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General Operations Manual Frequently Asked Customer Questions & Answers General Operations Manual Frequently Asked Customer Questions & Answers 1. Do you take orders over the phone? Yes we do, provided we are not too busy. We strongly suggest that customers use our friendly web based ordering system at www.SoChoklat.com if you don’t have time to wait for an order. Quite often our staff are very busy, and aren’t able to get to the phone in time. 2. Does Choklat deliver? At this time Choklat ships all across Canada to both residences and businesses. The cost of delivery is a flat $20. We offer same day service during the week in Calgary, but do not ship or deliver on weekends. 3. I have a Groupon Voucher I would like to redeem… Over the years we have run several Groupon and LivingSocial promotions. Some promotions were for a collection of truffles. Some promotions were for seats at events, and some were for chocolate bars. ALL GROUPON PROMOTIONS HAVE NOW ENDED. All outstanding vouchers are now to be treated as a gift certificate FOR THE VALUE THE CUSTOMER ACTUALLY PAID. For example, if the promotion was “get a $20 box of truffles for $10”, a customer can still use their voucher to purchase a $20 box of truffles. They would just need to pay the extra $10 plus any applicable taxes. Substitutions cannot be made. If the voucher was for an event, then the voucher must be used for an event and not to purchase chocolate products. This is indicated in the fine print on each voucher. 4. Are your cocoa beans fair trade? The term “Fair Trade” as it relates to the chocolate industry is hardly “fair”. It takes approximately 3200 man hours to harvest and successfully process 1 metric ton of cocoa beans. For those 3200 manhours, the minimum price as mandated by various world fair trade organizations is $1750 per ton (only when the price of cocoa is above $2,000 USD per metric ton), or about 54 cents per hour, IF the farmer doesn’t take his cut before paying his employees. There is currently no incentive for chocolate producers to pay more for the beans than that price, hence it’s both a floor and ceiling price. We offer a program called “Sustainable trade” whereby we completely disregard the “fair trade” hoopla and propaganda, and pay considerably more than market prices directly to the growers for our cocoa beans. Our mandate is to create a sustainable living environment for the grower, thereby ensuring a long, exclusive, and prosperous relationship with us. 5. Do you make organic chocolate? To be quite candid, almost all cocoa beans are by design, “organic”. This is because the farmer is paid so little for his crop that he can’t afford the sprayers, or chemicals, or even an education to be able to read the instructions if he did have the equipment. With regard to other ingredients – the sugar, cocoa butter, and vanilla, we haven’t found organic products of the quality and price we would be happy making chocolate out of. Most organic cocoa butter I have sampled has been horrible. It’s also VERY difficult and inconsistent to obtain. General Operations Manual Frequently Asked Customer Questions & Answers 6. Is there any dairy in your dark chocolate? None at all. Our dark chocolate contains 4 simple ingredients: cocoa beans, fat from the cocoa beans (called cocoa butter), sugar, and Madagascan bourbon vanilla. 7. Does your chocolate contain lecithin? Quite often you will find on the ingredient list of a chocolate bar "soy lecithin as an emulsifier". Chocolate isn't an emulsion, and Lecithin in chocolate is used as a form of lubricant – to allow the particles in the chocolate to move around more easily in the fat. It is commonly used in varieties of chocolate where there is low fat content, and high solid content. Our dark chocolate recipes contain enough cocoa butter to allow the chocolate to be very fluid, and melt very nicely on the tongue without feeling thick or gummy, and as a result needs no lecithin. Our milk and white chocolate however have a very high solid milk and sugar content, and as a result do in fact need lecithin in order for us to pour it into molds. Having said that, the amount of lecithin in our milk and white chocolate is only one half of one percent by weight. 8. Does your chocolate contain gluten? Our recipes call for no gluten to be added to the chocolate we make. However…. Our shop works with flour daily, and as a result, a small amount of flour dust may be present in the air, and settle on a piece of chocolate. Also, some of our truffle coatings contain gluten, and because they are side by side in our truffle assembly line, a small amount of cross contamination may occur. Some of our customers have celiac issues and regularly buy our bars and certain types of truffles with no problems. Due to flour being present in our shop we simply cannot legally state that our products are gluten free. 9. Do you sell baking chocolate? At this time, the only chocolate we make and sell is in the form of eating bars, or our own confections. We are currently attempting to source a supply of beans that will allow us to make a chocolate that could be used for baking. 10. If I buy some of your bars, can I bake with them? Our 80% dark chocolate bars could feasibly be used for baking. However our milk bars, and our 70% dark barks are too high in fat, and don’t have enough flavour intensity to work effectively in a baked product. Further to that, all of the flavour nuances found in our chocolate would be lost in the baked product you are creating. A good comparison in this regard would be the use of wine in cooking. Sure, you can use a $50 bottle of red wine in your stew, but you would see no more benefit from it than you would if you used a much more value priced bottle. General Operations Manual Frequently Asked Customer Questions & Answers 11. Do you offer discounts for large orders? Our prices are already between 30 and 50% lower than that of our competitors while at the same time we offer a far superior tasting, hand made product and excellent service. With the exception of the retailers who have made a long standing commitment to sell our products, we feel that our pricing is already better than even the best price our competitors will offer, so no, we don’t offer discounts. 12. Do you sell wholesale chocolate to businesses for their own baking? In 2018 we opened our doors to individuals and business who wanted to purchase our products and resell them to friends and customers of their own. Our wholesale prices are 65% of our MSRP across the board. However there are minimum order amounts that retailers must purchase to get that kind of discount. 13. Do you offer private chocolate events? If so, when? Yes we do. We only host them in the evenings after 7:00pm, as the shop is open during the day, and nobody is allowed back in the food preparation area. The best date availability is between October 1st and March 31st. We will also not host events on statutory holidays, or within 7 days prior to a seasonal event such as Valentines, Easter, Thanksgiving, etc. 14. How long are they, and what happens during your chocolate events? The events, called “Choklat Therapy” are about two to two and a half hours in duration. During this period, the speaker gives a brief history of the shop, and chocolate in general. After that, the registrants are stepped through the entire process of making chocolate – right from selection of the beans, through to the making of chocolate bars. Once that is complete, the participants are given a series of samples of each of the dark chocolates we make, along with a comparison of what many people think is good quality chocolate. The comparison is drastic and very surprising to many. After that, there is a brief wine pairing with a selection of chocolate and wines chosen by a local sommelier. 15. What is the maximum capacity of your chocolate events? The largest number we prefer to host is 20 at a time here at Choklat. This size is strictly based on the limitations of space in our shop. 16. Do you hold events at other locations, and if so what is the cost? Yes. We can host a “Chocolate Therapy” event at the location of your choice. We have a fully prepared Powerpoint presentation, along with all of the multimedia equipment necessary to host the event. The price for it is a $200 flat fee for the presentation, and then $5 per person for the chocolate and $5 per person for the wine samples if you choose to do a wine and chocolate pairing. Depending on availability of staff we are General Operations Manual Frequently Asked Customer Questions & Answers able to host this event during the day as well at your location. The minimum number of participants we will host an event for is 20 people. 17. I purchased a ticket to one of your events, and need to reschedule. How do I do that? You can’t. Reservations for our events are non-refundable, and non exchangeable. If you can’t make it to an event, you may give away, or sell your tickets to someone who can make it.
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