Online:

Do you have your own web site or newsletter with lots of viewers?
We have a special way for you to get credit and automatic payments for sales that originated from your newsletter or web site.
http://www.ccberries.com/reseller_wholesale_affiliate.html

If you want to sell strawberries with your logo (possibly higher profit) there are startup costs: http://www.ccberries.com/fundraising.html  when this type of setup is done we create special landing pages on it with your special decorated version of the product.

Pre-packaged:

roses for fundraising

 An example of pre-packaged fundraising would be our wholesale roses in sleeves http://www.ccberries.com/roses-bouquets-wholesale-delivered.html?category_id=146 they come ready to sell, all you’ll need are some buckets to allow you to put them in water.

These can be pre-sold or you can set up a table at a local event, they are designed for fundraising, with minimal effort on your part.

Re-packaged:

This takes the most coordination at your end but can lead to the highest profits.

Re-packaged Flowers:

Wholesale Roses

First you get some wholesale flowers
http://www.ccberries.com/roses-red-400.html?category_id=110  You can even order different colors to mix them up and make different versions..  (for valentines: red/white, red/pink, white/pink..), on the wholesale flowers page there are options for 100,200 and 400 roses..

add some ferns
http://www.ccberries.com/leather-leaf-fern-wholesale.html?category_id=146
and babys breath
http://www.ccberries.com/wholesale-babys-breath.html?category_id=146

put them in sleeves
http://www.papermart.com/Product%20Pages/Product.aspx?GroupID=5213&SubGroupID=5214&ParentGroupID=19083#5214
or a wrap
http://www.papermart.com/Product%20Pages/Product.aspx?GroupID=7814&SubGroupID=7815#7815
with a box
http://www.uline.com/Product/Detail/S-12698/Retail-Boxes/30-x-6-x-4-Floral-Boxes

If you have a reliable workforce this can be a great way to make up semi-custom roses bouquets. (5 red roses and one white,  or 5 white and one red..), if your workforce is not reliable this is not the way to go.

Strawberries:

Basically you order wholesale quantities and then repackage them in much smaller boxes or bags.

Wholesale Chocolate Dipped Strawberries

Wholesale Strawberries:
http://www.ccberries.com/drizzle-strawberry-gift-4dz-set.html?category_id=54

Box option:
Gift boxes to fit three berries (This is just one of many types of boxes that will work)
http://www.papermart.com/Product%20Pages/Product.aspx?GroupID=5495&ParentGroupID=18990
Red film to make the inside look prettier:
http://www.papermart.com/Product%20Pages/Product.aspx?GroupID=11968&ParentGroupID=19003

or
(you can also use shred (red/pink Easter grass )
http://www.papermart.com/Product%20Pages/Product.aspx?GroupID=15958&ParentGroupID=19007

or besides boxes you can put them in
Fancy plastic gift bags:
http://www.papermart.com/Product%20Pages/Product.aspx?GroupID=34729&ParentGroupID=18876
You can fold over the top of the plastic bag and tape it shut or tie it with a ribbon. The size of the bag would be dependent on how many berries you want to put in it.

Repackaging takes a lot more effort on your part but it also has higher rewards as you can get a larger box and add inexpensive items such as fun sized candy bars , small bags of jelly beans, or those little candy hearts that are popular at Valentines. (we have wholesale sources for all sorts of bulk candy that we can recommend after you place your order.. ) Along with the higher reward there is higher risk, is your workforce dependable?, will they be free in the short window between when the berries arrive and when you sell them? (a period that should be just a few hours at most). Much of your prep work can (and should) be done well ahead of time: assembling the boxes, prepping the shred/fill, adding in the non-perishable side items,  but the final step of taking the berries out of the larger boxes and putting them in the smaller ones has to be done in a very short timeframe.

Several of the links on this page go to companies that we have used in the past , you can always find your own sources but we feel they are a good starting point. If you wish to find your own sources just do a Google search on “floral sleeves” or “floral box”, either way all supplies (not the berries or flowers) should be ordered so that they arrive well ahead of time: that gives you time to make sure everything is OK and pre-assemble them if needed.

For Valentine’s we suggest you pre-order any wholesale priced flowers or strawberries before mid-January as this allows us to get the orders to our suppliers before they do the Valentine’s price increases (roses can jump up by 30% but if they already have the roses in their order system the current pricing is honored), even our wholesale strawberries will jump in price right before Valentine’s as we focus on the retail side rather than wholesale. When you pre-order the strawberries & flowers make sure you select the correct delivery date as these are very perishable, flowers can have a delivery date a few days ahead of the event if stored properly, but strawberries should be delivered the day of the event and kept refrigerated as long as possible.

