Mink Chocolates Blog

Hey Buddy, Need a Lift?

August 30th, 2010

Fred sauntered into Mink looking like a man who’d just had sixty minutes of Shiatsu and was too relaxed to shower afterwards. He called me out from behind the bar and tried to give me a complicated handshake that I’m either too old or too white to comprehend.

“You’ve lost your hipness”, he said, berating me in that playful tone one can when one’s been friends over three decades. “You’re slippery”, I shot back, “and I’m not referring to your methodology”.

“I’ve been walking all over downtown. You should try it sometime. Or maybe you’re just sympathetically pregnant”.

It’s now public fact that Mrs. Mink is expecting in the spring. Still, that jab hit above the belt, so to speak.

I offer him a cappuccino, which I suspect is the sole reason for his having hoofed it from Yaletown. We could have easily talked or texted to catch up.

“Remember Danny Kaide, from high school?” he asks me. “I saw him at an opening last night. He told me no one in his family has lived past 61. I said we should have dinner soon”.

As disturbing as it is to hear that from a man sweating profusely in a chocolate shop, I laugh. “Thanks for the update”, I say. “What else is going on?”

He tells me his daughter is turning eight, and he’s planning her birthday party. All she wants is an afternoon limo ride with a dozen of her closest friends. No bouncy castles, no Barbie impersonators, no magic tricks. Just some urban cruising. Because Fred walks everywhere, I sense she’s feeling auto-deprived, and like her Dad, she’s a go big or go home kind of kid.

He asks me for loot bags, figuring that’s the missing element to making this party a success and I’m happy to oblige. The logistics are simple. I’ll make twelve bags with black and white chocolate cow lollipops, ladybug and dinosaur truffles and milk chocolate cell phones, gender neutral because he doesn’t have a girl/boy headcount, and he’ll pick them up the day before.

Now any parent who’s ever thrown a modern day birthday party for their kids, or at least picked their kids up from a birthday party, knows the loot bags are given out at the end, to take home. Fred made the cardinal mistake of giving them out as they piled into the car. Lots of kids, lots of chocolate, confined space, and stop and go city traffic, equals motion sickness.

Twenty minutes into a two hour tour and the limo driver calls Fred and tells him he’s bringing the kids back, and is expecting help dealing with the barf fest. Fred’s out walking, so the car has to swing by and pick him up first.

I’m laughing, yet I’m disturbed, and it makes me want to take a shower just thinking about it.

Marc Lieberman

Mink Chocolates Inc.,
Mink A Chocolate Cafe Ltd.

Call the store: 604.633.2451
Call my mobile: 604.376.3464
Call toll free: 1.866.283.5181

Shop: minkchocolates.com
Tweet: twitter.com/minkchocolates
Join: facebook.com/mink.chocolates
Read: blog.minkchocolates.com
Watch: youtube.com search mink chocolates
In Person: 863 Hastings Street West, Vancouver, BC V6C 3N9

Nine out of every ten persons say they love chocolate. The tenth lies.
- Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

Tags: 38% milk chocolate, artisan chocolate, Barbie, birthday parties, café, chocolate bars, chocolate gifts, chocolates vancouver, coffee, fatherhood, Fred, handmade chocolate, independent coffee shops, limo rides, loot bags, mink, Mink A Chocolate Cafe, mink chocolates, Shiatsu, truffles, Yaletown
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What Does it All Mean?

August 22nd, 2010

This post first appeared on Annmarie Kostyk’s blog, Chocolate Goddess. Check it out for great recipes, and the largest resource of makers of 70% or higher dark chocolate bars.

Well into my vacation, I dream that instead of putting the nightly deposits in the safe, Ben puts five bags of cash in the milk chocolate ganache and all the deposit slips and till tapes in the dark chocolate ganache. All the while the machines are spinning and everyone is oblivious to the shredded bits of banknotes floating in their fondues.

He rationalizes it as the equivalent of putting the family heirlooms in the cereal box because the home invader would never think to look there. I wake up fretting about whether or not that tactic is food safe.

I tell the story over breakfast to my wife who is trying to feed our 2-1/2 year old. Levi gets to pour a glass of water onto his make believe rock garden every time he eats a big spoonful of Cheerios. Picking her battles, my wife is convinced she’s won this one. Between shoveling processed oats into his mouth, and trying to feed herself, I ask her if she thinks the dream is indicative of my constant state of worry that the chocolate shop will be in disarray when we get back to town.

