This afternoon I told myself I wasn’t allowed to get up from my desk until I got through the phone calls and emails I've been meaning to make to new suppliers and suppliers that aren't treating me right and need a talking to. In business as in life, it's easy to slide into habits and take the easy way out. Because I think of my business as a vegan chef and chocolatier as a part of my activism to bring about a less screwed-up world, I never feel like I can do this - though I still do more than I should.
My first call was to a new mushroom supplier.
My friend Aaron grows beautiful shiitake mushrooms on inoculated logs, but he doesn't have a greenhouse so they are only available when the outside temperatures are warm enough for the logs to be outside without freezing (yes, logs can freeze to death. Shiitake spore-inoculated logs are rather dainty little dudes, and need a little coddling.).
So, during the summer I have a great hookup for perfectly fresh and delicious shiitake mushrooms and during the winter I use the plain Jane mushrooms that my local distributor gets from Kennet Square, PA (the mushroom capital of the US!). Pennsylvania isn't all that far away, but the growing practices of commercial mushroom operations are not exactly in line with my values. I’ve been half-heartedly looking around for local mushrooms year-round with little success. Aunt Debby (as she introduced herself) - a hilariously outspoken mushroom farmer and forager I adored - used to sell them, but she had to shut down the business in order to take a job with health care, benefits, and a regular salary. A company in White Plains offered to FedEx me mushrooms, which just seemed silly. So it was with extreme excitement that I heard about Wiltbank Farm, just an hour north of me, in Saugerties.
Wiltbank (I didn’t catch his first name) not only has mushrooms all year round, but he delivers to New Paltz every week. I asked him if he could email me a price list, and he said he could just tell me the prices, since he only has two - one for shiitakes and one for oysters (of which he grows 5 varieties: pink, yellow, grey, blue, and brown!).
He said I didn’t need to order by the box (3 or 5 lbs) if I couldn’t use up a whole box – he comes to New Paltz anyway and could just bring me a pound or two at a time. Free delivery for a pound of mushrooms! Insanity.
I told him that I use many pounds of mushrooms at a time, especially lovely local ones like I’m sure his are. I ordered a few boxes of brown oyster mushrooms, and he said he’d bring them by Thursday morning. No credit application, no driver to meet, just a friendly transaction between the mushroom grower and the mushroom cook – easy.
Then I got a call from Amy, from Wild Hive Farm. At a winter farmer’s market recently I had been talking to Don, another Wild Hive farmer, about how good their flour is. I had mentioned that I would be ordering some soon but still had some to use up from the last order. Amy told me that she wanted to replace my flour, for free, because they grind everything fresh and pride themselves on super-freshness and they thought my flour was too old. I told them I had been keeping it in cold storage and had just tasted some the other day, and also that I had very little left, and we had a nice talk about farming, how good their polenta is, and running a small business. It was a good reminder that we’re used to thinking of flour as a non-perishable food staple but that fresher really is better, and yet another example of the amazing customer service small businesses provide.
After that I called Maui Vanilla Bean Co, which I had read about in Edible Hawaiian Islands. The guy who grows the beans answered the phone, and we chatted about Kauai and his vanilla bean business, and he offered me an amazing wholesale price on 50 beans – a price I dare not repeat here unless he was giving me a bit of a kama ‘aina discount, the discount given to locals in Hawaii. I don’t really deserve a kama ‘aina, since I am only in Hawaii one month out of the year or so, but who knows – Hawaiians are nice like that. At any rate, even the rate advertised in the magazine – 3 vanilla beans for $12.50 including shipping – is amazing considering they are organically-grown (but not certified – like all the good farmers are these days – organic certification is just a pain for small farmers and means very little). (Call 808-870-1104 to order!) I asked him if he took PayPal or if I could give him my credit card number directly, and he said not to worry about it, I could just send him a check when I got the beans. Yes, he just sent fifty vanilla beans – one of the most precious commodities on earth – on credit to someone he’d met over the phone five minutes ago.
What on earth? Real human beings still exist - it’s not all Spitzers and Pattersons, people. Small businesses are the shit.