Once you have committed to your  fundraising purchase we’d be glad to help you selecting secondary packaging such as “will this box work with 3 berries”, or “is this type of shred safe for food contact..”  just use the help desk on our main site..

Update: rather than have our help desk get swamped with questions about side items that we don’t sell: you can buy bulk candy to fill out a Valentine’s day box here http://www.candywarehouse.com/valentinebulk.html and  http://www.acandystore.com/shop-by-event-valentines-candy.html ,  (a nice mix is http://www.candywarehouse.com/valentinemix.html) most of the selections are bulk packaged so you’ll need to bag them up with little plastic bags from a companies like PaperMart or ULine. (just make sure the bag is approved for food use)

Giveaway started 8/1/2011 – ended 8/18/2011 at Midnight

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CCBerries : Authentic Gourmet Ingredients, Taste the Amazing Difference

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We have a winner in our chocolate covered strawberry giveaway:
Edgardo F,  of  Colorado.  (Currently deployed in Afghanistan)
Congratulations Edgardo (stay safe) 

3 ways to enter

1) Enter Online (Below)
2) One automatic entry per shipped order at ccberries.com
3) Tell friends about this giveaway. (details below)

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Terms and Conditions

Eligible:
US residents, 18 years of age or older. Employees of CCB Radiance/CCBerries, their families (and the members of their immediate families,and/or households), SAS affiliates, or suppliers are ineligible to participate or win. Subject to all applicable federal, state, and local laws and regulations. Void where prohibited.

Entry:
Three methods:
1) Online using the form on this page, one entry per person, email address or IP address.
2) Automatic entry for each order shipped between August/01/2011 and August/18/2011
3) Tell your friends and family about this giveaway, if they enter your email address or twitter user name in the “How did you hear about our giveaway?” field you’ll be entered again. (If you tell people to enter your twitter ID you’ll have to follow @ccberries on Twitter so we can notify you). One referral per entry. How you tell your friends about us is up to you: Twitter, Facebook, Renting a blimp, use your imagination, but don’t spam or break the law..

Notification:

Winner will be randomly selected and will be notified by email and/or phone on or before August/31/2011. The winner will forfeit any prize or prize certificate not claimed within forty-five (45) days of winning.

Prize:

Prize consists of a single use discount code for a $50 discount off of product(s) with chocolate covered strawberries ordered online, discount code is valid for a single order and can not be split between orders, not valid with any other discount codes or on phone or fax orders. Discount does not apply to shipping costs or or other handling fees.

There is no substitution, transfer, or cash equivalent for prizes, the prizes are expressly limited to the item listed above and does not include taxes, or any other expenses. Other restrictions may apply.

Privacy:
None of the data collected will be sold, rented, given or otherwise transferred to a third party.
The phone number entered above will only be used in the event of verification of a winning entry. Email addresses will be added to our customer newsletter system which you can later opt out of. Feedback data may be used in our testimonial section (without your last name) but has no effect on giveaway.

Odds of winning are dependent on the number of entries received.

Entries found to be submitted fraudulently will be removed. This includes but is not limited to: computer generated entries, entries with false/non-working phone numbers or email addresses, entries from outside the United States, entries by people under 18 or with invalid city, state or zip codes.

Entry deadline: as described above by Midnight August/18/2011 Eastern.

I found a number of these types of pictures on a social media site and contacted each of the photographers  in order to get the rights to use the pictures, so far I’ve only heard back from one.. below is that picture.

The thing you notice first is not the most important thing to us, broken berries can happen for several reasons. Unless we had a whole lot more detail (pictures of the outside of the box, the shipping label and such) we really would not be able to determine the cause of the breaking. The breaking could be caused by dozens of reasons, everything from missing gel packs to carrier mis-handling to the after effects of a bad delivery address, we have no way of knowing for sure. But as we said that’s not the most important thing…

What we see is that the product delivered never matched the pictures on their website, while we know from their ingredient list that the product is not dipped in Milk, White or Dark Chocolate; what we see is no leaves. It’s not just that the leaves were lost on one berry during dipping process but that they were taken off before dipping. While I’m not certain: the removal of the leaves is more indicative of a machine dipped/ conveyor belt type of operation rather than hand dipping.