She thinks it’s simple; there was too much MSG in the previous night’s Chinese takeout.

Convinced I’ve foretold a variation of some sort of calamity, I send Ben a text. “How’s it going?” I’m nothing if not succinct. He’s slow to reply, which is disconcerting because like all my staff, their iPhones are in their aprons, set to vibrate, and always at the ready. I assume the Café has either burnt down, or Ben’s leading a staff retreat at the Lions Pub.

Soon my BlackBerry plays the opening refrain to the James Bond Theme, the song I’ve set as Ben’s alert. I like to think of him as an operative and me as the mysterious benevolent chocolate dictator, and all our communiqués are top secret. “May I speak?” is his cryptic text that lets me know he can chat on the phone if I’m available. I call him up.

We exchange hi, how are you’s, then he’s all business.

“Things are quite good”, he says, “people still want to eat chocolate even if you’re not here”.

I get the numbers, all the phone messages, and updates on various staff drama, and am temporarily reassured.

“Cohen’s taken it upon himself to make a merchandising statement in honor of Pride weekend, using only the Queen Cake chocolate bar”, Ben tells me, trying to contain his laughter. “You’ll definitely have to put it into production when you get back”.

Queen Cake is Mink’s 70% dark chocolate bar hand filled with marzipan. It’s my take on some versions of king cake eaten during the carnival season in the South. Didn’t think of it at the time, but I guess the cross promotion is self evident.

Ben and I hang up. I’m home in a couple of days. They’ve managed without me, and done quite well actually, so at my wife’s behest, I’m going to try and chill the rest of the trip.

I hit the pool. I’m trying to finish Candy Freak by Steve Almond, billed as a journey through the chocolate underbelly of America. I started the paperback just after Christmas, when the hysteria of the biggest chocolate season of the year slowly wound down, but put it aside as both the 2010 Winter Olympics and the start of construction on the new Mink A Chocolate Café retail outlet at Morgan Crossing was getting underway.

I pick it up at the bookmark. Two pages into this candy porn confessional, and I’m fast asleep. I dream that everyone in the Café is eating my chocolate bars like Big Walter Horton playing the harmonica, sliding them from side to side. Ben’s playing boogie woogie blues on an old upright piano. The keyboard not only makes music, it can send text messages. I learn the deposit is in the safe. It’s easier to sleep when there’s nothing to worry about.

Marc Lieberman

Mink Chocolates Inc.,
Mink A Chocolate Cafe Ltd.

Call the store: 604.633.2451
Call my mobile: 604.376.3464
Call toll free: 1.866.283.5181

Nine out of every ten persons say they love chocolate. The tenth lies.
- Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

Tags: Annmarie Kostyk, artisan chocolate, Ben Best, Big Walter Horton, chocolate bars, Chocolate Goddess, chocolates vancouver, coffee, espresso, ganache, handmade chocolate, independent coffee shops, mink, Mink A Chocolate Cafe, mink chocolates, Queen Cake
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My Hedge Fund is Bigger Than Your Hedge Fund

July 21st, 2010

As makers of artisan chocolates, we’ve long taken the position that you can charge a premium price if you put out a premium product, and that there will always be a segment of the market that will respect you for that strategy.

Pricing product at retail is not for the faint of heart. After taking into account raw materials, labor and packaging, you try and find a fair price that gives you margin, and doesn’t test your customer’s resolve to staying loyal. As with almost everything that is made for consumption, there are price fluctuations beyond one’s control. Sometimes those costs are passed on, sometimes they’re absorbed.

When fuel prices rose dramatically a few years ago, freight companies imposed fuel surcharges on deliveries. It was seen as a temporary measure that would correct when energy costs stabilized, and retailers for the most part had to eat the increase.

When the price of dairy went up, as it’s prone to do three or four times a year thanks to our provincial marketing boards, we may have raised prices, or tried to trim non-essential operating costs.

When government introduced taxation on things that were previously exempt, it caused prices to rise at the till, but it was generally understood that we were simply collecting on the Crown’s behalf, and that we didn’t actually get to factor any of that new price into our bottom line.

The pressure on price is constant, and as a small business owner, it’s unnerving when things happen that you know will cause prices to rise, but which you have no control over.