After that, I felt so good about the world and excited for Hawaiian vanilla that I called a hairdresser I’d been meaning to call for weeks. I haven’t had my hair professionally cut in years, and decided that as a treat I would get it cut by someone who would do something other than put it in a ponytail and hack off the ends. I called up the owner of the coolest (and slightly intimidating) salon on town, totally insulted her by saying that I had heard that she only cut short hair (I had heard this, but the minute I said it I realized that it might sound like I was asking because she is a lesbian) and could she cut my long hair? She just laughed and said she cut all kinds of hair and I felt like an idiot. We made the appointment and I asked her about how much it would be, and she said she has a sliding scale, and was I from NYC or New Paltz, because she knew people in New Paltz just don’t make as much as city people, so she charges them less.
After that I was feeling so amazing about the possibility of true humanity that I decided to chip away at the biggest businessy problem I have, the one that never goes away and has been around for years: chocolate.
And this is where everything goes sour. Thus we begin a long, long tale – the tale of HOW MUCH CALLEBAUT CHOCOLATE HATES LAGUSTA’S LUSCIOUS VEGAN, ORGANIC, FAIR-TRADE CHOCOLATE TRUFFLES, and, related, how LAGUSTA’S LUSCIOUS VEGAN, ORGANIC, FAIR-TRADE CHOCOLATE TRUFFLES NEVER DID ANYTHING TO CALLEBAUT EXCEPT WANT TO SPEND HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS BUYING ITS CHOCOLATE.
Here we go.
In the five years that I have been making truffles, the only real problem I’ve had is that organic and fair trade chocolate that does not taste like artificially-flavored chocolate wax is almost completely impossible to find in foodservice sizes.
I use chocolate in 11 lb slabs, and buy 3 or 4 cases of 4 11 lb slabs at a time – almost 200 lbs of chocolate every few months. I’m a very small chocolatier, yes, but not completely insignificant. I do have a whole other full-time job, after all.
I have tasted every fair-trade and organic chocolate out there, and they all break down into one of four categories:
-Those that taste like ass.
-Those that taste heavenly but do not come in foodservice sizes or pricing.
-Those that are heavenly and do come in foodservice prices but are not right for truffles. Sharffen Berger and Valrhona are delicious chocolates, but a little challenging for my truffles, a bit rough around the edges (in a wonderful way, but not wonderful for truffles).
-Callebaut.
And so I began the dance with the devil.
Callebaut is the largest chocolate maker in the world.
They make a tiny amount of organic and fair-trade chocolate, and I am convinced I am the only person in the universe using it, because I have to order it six months in advance and get it boated over from Belgium.
Trying to order it is an Odyssean task in itself, but I’m not happy with the kind I currently use. Trying to get a list of all organic and f/t chocolates Callebaut makes, so I can find a better mix of chocolate, has proven to be far, far more than they can do for me.
The saga of me trying to buy chocolate from Callebaut is the perfect counterpoint to the heart-warming stories of small businesses above. The following story perfectly exemplifies how broken and small-minded and unfriendly and inhumane and just ugh the American capitalist system has become.
I know that though the larger problem is gigantic multi-national corporations and they way they are ruining the world, the smaller (but still huge) issue is that if we want food grown with our politics we need to start companies to distribute it ourselves.
Callebaut is clearly not teaching its distributors to care about the customer interested in organic and fair-trade chocolate - even though it costs more. It’s a completely business-as-usual operation that is utterly uninterested in tapping into the biggest consumer trend in the past 20 years.
I knew all along I wanted to only use organic and fair-trade chocolate, because I believe in organic agriculture and in farmers and communities and producers all down the line being paid a fair wage. I know there are problems with both organic and fair-trade certification, but right now they are the best guarantees I have that the chocolate I use is grown with something close to my politics, so I’ll take it.
In truth, it’s mainly Hershey’s and other low-quality chocolate makers that have been accused of the worst violations of human rights. Higher-quality European chocolatiers usually have better human rights records, but I still want that fair-trade certification on my chocolate. Readers more interested in this issue are encouraged to do a Google search and sift out the propaganda from the truth for themselves. I’ll err on the side of not having African children stolen from their families and forced to harvest chocolate under threat of whippings, thank you very much.
I tasted some Callebaut chocolate at a food trade show about five years ago. I liked it and talked to their representative, who said they make organic and fair-trade chocolates. He gave me the number to call to order some.
The number was for Ambassador Fine Foods, in New Jersey (800-272-8694, if you want to give them a friendly call after reading this manifesto).