All of the problem pictures I found for this competitor had the same missing leaves, and that was not what was pictured in their many TV commercials, print ads or their web site. The product does not even match the marketing materials included in the box (as seen below). It’s not the result of an accident in packing,  delivery or customer actions: It’s a very basic change to the product; one that was done on purpose.

Even with the logo that you can see in the marketing materials above: just avoiding that one web site will not keep you from running into other parts of the same company with the same product, they operate under many different names and web sites, they own shopping channels, a  baseball team, TV stations and so much more that it would boggle your mind. The product is also sold by totally unrelated companies, they are so pervasive that it’s hard to avoid them.

Ignore the broken berries for a second: The product in the box does not match what was promised, no leaves, no stems, and not milk, white or dark chocolate. But since their customers are also saying they are involved in the “easy saver scam”:  should it be a surprise that their product looks nothing like their marketing materials?

Of course we sell chocolate covered strawberries so when  you are ready for real chocolate and whole strawberries with the leaves, dipped by hand to order give us a try.

Easter is coming up and I thought that just for fun I’d review some of the mass produced bunnies available in the local stores. It’s a little bit early but the local drug store already has two rows devoted to Easter candy.
Since it was early in  the season the premium bunnies were not out yet, nothing by Dove or even Hershey’s. There were only two different brands and I found the exact same bunnies at one of the local grocery stores.

I was working with a very small sample, and avoided the specialty bunnies like the peanut butter flavored ones because I knew those were not anywhere near real chocolate (more on peanut butter bunnies later).

As I made the purchases: cocoa beans were at a 30+ year high due to unrest and an embargo of Ivory Coast.  Cocoa beans are the source for all things truly chocolate: the cocoa butter plus chocolate liquor, cocoa power, chocolate mass.. it also goes by a few other names… but essentially the key ingredient in Milk or Dark chocolate (White chocolate has cocoa butter as the key ingredient).

I got 4 bunnies, three ‘fake’ and one real chocolate. What I didn’t take into account was that these were the low end of the market, and that was a real disappointment.

First a little background, as you can guess I know more than a little bit about chocolate, even as a kid I could taste the difference between real white chocolate and the fake stuff. Back then I didn’t know why that years bunny tasted so bad. A seven year old is not going to know why this years bunny isn’t good, but will remember that last years bunny was better. That was the case while I was growing up, some years mom would save some money and get a cheap bunny. Forty plus years later I still remember how bad some of those cheaper bunnies were. Back then white chocolate was not as popular or widely available as it is now, there were not even regulations on what could be called white chocolate.

Back in the good old days a foot tall bunny was not uncommon, it took days to get your way through it (none of the hollow stuff you see today), and I really liked white chocolate better, but there was another (very selfish reason): if any of the younger brothers had white chocolate on their faces (they all got milk chocolate bunnies): it was clobbering time, while the parents may steal the jelly beans: we all know no adult would take a kids (pre-licked to preserve ownership) bunny.. but a little brother.. they would try it once..

As I said before there were four bunnies for taste testing, and only one was true chocolate, but if you are looking for a taste test that would suggest any of them you will be misteaken.

That’s because they all were really.. really bad… even the chocolate one.

First bunny:

Not Yummy

Let me be clear that I knew this was not real chocolate before the first bite, after all it didn’t say “chocolate” on the box: it said “Milk Flavored”..  The first taste of was of milk then vanilla, then very chalky, not as bad as a chalkboard eraser but close. It was hollow so it broke apart while eating, the walls were so thin that light shone through on half of it. The after tastes were not enjoyable.. actually it was so vile that I stopped tasting for the night… Just to be clear: I’m a sugar junky, I’ll eat a whole tray of my grandmas brownies (with extra chocolate marshmallow frosting) without any help or sharing. This “confection” (and I use the term lightly) was horrid. The remains of the bunny still sit on the table a few days later (just in case I need a reminder of how bad it was).. but its next stop is the trash.

Second Bunny:

Burnt Flavor

Rather than risk another chance at eating more bunny droppings.. I decided to try the one that actually was real chocolate. I checked the ingredients list to make sure that it had the required ingredients (and it did.. ). I didn’t expect gourmet quality, frankly I expected generic candy bar quality.. again I was disappointed.  This bunny was the smallest of the four, and it started out with a slight fruity flavor, for a fraction of a second I was hopeful.. then it hit with an overwhelming burnt flavor.  I’m not going to sample this brand of bunnies from across the country to see if the problem is widespread.. but this bunny was made with burnt chocolate, a real disappointment.

