, and it's quite good. Um, then the next category is modelin. Uh, these are gluten-free modelins as they're made with buckwheat. There are four flavors uh carrot, orange, green tea, and chocolate. Uh they're made in modelin molds, and uh which are uh sort of seashell-shaped, and then all four are dipped in dark chocolate with white chocolate, dark and white. Um, then the next category is Saison or Seasons. Uh, there are three assortments in this category: two Christmas assortments and one Easter assortment. One Christmas assortment is made of five butter cookies decorated with icing on one side and chocolate on the other. There is a, for example, there's a star and there's a um snowman and a Christmas tree. Okay, so traditional Christmas cookies. Uh the second Christmas assortment includes a chocolate bar, a butter cookie, a speculose, and assorted chocolates. The third assortment is the Easter assortment made of bells, roosters, rabbits, eggs containing milk chocolate, uh, buttercream, or milk chocolate on the outside or dark chocolate on the outside. The bells, rabbits, and roosters are filled with either a vanilla or a chocolate buttercream. Okay, those are the seasons or saisons. And finally we come to the last category, which are tablets. All ten tablets, there are ten in this category, weigh, they all weigh 30 grams. Four of them are straight chocolate, that is, you know, milk chocolate, and the three dark chocolates. And then there the remaining six of the ten are uh flavored with uh sprinkles on the back of each bar. Um so the lavender one uh bar is sprinkled with dried lavender flowers, uh, the candied orange with candied orange peel, again, candied ginger with ginger from the village, uh real African ginger, um, toasted almonds, crushed peanuts, and pink peppercorns. Well, that's the end of the boutique, and as you can see, there's quite a variety. I'm trying to develop the brand Chocolate des Village by presenting many products. I do not know where this will all lead, which category will win, which flavor will win, which chocolate. Generally, the pattern in business is you start with a bunch of stuff and then you trim down until you find the real winners. Uh, the European Union is like the US. You can ship products from October to May from France to any country in the EU without paying custom duties. My next step is to have the developer do an English version of this website. Please write to me and give me your impressions. Thank you. Well, thanks for listening to podcast number 64. We finished today's podcast with Show Pass Prelude Number 10 in C sharp minor. So that's the same key as the Bach was in. What's different about this? Um, you'll notice that uh it has uh going through it triplets and doublets. So there's like um three beats to a measure, and it goes a triplet, then a doublet, a triplet, and a doublet, a triplet and a doublet. So that's um very innovative. Uh people weren't doing stuff like that. Uh so Chopin, of course, was quite the genius and quite the innovator. Well, thanks for listening, and uh, here comes little his little prelude. It's a rather short one. Well, see you next time. Goodbye.