Last week, a hedge fund manager in Europe tried to corner the market in cocoa. He bought up nearly all the physical inventory of cocoa in Europe, and that has led to speculation that prices will rise, probably around Christmas, the biggest chocolate time of the year.

And it’s not like cocoa prices weren’t already at record high prices. Poor harvests, rising wages, higher shipping costs, increased demand, all have had significant impact on commodity pricing.

The prevailing wisdom is that there is a lot of competition, and rising prices will be absorbed between retailers and manufacturers. As both a retailer and a manufacturer, my capacity to absorb may have hit its saturation point. However, I’m on the verge of implementing a new strategy to combat these wicked market forces.

I’m going to corner the market in customers. I know it’s an aggressive strategy. If I’m successful, you’ll read about in Bloomberg News. And if not, well, you can’t have everything, because where would you put it?

Marc Lieberman

Mink Chocolates Inc.,
Mink A Chocolate Cafe Ltd.

Call the store: 604.633.2451
Call my mobile: 604.376.3464
Call toll free: 1.866.283.5181

Nine out of every ten persons say they love chocolate. The tenth lies.
- Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

Tags: artisan chocolate, Bloomberg News, chocolate bars, chocolate gifts, chocolates vancouver, cocoa futures, comodity prices, handmade chocolate, mink, Mink A Chocolate Cafe, mink chocolates, organic chocolate
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My, How Things Have Changed

June 22nd, 2010

Back in 1996, when I was putting the finishing touches on, and getting ready to open, a new food concept in Vancouver, the natural tendency was to be highly suspicious of anyone with a camera, especially if that person was asking a lot of questions about what we considered to be proprietary information.

I can remember more than one instance where someone poking around the store, loitering far too long, asking too many questions, shooting surreptitiously from across the street, went on to open a competing business. It got to a point where the concept of industrial espionage was not limited to Fortune 500 companies, and our spy-dar was so highly tuned we could see them coming, and all staff was quickly advised to be on high alert.

Fast forward a decade and change, and the clandestine shooter is embraced with open arms. That undercover operative is given carte blanche access. Every iPhone user is no longer a secret agent, but a de facto Director of Public Relations, and is openly encouraged to take pictures, post pictures, share pictures, ask questions, and take notes. These days one runs a retail business on an open source platform.

You share everything, from the trivial to the crucial. The risk of having someone knock off your concept is mitigated by the conversation people are having about your brand, and the loyalty that ensues. As a business owner, you’re born to pioneer change, and are not surprised when every shift in tactic redefines your business and how you approach it.

I imagine no one is fretting over reprinting business school case study textbooks. It’s all being uploaded, downloaded, Googled and SMS’d faster than we can see it coming. My spy-dar is so last century.

Marc Lieberman

Mink Chocolates Inc.,
Mink A Chocolate Cafe Ltd.

Call the store: 604.633.2451
Call my mobile: 604.376.3464
Call toll free: 1.866.283.5181

Nine out of every ten persons say they love chocolate. The tenth lies.
- Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

Tags: artisan chocolate, bon bons, café, chocolate bars, chocolate gifts, chocolates vancouver, industrial espionage, IPhone, mink, Mink A Chocolate Cafe, mink chocolates, social media
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I Don’t Follow the Logic

May 28th, 2010

The other day I was at a store on South Granville, picking up something my wife put on hold. I went next door to Purdy’s to buy some Sweet Georgia Browns. It’s a pecan caramel confection that every once in a while satisfies my craving for something sweet and salty.

Purdy’s is a 100 year old Vancouver institution, with 57 stores. They are well known, and successful. They mass produce, and have positioned themselves based on price. We’re a handmade artisan chocolate company, and I don’t consider us competitors. I do poke around other chocolate stores from time to time, just to see what everyone’s doing, and to ensure I’m not doing anything remotely similar, because let’s face it, the world is over-retailed, and doesn’t need any more of the same old.

I’m looking at their bars, and I’m surprised to see a dark chocolate bar with Goji berries. It’s about the same size and weight as my Fountain of Youth, a 70% dark organic bar I make with both Goji berries and blueberries. That’s a triple whammy of anti-oxidants and flavanols, hence the name. When I developed the bar three years ago, Goji berries were hard to come by. In fact, until Oprah talked about them the previous Fall, no one really knew anything about them.

