Chocolate Sales Stay Sweet Despite Melting Economy

This Valentine’s Day, despite the economic crisis surrounding every decision individuals—and couples—must make, sales of boutique chocolates remained comparable to previous years in New York City’s West Village and SoHo districts. Though it would seem that sales would melt they held strong because of the emotions, feelings and traditions that connect chocolate to many major holidays and events, especially Valentine’s Day.

It is difficult for a weak economy to affect Valentine’s Day. “People like nice things and if they won’t buy them on other days they will buy them for Valentine’s Day,” said Jackie Caruso, an assistant manager at Vosges Chocolates. Most of the chocolates purchased on or before the holiday were bought as gifts. Though fewer customers bought the truffles that Vosges is known for, those who did purchased more. The average purchase was $45 but customers bought individual pieces ($2.25) and boxed sets whose price depends on the number for chocolates purchased.

Similar trends were found at other stores in the area. This Valentine’s Day “people aren’t spending as much on big luxury items but chocolate is still a luxury and it’s affordable,” said Keeling Tong, owner of Kee’s Chocolates. In fact, at Kee’s, this year’s Valentine’s Day was “a little better than last year’s,” continued Tong. This is important because the cost of cocoa, the main ingredient in chocolate, is higher than it was before past Valentine’s Days. The International Cocoa Organization shows prices for January 2009 at $2,600 per ton of cocoa, up $400 from 2008 and $900 from 2007.

Despite the increased prices for raw goods Tong hasn’t raised prices. “It is more important to maintain the product and customer base and to keep the customer’s happy than to gouge prices to make a better profit,” said Tong. At Kee’s Chocolates a single bonbon costs $2.35 and the average Valentine’s Day gift purchase was a box of 12 pieces for $30.

Like Kee’s Chocolates, Li-Lac Chocolates experienced strong sales this Valentine’s Day also. There wasn’t really difference in sales “and if there sales were different, they were a little higher,” said Martha Bond, owner of Li-Lac Chocolates.

Having owned the store for 21 years, Bond’s contacts reach as far as Hershey’s bars. The “old-timers say, in their experience, that chocolate does well” no matter what the economy is doing; “it comforts people and is an affordable luxury. It is part of almost every holiday,” said Bond.

The comfort and traditions associated with chocolate may help it survive, especially because it is often given as a gift. “I would continue [buying chocolate] no matter what. The amount might go down but I would still give it as gifts” for others and myself, said Lee Russeth, a regular consumer of Vosges Chocolates. 

Baseball/God

My first class of Baseball as a Road to God took place last Tuesday. We talked about the books we read; the discussion lead by James Traub. It was a wonderful discussion but someone (logically) expanded a point I made about the Kinsella book. I was talking about a connection between Gideon’s experience and that of the Indian philosophers who came up with the concept of a release from karma, of moksha.

Because of the cyclical nature of the book and Gideon’s role in the story I said something about how he had been perpetually trapped in a cycle of time travel and experience and that because this time around he was learning more about the game and about Drifting Away he realized that Drifting Away had suffered more than he had. This knowledge led to the breaking of the cycle and showed an evolution of thought surrounding sacred time similar to that of the Indian philosophers and elite.

Someone then took this to the next logical step and said that religion, then, is something that traps people in an ignorant, painful place and that only through knowledge can we escape it. The Catholic in me, simply the religious/spiritual person in me, was very struck by this idea which has been around but which I hadn’t had to grapple with or deal with, especially as something that would lead from something I had said.

It took me the rest of the class to find a way to rebuke this and I didn’t have the opportunity to do so in class. What I figured out was that while it looks like religion can seem to trap people in ignorance it doesn’t. What does, though, is when man uses religion as a means to other ends outside of the spiritual, outside of love and salvation. When someone uses the church as tool to control thoughts or achieve their own goals, for it is only when kept ignorant that people will allow something like that to happen. Neither religion, nor the church, work to perpetuate ignorance except for when man uses it to do so.

Talk

I’m writing my Kairos talk, or trying to anyway. It’s easy and difficult at the same time. Easy because it’s easy enough to write about yourself, especially when you’ve got a task. Difficult because it’s hard to know how to say what you think you want to say to say what you think you should so that the retreatants get what they should be getting out of the talk, if that makes any sort of sense. It’s hard, too, because many of the talks I heard on my Kairos revolved around great personal tragedies and I don’t have experiences like that. I also don’t know how many typed pages make an hour’s worth of talking, or if I should even type it out anyway. I wanted to be further with it (beyond draft one) at this point, but I procrastinated and so I've got to make up time I suppose.

 

Part of my procrastination was the nifty picture on the side. I made it at http://www.wordle.net/ using a couple different prayers. They size each word according to how many times it is used in relation to how many times the other words are used.

First Post

I’ve been doing a good amount of reading for my class with President Sexton, Baseball as a Road to God. One book is called The Sacred and the Profane and the other is The Iowa Baseball Confederacy. The first is academic, the second fiction. Guess which one I like more.

While it isn’t my favorite of the two, The Sacred and the Profane is interesting in small doses. I don’t really know what the author’s point is because he didn’t often compare the sacred and the profane but usually expounded on the ways that the religious man experiences the Sacred in everyday life. He uses myriad religions to show is point that for the religious man everything in life is Sacred because everything is a symbol, everything represents something that is connected to the creation or to the God(s). He says that modern man experiences this on a much smaller scale than primitive man, which makes sense due to our reliance on technology and their reliance on nature, and being able to read natural signs instead of weather.com.

I think, though, that there are often opportunities for modern religious man to see the Sacred in his everyday life. A child’s smile, the perseverance of a weed growing in a sidewalk crack, the many moments of charity, the graffiti encouraging one to follow his dreams,  all these could been connected to the origin stories, to the cosmologies, to the Sacred.

As more of what both books say sinks in, and as we discuss them in class, I’m sure I’ll have more to say. I mostly wanted to just get something written, to get this blog started.