Ambassador is a bunch of lunkheads who know absolutely nothing about organic and fair-trade chocolate, and talking to them about it is like talking to a two year old. You have to repeat yourself a lot, speak very quietly and calmly, and continue making your central point again and again until they begin to understand. (In truth, I know no two-year-olds – please correct me if this is not how you need to talk to them.)
The next day, you need to call up and do it all over again, because Ambassador’s number one rule seems to be Never Call That Insane Organic Chocolate Lady Back. I’m sure they have it taped up right by the front door.
My last sales person (I believe his name was Joe – I tore up the paper with his contact information in a fit of rage one day) actually told me that the term “fair-trade” doesn’t exist. When I pointed out that if he wanted to steer his SUV about an hour north, I could show him hundreds of dollars of certified fair-trade chocolate I had bought from him, he was utterly nonplussed.
Another salesdude once sold me an entire case of chocolate that he said was fair-trade, but it turns out it was single origin – when I asked him why the box didn’t say fair-trade anywhere on it, he told me that he sold it to me because “single-origin means fair trade.” When I politely pointed out that single-origin chocolate was a lovely thing and, yes, the community members producing single origin chocolates are more likely to be paid a fair wage and have better working conditions, none of those things were guaranteed, and I can’t sell fair-trade truffles if the chocolate is not certified fair-trade. As usual, I met a brick wall.
It took me over a year to just find out about the three chocolates I currently use – I had to pry the information out of them over a painful series of phone calls, emails, and even a personal visit.
After much wheedling and pleading and begging, I found the three chocolates (a 47%, 70%, and 56%, in case you’re interested) I use and learned about the up to six-month process of ordering it directly from Belgium. The water. The boat. The wait. The pallet.
I’ve learned that if I don’t buy the entire pallet at once, they will just sell it to me until it’s gone, racking up the gigantic shipping charges each time (see below), no matter how past the expiration date it is. When I call to politely enquire about this they tell me that the expiration date is arbitrary and means nothing – good chocolate will last forever! Which might be the case, but then why did they tell me for months that they couldn’t order organic and f/t chocolate for me because by the time they sold it all it would be useless and past the expiration date because so few people order it?
After the rule about not calling me back, Ambassador’s number two rule seems to be Say Whatever You Need To Say To Get Insane Organic Chocolate Lady Off The Phone.
They never let me know when they are going to place an order from Europe so I can order my damn pallet – every time I call I have just missed the order so the next one won’t be for another few months.
After breaking down seemingly endless brick walls and actually getting the privilege of ordering the chocolate, I tell them I only live an hour away and can pick up the chocolate instead of them charging me my weight in gold to ship it UPS. They say OK, then they always, always ship it. With no warning it’s arriving. Thus, one day, 6 months after I ordered it, I find hundreds of dollars’ worth of chocolate melting away in the middle of summer on my doorstep.
As stated, all the Ambassador salespeople never return phone calls (have I mentioned that I am extremely polite and spend hundreds and possibly thousands of dollars a year on their chocolate?), and on the rare occasions that they pick up the phone they are always driving in the SUVs to some sales call or another and talking to me in their ridiculous Joisey accents on those Blackberry hands-free things that you wear behind your ear when you want to look like a total frat boy/stockbroker/douche.
Did I mention the time they charged me double for everything - $800 instead of $400 in chocolate? When I called up to enquire about it, they casually informed me it was a mistake and they would take care of it, completely carefree about charging my credit card an extra $400.
On a good day I can order directly from the receptionist, who is, as usual, the only person in the whole God-forsaken operation who knows jack shit. Yes, last month she sent me a case of 70% chocolate when she had sold it as 50% - a gigantic difference, but accept full responsibility for that - I should have known better.
I know all the organic and f/t chocolate that Callebaut makes, and I knew they didn’t make a 50%. I did exactly what I should not have done, though, and believed someone from Ambassador when they told me something, believed that Callebaut might actually have come out with another organic chocolate, believed that something involving Ambassador and Callebaut might not get completely fucked up. I accept full responsibility for this unacceptable naiveté.
At any rate, the receptionist is polite and not a Jersey dude calling me honey, and she does her very best with the limited information available to her.