I take it up to the till, and pull out my debit card. The clerk takes the bar, rings it in, then turns it over, and peels off a sticker on the back of the wrapper. She manages to rip the sticker in such a way that half remains and half is a sticky gluey residue. I ask her why she did that, and am told it’s an internal control sticker and they’re required to do it before the customer takes the product home.

I watched her throw the remnants of the sticker in the garbage. I ask her why it’s so important to remove the sticker if she’s not actually doing anything with the information, because now the package looks tampered with. This flusters her, and she turns beet red. Her co-worker interjects, and says they remove, or attempt to remove, the sticker because people think it’s a price.

I grab a new one off the shelf, and take a look at it. There’s a hand written number 40 in the middle of a small green square sticker randomly placed on the back of the bar. I know it’s not forty cents or forty dollars, because I just paid for it. I’m told it’s the week of the calendar year that the product is good until. Week forty puts it into October. It’s May now. I’ll eat the bar within hours. There’s no risk it will be bad before the shelf life expires.

I take a closer look at the sticker, and on the left hand side, in tiny letters, are the words price, and net weight. Well, no wonder people think the handwritten forty is a price. That’s what the sticker says!

So I explain to the two clerks that I’m not trying to be the customer from hell, and sure, 99.9% of the population wouldn’t care if their sticker was removed in whole or in part, but details to me are everything, and If they don’t want people thinking a number isn’t a price when its written on a price sticker, they should use another sticker. More importantly, I’m flummoxed why they would not want me to know what the shelf life is. Coding things by week may work well in their factory, but an actual date when it’s on the retail shelf makes more sense to me.

I thank the girls for serving me, wish them a pleasant day, and leave them with the unsolicited advice that at their next staff meeting, they should review the futility of this protocol. They tell me in parting they wish they had the opportunity to get customer opinions back to management. And that’s where the logic escapes me.

Marc Lieberman

Mink Chocolates Inc.,
Mink A Chocolate Cafe Ltd.

Call the store: 604.633.2451
Call my mobile: 604.376.3464
Call toll free: 1.866.283.5181

Nine out of every ten persons say they love chocolate. The tenth lies.
- Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

Tags: artisan chocolate, chocolate bars, chocolate gifts, chocolates vancouver, Fountain of Youth, handmade chocolate, mink, Mink A Chocolate Cafe, mink chocolates, organic chocolate, Purdy's, Sweet Georgia Browns
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Under Construction

May 11th, 2010

Tuesday I get a frantic call from the contractor building the new store at Morgan Crossing. “I’ve done all I can do”, Stephen says, excitedly. “They’re not with the program”.

With lifts in his shoes, he could pass for a young Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man. “Who’s not with the program”, I ask, knowing full well I’m going to have to stick handle something minor that’s a hair trigger away from being something major.

“We don’t have a building permit. I’ve done all I can do. I’m framed and all roughed in, but I need to call for inspection. I need that permit”. He speaks with a soft slur, as if his mouth can’t quite keep up to the volume of information his brain is asking him to dispense.

Apparently the good folks at Surrey City Hall are on a program that broadcasts on a channel we’re not subscribed to. I call the Chief Building Inspector. I learn that our drawings were misplaced for two weeks. Someone else was on holiday. I’m left with a promise that a plan checker has it on her desk and a review is forthcoming.

I relay this information to Stephen. “That’s unbelievable”, he says. “This isn’t just fun and games for us. I look after my clients. They’re not with the program!”

I agree with him. Building a store is like going to Playland, eagerly anticipating the front seat on the roller coaster and finding the ride closed for repairs, and no rain checks being issued.

I look at my calendar. It’s completely arbitrary, but I try to imagine a revised opening date. What was originally contemplated as April 15^th is now looking more like early to mid-June. I’ve got to delay the arrival of some equipment, reschedule the training program.

My phone rings. It’s Stephen. He’s agitated. I tell him not to panic, that Qantas has never crashed.

He doesn’t get the joke. That’s OK, I say, it’s someone else’s program.

Marc Lieberman

Mink Chocolates Inc.,
Mink A Chocolate Cafe Ltd.

