Valentine’s Day is probably the world’s most ultra-special marketing bonanza. It’s the day when those in the flower, chocolate and jewelry business hope your sweetheart will equate the most expensive gifts with the depth of your love. This faux holiday is not for the faint of heart or the flat of wallet. At this time of year, your credit card senses the blood of a spending spree like Dracula awakening after a century long snooze.
I’m sure that some un-scientific survey will verify that if the average guy adds a huge teddy bear and some fine chocolates to a well thought out and lavish evening, the ‘feel good’ effect will last until St. Patrick’s Day when they will once again have to start proving their love by whipping up a dinner of corned beef and cabbage in a romantic setting of imported beer and flowers.
Oh yes, the flowers; one of the most significant aspects of Valentine’s Day. For the slow to catch on, roses aren’t always that expensive. Once again, marketing has taken hold of our credit cards.
Some will say it’s the little things like crafting your sweetheart a special cup of coffee while she ponders all the expensive things you could have bought. Nothing says ‘I love you’ like a double steamed whole milk mocha macchiato poured over a heart shaped ice float with cherries for the aorta.
Or just take your love out of the house which means that you care enough to get in the car and drive her somewhere.
The timing of Valentine’s Day in the middle of February couldn’t have been better. Almost everyone who has made a new year’s resolution to lose weight and exercise has either forgotten those vows or has lost just enough to splurge on some really good chocolates.
So let’s talk about chocolate, which is synonymous with how sweet you really are. The prevailing calculation is that the more expensive the chocolate the bigger the love. You don’t want to deliver a Hershey’s Kiss in a Kia Rio.
You want to present some To’ak Chocolate in a Bugatti Veyron.
And it’s a rare treat indeed. Only 574 bars of this Fair Trade, USDA-organic, 81-percent dark chocolate were made from the 2014 harvest. Each comes packaged with a 116-page booklet in a Spanish elm box engraved with the bar number. It’s a love letter from To’ak co-founder Jerry Toth, who has a house in Ecuador. It was there that he got the idea for To’ak, the cacao culled from a 1,000-acre forest featuring trees that survived the 1916 “Witch’s Broom” disease. (I’m not kidding) For only $260 and you probably have to know someone who knows someone, you may purchase a 50 gram bar. That’s $5.20 a gram or a total of one and three quarter ounces, slightly more than a Hershey Bar.
Aren’t you glad it comes around only once a year?