None of this would truly bother me, I would go on forever ordering my pallet and dodging the “honey”s, except that I’m really unhappy with my current mix of chocolates. It’s not perfect for the truffles, and I hate mixing three chocolates of three different percentages. I know Callebaut makes more organic and f/t chocolates, and I know there has to be a way to get them.
For the past year I’ve been searching for the magic key that will gain me access to the magical list of all organic and fair trade chocolates that Callebaut makes.
Because no one at Ambassador or even Callebaut seems to know what the word organic means, however, and because I cannot get the same list of chocolates from two different people no matter how many people I speak to, I sometimes question my own sanity – seriously people, how can this be so difficult? I just need an item number so I can beg Ambassador to float it on over. An item number!
I make more calls.
Someone at Callebaut will explain that they only have fair-trade cocoa powder. I politely explain that yes, I know that they only distribute fair-trade cocoa powder in the US, but if ordered directly from Europe, as previously stated that I am interested in doing, they have a wider range of chocolate, including FAIR105, also known as CD-FAIR-D, the 44 lbs of 70% fair-trade, and CB-BIO-D, the 44 lbs of 56% organic.
In my best two-year-old voice, I explain that I’m looking for other chocolates, not the ones I just mentioned, whose item numbers might contain F (for fair) and T (for trade) or maybe BIO (because Callebaut is a Belgian company, and in Belgium they often speak French, which is another language, and in that other language, “organic” is “biologique,” and the abbreviation for “biologique” is BIO), and could those possibly be located in your system, seeing as you are the headquarters for Callebaut?
They say they will call me back.
A couple of weeks later, I call Callebaut again, and they tell me to call Ambassador again. I call Ambassador and beg and plead for a list of ALL of Callebaut’s organic and f/t chocolates, and they tell me the business of the boat, and how they don’t stock them, and I tell them that I KNOW. I’M THAT CRAZY LADY WHO ALREADY GETS MY DAMN CHOCOLATE BOATED OVER. I WANT DIFFERENT CHOCOLATE. And they say they will email me and never do, or they give me meaningless item numbers that don’t tell me anything about percentages or any info I can use, and I have to beg and plead for the spec sheet, a magical document a salesdude once faxed me that had all the information on the chocolate, so I could for once see if they were lying about a chocolate being organic and fair trade (they do this often, refer to Rule No. 2).
Then I get frustrated with Callebaut, and go on another chocolate-tasting rampage, hoping another company has started up that will treat me better and understand where I’m coming from. I try out hippie chocolates whose flavor will never match the smooth meltiness of Callebaut. I scour the internet for another Callebaut distributor. None in my area, the magical internet tells me again and again.
By that time I’m almost out of chocolate, so I make another round of calls to Ambassador again, and get the same Jersey dudes calling me honey and telling me “I’ll getcha some good chocolate, don’t you worry, honey.”
I’M WORRIED. In fact, I’m considering moving to Belgium. That would at least cut out the boat trip.
Hmm. I just thought of submitting this whole thing to This American Life to see if they want to do a story on it. How would This American Life end this (after they got in touch with Ambassador and Callebaut and they explained their side of the story, which would be all about how they were doing their best and they are sorry for the confusion and they are sending me flowers and a gift-wrapped, handwritten letter listing every single organic and f/t chocolate in production, with chocolate percentages, prices, availability, and how to order)?
Ira would say, in his wimpstery little halting voice (I love it, I’m not complaining):
“What I think this story is about, really, at its core, is communication. I mean, obviously, right? But really, on a deeper level. Communication. Lagusta couldn’t communicate, no matter how hard she tried, what she wanted from Callebaut. And they couldn’t listen. They couldn’t give her what she needed, although, paradoxically, what she needed was the very thing they were selling.
Something fundamental – something that goes to the core of this nation, of This American Life, people, [Ira will let it slide that they are a Belgian company] – just could not be conveyed. And what do we do when we encounter a gulf so wide like that? When a tiny little chocolatier trying to do the right thing just can’t get a huge company to listen to her? What does say about us, as a people, as a planet, really?
[Pause]
“Um. That story aired a few months ago, and since then Lagusta has started her own company importing foodservice sizes of organic and fair-trade chocolate directly from small family producers. Callebaut has filed for bankruptcy because they were unable to meet the demands of a new generation of chocolatiers who wanted not only quality but ethical sourcing behind their ingredients.”
The music swells.