Posts Tagged ‘truffles’

Hey Buddy, Need a Lift?

Monday, 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

Rolling With the Punches

Tuesday, 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

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

Welcome Olympic Visitors

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

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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

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

Let the Games Begin!

Wednesday, 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

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

The Mayor of Mink

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

Many years ago, before my wife’s gaggle of girlfriends started getting married and raising families, one of the “ladies”, a communications hotshot in the Prime Minister’s Office, was raising a little hell on the campaign trail. I grew very fond of her spirited opinions, forever on message, and relished those times when she was not in the Nation’s Capitol, but here on the west coast, spinning circumstance along party lines. 

She always carried herself with the air of one destined to garner the popular vote, riding the middle-of-the-road sentiment of the electorate, wanting to effect change, but nonetheless happy with the balance afforded the centrist. 

When the PMO lost the election and his staff was sent packing, I was tickled when she called me up and made me this offer: “I’ve got the balance of the afternoon to pilfer as many things as I can from the stockroom. What do you want?” 

I wasn’t so much shocked as excited about securing Government of Canada branded merchandise. In true Canadian fashion, the lowest she would stoop before power changed hands, was to load up on post-it notes and whiteout. 

“I’ll take any stationary with the seal of the Government of Canada on it”, I asked hesitantly. “Failing that, any type of form, blank proclamation, or other such document that I could use as a gag to impress my friends”. 

After an obligatory reprimand that touched on everything from fraudulent misrepresentation to the penalties for treason she signed off with a firm “I’ll see what I can do”. 

A month later a large manila envelope with no return address appeared in my mailbox. Inside was a one inch thick sheaf of letterhead, resplendent with the embossed seal of the Government, and a note from her disavowing any knowledge of my ever having existed. 

I thought it hilarious that I could send a fictitious letter to my friend Skelly, offering advice, as his representative in Parliament, about a nasty “tax situation” that was sure to befall him. Or to Fred, offering an opportunity for him to relinquish his unofficial title as Mayor of Yaletown for a crack at, say, Speaker of the House of Commons. 

I never did do anything with that paper, and it’s still in a drawer in my office, under a package of page protectors and colored blank file folders, but it serves to remind me of the possibilities that come with power. The closest I have to that is titular head of a household that defers any decision of importance to my wife, or being the Captain of a small business ship known as Mink Chocolates. So how surprised was I to learn that someone else is the Mayor? 

There’s a phone app called foursquare, and there’s a guy named James who, because of a well coordinated campaign, became the Mayor of Mink.  I guess until the seat becomes vacant I won’t be able to run for that office, even though technically I own it. I’m more hoping that when he loses the next election, he calls me, and offers to raid the stockroom. Maybe I wind up with some great Mink branded merchandise I haven’t already thought of.

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

Blink and it’s Done

Monday, January 4th, 2010

Months of planning and preparation to get ready for Christmas, and it’s over as fast as you can drink an eggnog latte. Four hours to unwrap and hang ornaments at precisely the right height over the espresso bar, and ten minutes to snip the wires, throw them in a box, and stow for next year. 

Almost an entire day to tweak the recipe for the rum-based ganache in the Traditional Christmas chocolate bar, and nary a moment for people to stack a pile of them at the till, sign the Visa slip and be bid a Seasons Greetings. 

The Holiday is over, but the respite is short lived. Valentine’s Day is fast approaching. Where Christmas business in chocolate is spread over the three weeks leading up to the 24th, Valentine’s is all done in the three days leading up to February 14. 

The planning and preparation for the two holidays start pretty much concurrent with each other. This year we’ll have heart-shaped boxes of bonbons, lots of Love Potion and Romeo & Juliet chocolate bars, and of course the ubiquitous Oh, Baby! romance gift box. What’s unique about Valentine’s Day in the first year of this new decade, is that two days prior is also the start of a seventeen day international event showcasing seasonal amateur athletics, the heavily trademarked and copyrighted Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics. 

By sheer virtue of our location a block from the 24 hour broadcast facility which is playing host to thousands and thousands of media from around the world, we will be busy. The International Olympic Committee is sequestering themselves in the Vancouver Club, opposite us across the courtyard. The host provincial Liberal government is staying in the hotel tower at Terminal City, directly above us. 

The magnitude of this event, and our proximity to it, behooves us to extend our hours by opening earlier and closing later than normal. We will hire and train more people. We will take a bigger position in chocolate inventory. We will get into the spirit and cheer on our athletes. 

For all the scheduling details, delivery logistics, and chocolate production that consumes these weeks leading up to the Olympics, one thing is certain, it will be over before we know it. 

We expect ourselves to turn in a gold medal performance. Stay tuned. Highlights at eleven.

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

Merry Christmas 2009

Monday, December 14th, 2009

I’ve been a frequent customer at the post office this Christmas, sending off packages of chocolate to people I’ve never met. With each order comes a story of my own manufacture. What do I surmise is behind the large box of bars to the northernmost postal code in the country?  More a cure for cabin fever than stocking stuffers, I figure.

That gift box of bon bons to an editor at a prestigious publishing house in the States? Of course it’s a hopeful author of science fiction novels looking for a nod on a recently submitted manuscript.  And the selection of Mink chocolate bars in a wooden keepsake gift box with the Oh, Baby romance box wrap sent to a real estate agent in Edmonton? Looking for a little loving’ under the mistletoe, I suspect.

The stories we get in the Café leave little to the imagination, but are no less unique. Like the woman who asks Ben the price on a bon bon gift box, and wants to know if that includes chocolate. She’s buying for someone special, don’t you know, and it would be a shame if the box were empty.

Or the customer who asks if we’ll be open on December 25th, because he’s sure he’s going to forget someone on his list. “It might make sense to stock up now, seeing as you’re here, don’t you think?”

