Yesterday, I did something that I haven't done in more than 5 years.
I rewatched the Peru episode of Parts Unknown with Anthony Bourdain.
I bought the season on Amazon Prime, but it is available for free on Youtube as well.
Back in 2013, Anthony Bourdain, Eric Ripert, and one other partner decided to buy chocolate from us and launch a chocolate bar.
They wanted to do that because Eric Ripert, who is one of the most celebrated chefs in the world, said that our chocolate was the best he had ever tasted in his life.
The bar was called the Good and Evil bar.
But the project was short lived as the bar retailed for $18 for a 2 oz bar.
The Peru episode of Parts Unknown was filmed in conjunction with the launch of the chocolate bar.
It is a really good episode and gives an excellent little look at the culinary scene in Peru.
You also get to see a lot of footage about what our operation is like in Peru.
A few things stood out when I watched the episode again yesterday for the first time in a long time.
The first thing is that occurred to me is that back in 2013, we had already been in business for 5 years.
And the episode was filmed 9 years ago.
We've been doing this a long time.....
The second thing is that we are still selling the exact chocolate that was used in that bar 9 years ago.
Our 68% dark chocolate is made with the exact same cacao and using the exact same recipe.
It is literally the exact same chocolate.
Along those lines, the third thing that I noticed is that we are still buying cacao from the exact same cacao farmers who are featured in that show.
Our business has grown some, but the underlying fundamentals of our production have been the same this whole time.
The last thing I noticed, and this is the biggest thing, is that my brother Brian didn't get enough credit.
In fact, he didn't get any credit.
The name of our company isn't even mentioned.
We signed off on it at the time, because our business needed the boost, but in retrospect we should have insisted that Brian be featured on the show.
Because what happened is that the stars of the show told Brian's story as if it was their own.
But he had lived it and paid his dues for more than 5 years in the jungle.
And it would have been good to have that show as a tribute to Brian that could live on through the ages.
So here is what I want to encourage you to do if you have the time and interest.
Give that Peru episode of Parts Unknown a watch and just keep in mind that everything the three main characters say about themselves, is actually true about Brian, not the people in the show.
Everything else is accurate and a great look about the operation that we continue to run to this day.
Oh yeah, we just recorded a full 50 minute podcast about this topic as well.
In the podcast, we also calculate how many cacao pods it takes to make on bar of our chocolate, per a request from a wonderful friend and customer named Greg.