Call the store: 604.633.2451
Call my mobile: 604.376.3464
Call toll free: 1.866.283.5181

Nine out of every ten persons say they love chocolate. The tenth lies.
- Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

Tags: artisan chocolate, Artist Series bon bons, bon bons, café, chocolate bars, chocolate gifts, chocolates vancouver, coffee, Dustin Hoffman, handmade chocolate, independent coffee shops, mink, Mink A Chocolate Cafe, Morgan Crossing, Rain Man
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Rolling With the Punches

April 6th, 2010

I try and instill in all the Mink staffers a sense of the Four Seasons standard of service excellence. The ubiquitous hotel chain does arguably the best job in the service industry of paying attention to details.

Details are those little intrinsic differences that subliminally affect your perception of something. It may not be immediately apparent, but it supports the overall message of the brand. It strengthens brand intention, and serves to set you apart from others in a very crowded marketplace.

The world is over retailed, and doesn’t need any more of anything. If you’re going to do something, you might as well be different, and do different so well that you set the standard by which all others have to compete.

This strategy can sometimes get lost in translation, and when it’s lost on a tenured employee we call Spicoli, it can have very humorous consequences. The washrooms in the Café have really nice chrome fixtures. The toilet paper dispensers in particular are hotel caliber, dual roll dispensers with hoods that cry out for a chambermaid’s touch of origami to the loose end.

We insist that each new roll of toilet paper be loaded into the dispenser so the paper unrolls over the top, rather than behind. It looks better, and it’s more convenient. The most important detail though, is starting the roll, so the guest doesn’t have to pick at the point where it’s glued to get it going.

Most commercial toilet paper is two ply. Starting the roll means paying attention to ensure the two plys line up. Not paying attention to how one starts the roll could mean the plys have separated, and at the perforation point of the individual squares, they don’t line up.

The simple fix is taking the first errant ply, and folding it over the roll to catch up to its proper position, and tearing it equal to its natural second ply. We’ve actually referenced this in the staff communication book and teach it as basic bathroom maintenance to all new hires. Spicoli had other ideas. His acute sense of logic dictated that if the roll is wound down far enough, the two plys will eventually meet.

The mystery of why there was always so much unused toilet paper in the garbage can was finally answered when Spicoli confessed to Ben that he thought our service standard for toilet paper was untenable.

Hearing this from Ben the other day, we were killing ourselves laughing, but not as hard as when we wrote the memo that effective immediately, we’re switching to a three ply toilet paper, and everyone changing rolls had to ensure that all the plys, again, lined up at the start.

So the next time you’re in the washroom, if all you see is toilet paper almost at the end of the roll, either we’ve been busy, or Spicoli’s been on bathroom maintenance.

Marc Lieberman

Mink Chocolates Inc.,
Mink A Chocolate Cafe Ltd.

Call the store: 604.633.2451
Call my mobile: 604.376.3464
Call toll free: 1.866.283.5181

Nine out of every ten persons say they love chocolate. The tenth lies.
- Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

Tags: artisan chocolate, café, chocolate bars, chocolate gifts, chocolate making video, chocolate vancouver, chocolates vancouver, Four Seasons, Four Seasons Hotels, handmade chocolate, independent coffee shops, Isadore Sharpe, Mink A Chocolate Cafe, mink chocolates, organic chocolate, truffles
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Last one to leave turns out the lights

March 8th, 2010

7AM to 7PM, 7 days a week, for 17 days.

Those were the hours we chose to run with for the 2010 Winter Olympics. There was no magic hospitality industry formula for determining when we opened or when we closed, the staffing level or the schedule.

As a slogan, it had a nice ring to it. We were going to take the ball and run with, and change on the fly if necessary.

Excitement really started to build as the torch relay got closer to Vancouver. We were serving more and more people with Vanoc (Vancouver Olympic Committee) or IBC (international Broadcast Center) credentials, and the ubiquitous red mittens. More and more of our customers had accents, credit cards issued by foreign banks, and logo apparel of different nationalities.

The opening ceremonies were Friday, February 12^th. We decided we’d start wearing our Olympic souvenir hockey jerseys on Monday the 8^th. Mink bought every staff member either a Canadian jersey (their choice of home or away colors) or that of their country of origin or family ancestry.

Ben Best is from Dallas, Texas. Vancouver’s a hockey town. Poor guy took more than his share of abuse for those three weeks. How prescient was his Team USA jersey in a sea of Maple Leafs?

The Games got underway and we got slammed. Throw Valentine’s Day into the chocolate mix, and that first weekend was nuts. The volumes we did were staggering. All of a sudden, twice weekly deliveries of dairy became daily deliveries. Suppliers who couldn’t get downtown because of parking restrictions took to loading my unlocked car in the middle of the night in front of my house. Five hours sleep a night became a luxury.