Christmas is the undisputed king of the four major chocolate holidays, and this year is proving to be no exception. The Café is decorated, the fireplace is on the TV, the top-secret staff Christmas present is on its way, and everyone is optimistic. Barring a major weather event like last year, everything should be fine. If Canada Post lives up to their end of the bargain, where the price of postage is actually shipping and not just a storage fee, then all those folks in far-off places will have Mink for Christmas, and all will be right in the world.

To all our customers, friends and family, we wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy and Healthy New Year.

Ben B.

Staci

Alesia

Nicole

Ben A.

Taylor

Estrella

Parris

Arielle

Shea

Gustav von Mink

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

“How May I Help You?”

Tuesday, November 24th, 2009

The Forum for Women Entrepreneurs in Vancouver asked me to be a panelist at a recent roundtable event and speak on the topic of customer service. I thought it a risky move on their part, as my views on the subject tend to be somewhat unorthodox. Jill Earthy, the Executive Director, was confident the audience would glean enough value to make my participation worthwhile. I suspect she couldn’t find anyone else.

My own public speaking insecurities notwithstanding, it was a fun time and I managed to cover off a half dozen or so points I’d scribbled on the back of an envelope I’d pulled from the recycling bin the morning of the gig.

The group question was, “how important is service to the success of your business?” This blanket query established the premise to which we were expected to expand on as it relates to our specific endeavors. My individual question was, “Your current business has both retail and online stores.  How do you ensure a consistent high level of service for both”?

It’s pretty obvious in retail that without customers you’re not in retail anymore. A store devoid of customers is a storefront waiting for a property managers “for lease” sign. And in a world where we’re over-retailed, where we don’t need any more of anything, you better be really good at what you do to compel people to keep you in business.

With respect to service levels, the bricks and mortar environment is substantially different from the e-commerce environment. In the former, I’m expected to shave, shower and smile. In the latter, all I have to be is truthful, honest, and fast. No one cares if I process online orders in a Lone Ranger bathrobe. For the purposes of the roundtable discussion, and the breakout group afterwards, I chose to focus on Mink’s physical store and my customer service philosophy within those four walls.

It all begins with hiring. Putting the right people in the right position is the foundation for building a successful serviced oriented approach to retailing. Training becomes, by default, the next most important aspect of my selling philosophy. Regardless of the tools used to train, each employee must become skilled in the position, and immersed in the culture of the organization.

Once you’ve got these competencies aligned, it’s vitally important to recognize that your customer is No.2, and that your staff is No. 1. Beat your staff into providing exemplary service to your customer, and they surely won’t. Treat your staff supremely well, and they will by nature do the right thing, and provide the highest level of customer care.

To be successful in retail, one also has to realize that you can’t be everything to everybody. Defining your brand and its position in the marketplace will help define your customer. At the confluence of all these factors is the final, ultimate tool to provide a consistent, high level of customer service, and that’s choosing good customers.

Great customers will go on the journey with you. Bad customers will give you a headache.

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

Joy Division Had It All Wrong

Tuesday, November 10th, 2009

People do the craziest things. Get tattoos, bet on the Canucks to win, open chocolate shops. Even crazier, they get married. I came to wedded bliss very late in life, having spent my entire post-adolescence and early adulthood disavowing any need or desire to tie the knot. It was generally known at that time that I was anti-marriage and I was vocal in my opposition to the institution of matrimony. This was all the more ironic as I was selling high-end wedding gowns and Mother-of-the-Bride dresses to wedding shops across Western Canada.

Starter marriages I’m sure for most of the brides I met, but their lack of spousal acumen was good for repeat business. Even for whom I stood up as Best Man, the union ended shortly thereafter, and he’s now on number three. Every failed marriage was ammunition for my rhetoric. Close friends and family, strangers or celebrities, it didn’t matter. If they got divorced, the statistic reinforced my need to ask that if we can’t pair bond for life, why encumber each other with the legal structure of wedlock?

It’s a man’s prerogative to modify an opinion to reflect an evolutionary bias, and I claim that right having finally met and married my sweetie, bought property, filed joint taxes, named each other as beneficiaries, and produced an offspring. Our wedding was formalized with a small ceremony poolside at the MGM Grand. She wore white cotton, not the tulle and silk organza I used to know so much about. I wore shorts and flip flops. We literally took the plunge, jumping into the pool after our vows, together like Butch and Sundance, against all odds.

Now that I’ve publicly declared my love, established a nuclear family, and taken steps to legally protect my child, I’m warming up to the whole concept of marriage. I can get genuinely excited when others say “I do”.

I get even more excited, when Mink is a pit stop on the happy couples’ highway of life together.

Recently, Gordon Ross and Sarah McMillan got married. They’re big fans of Mink, and I was thrilled to be able to supply chocolate that they very cleverly and creatively used to mark their guests seats at the reception dinner. The bigger thrill though, was seeing them at Mink the day of, resplendent in wedding finery, posing for pictures. Sarah wore the real white, Gord in a traditional kilt, and what a beautiful wedding couple they made. Local photographer Morgaine Owens took their pictures, and she posed them in the window at Mink.

mink_window

Once is an anomaly, but twice constitutes a trend. Shortly thereafter, my wife’s doula, whose husband Randal Kurt is a photographer, posed a couple in the window at Mink. We may all do crazy things, but we’re not all crazy. Once I realized that Love Won’t Tear Us Apart, getting married made sense.

RKP-20090516-08a

 

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:http://www.facebook.com/mink.chocolates
Read: http://blog.minkchocolates.com
Watch: http://www.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

…A Thousand Words

Monday, October 26th, 2009

chocolate2

 

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:http://www.facebook.com/mink.chocolates
Read: http://blog.minkchocolates.com
Watch: http://www.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