By the 16^th we found our rhythm. We could handle the hordes. We got our breaks back. No one missed lunch. Everyone got to pee when they needed to.

We were missing a lot of our regulars, but meeting people from all over the world. They found us because the Cafe fronts the pedestrian greenway that got them from Robson Square to the Olympic cauldron. That was a huge draw.

It was Olympics on the TV from open to close, but unless a gathering crowd was hooting and hollering for someone or some country specifically, we were oblivious to what was going on. Except for hockey.

To live through the preliminary round loss to the US, and make it to the gold medal game against that very team, our neighbors to the south, our largest trading partner, the country that causes us to get a cold when it sneezes, made for levels of pandemonium hitherto unknown. And on that final Sunday of the Games, after busting our chops so furiously getting it done, the only sensible thing to do was close the Café and let the staff watch the game, and take to the streets afterwards.

I scraped the auxiliary hours off the window, but left the Go Canada Go tagline and the small Canadian flag. I taped a piece of company letterhead below, saying “Closed Early for Hockey”.

I went home and watched the drama unfold from the comfort of my living room. My staff stayed downtown, watching with 250,000 of their closest friends. And in true Canadian fashion, Ben and his jersey came through the celebration unscathed.

Marc Lieberman

Mink Chocolates Inc.,
Mink A Chocolate Cafe Ltd.

Call the store: 604.633.2451
Call my mobile: 604.376.3464
Call toll free: 1.866.283.5181

Shop: www.minkchocolates.com
Tweet: www.twitter.com/minkchocolates
Join: www.facebook.com/mink.chocolates
Read: blog.minkchocolates.com
Watch: www.youtube.com search mink chocolates
In Person: 863 Hastings Street West, Vancouver, BC V6C 3N9

Tags: chocolate bars, chocolates vancouver, gold medal hockey, handmade chocolate, IBC, independent coffee shops, Men's hockey, mink, Mink A Chocolate Cafe, mink chocolates, Team Canada, Team USA, Vancouver 2010, Vanoc, Winter Olympics
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Welcome Olympic Visitors

March 2nd, 2010

70088949-5f90c8a2c8caca13d3b47b7328a249cd_4b89c928-full

Courtesy of @meljo45

Marc Lieberman

Mink Chocolates Inc.,
Mink A Chocolate Cafe Ltd.

Call the store: 604.633.2451
Call my mobile: 604.376.3464
Call toll free: 1.866.283.5181

Nine out of every ten persons say they love chocolate. The tenth lies.
- Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

Tags: 38% milk chocolate, artisan chocolate, Artist Series bon bons, bon bons, café, chocolate bars, chocolate gifts, chocolate making video, chocolates vancouver, coffee, handmade chocolate, independent coffee shops, latte, Mascots, melting chocolate, mink, Mink A Chocolate Cafe, mink chocolates, Olympics, organic chocolate, truffles, Vancouver 2010, Vancouver2010.com, Winter Games, Wintger Olympics
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Let the Games Begin!

February 10th, 2010

18845_513346196003_305200164_659434_2655833_n

from left to right: Ben, Spicoli, Taylor, Me, Staci and Alesia.

Missing from photo: Nicole, Estrella and the Twins

Mink Chocolates Inc.,
Mink A Chocolate Cafe Ltd.

Call the store: 604.633.2451
Call my mobile: 604.376.3464
Call toll free: 1.866.283.5181

Nine out of every ten persons say they love chocolate. The tenth lies.
- Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

Tags: artisan chocolate, Artist Series bon bons, bon bons, café, chocolate bars, chocolate gifts, chocolate making video, chocolates vancouver, coffee, espresso, handmade chocolate, independent coffee shops, latte, mink, Mink A Chocolate Cafe, mink chocolates, Olympics, organic chocolate, Team Canada, Team GErmany, Team Russia, Team USA, transfer sheets, truffles, Vancouver 2010, Winter Olympics
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Hey Buddy, Need a Lift?

What Does it All Mean?

My Hedge Fund is Bigger Than Your Hedge Fund

I Don’t Follow the Logic

Under Construction

Rolling With the Punches

Last one to leave turns out the lights

Welcome Olympic Visitors

Let the Games Begin!

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