Third bunny:

burnt vanilla flavored grease

It was pretty obvious that this was not a real white chocolate bunny, after all “pastelle” is not a flavor: pastel is a color group. The short version of the taste test would be: burnt vanilla flavored grease, but it was still better than bunny #1. If I would have gotten this as a kid I would have thrown it back at mom (yes I was “that” kid), while it looks like white chocolate it’s a cheap substitute, you’d do better going to the local craft store and getting their fake chocolate.

Forth bunny:

nothing special

At this point I had to make a batch of grandma’s brownies just to keep from getting depressed. So far every bunny had been worse than the worst Easter candy I had as a kid.  The fourth bunny was nothing special, close to what was expected, a mild chocolate flavor and a greasy after taste, no surprise: it was at least labeled “chocolate flavored”. I’d rather have a Hershey bar. At least it was not as bad as the others.

Just as a joke I picked up a foil wrapped snickers “egg”, it was better quality than all of the above. While the picture on the front of the foil pack showed a yellow egg, the inside was a snickers bar shaped like a half egg. The only thing I noticed between this and a normal snickers bar was that the peanuts were crushed into tiny pieces (a full sized peanut half would probably mess up the process). At least it met expectations, none of the bunnies did.

Later in the month the higher end bunnies will hit the shelves, but even then I’d suggest you avoid anything that is labeled “flavored”, “pastille”, or “chocolaty” (all fake chocolate) unless you want your child to throw it at you. (or leave it on the front seat of your car).

Provide Commerce (parent company of Shari’s Berries, ProFlowers, Red Envelope, Cherry Moon Farms and more) seems have ticked off another group of customers.  Their customers have filed another class action lawsuit for passing credit card information to a company that then bills the customers monthly. The case regarding what is commonly knows as the Easy Saver Scam is still pending and according to some customers they are doing something similar with a new partner “Clarus Marketing Group”.

According to the documents we’ve found (Click for details),  (shorter version here) they used the lure of “free shipping”,  and once the customers clicked on that ad they were unwittingly signed up for a membership program that billed them between $9 and $15 monthly.

Another lawsuit that came to light was the one by their insurance group. from the linked document:

“Hartford Fire Insurance Company issued commercial general liability policies to the parent company of Provide Commerce, naming Provide Commerce as an insured.” “seeking a judicial determination of  whether Hartford is obligated to continue defending Provide Commerce, Encore and  Regent in two putative nationwide class actions“.

Hartford no longer wants to have to be involved with defending the Provide Commerce (ProFlowers, Shari’s Berries, Cherry Moon Farms, Red Envelope…)  companies from the lawsuits regarding these practices. Insurance protects against accidents, but if you willfully and knowingly break the law they don’t back you up.   (Partial details here). Right now we’re only seeing the documents on the related filings, not the full case, but if the liability insurance company wants to distance itself: they must think there is something to the class action lawsuits.

Consumers have been responding to “Free Shipping” offers like a Pavlovian dogs responding to dinner bells.  Companies have found that by posting “Free Shipping”: the customers will go partially blind and not notice anything except the “Free”.  Pretty much like a 17 year old boy in a strip club. You have companies like Provide Commerce raking in millions with their version and you have other companies raising prices and then claiming free shipping, and consumers are drooling like a pack of well trained dogs. While the “free shipping” scams are supposed to be regulated either by law enforcement agencies or at least the credit card companies: no responsible entity has shut them down.

How are they getting away with this? (and by “they” we mean all the companies named above plus the other “Free Shipping” scammers)
So far there have just been consumer class action lawsuits,
NO ACTION has been taken by the criminal courts,
NO ACTION by the FTC, (on this or any “Free Shipping” false offers.)
NO ACTION by Visa, MasterCard or American Express: the companies involved can still process credit cards,
While congress held hearings on similar types of behaviors: congress does not file criminal complaints. (they write laws: they do not enforce them)
Basically the  sections of the government and credit card companies that are tasked with limiting/preventing consumer fraud have done nothing.

I’m sort of surprised that in this second  class action  lawsuit didn’t list the credit card companies as additional co-defendants. The credit card companies knew about the previous activity and continued to allow activities that violated the merchant agreements.

Since the credit card companies and enforcement agencies have not stopped this type of scam how can it be stopped?

That’s a subject for another day, as no one expects to order flowers or chocolate covered strawberries and get signed up for a membership service that bills you $15 a month.

How much of what you read on the internet is true? Does anyone even know? What percent of an article is true? If they write an article: it must be correct and fact checked right?

Nope, the sad truth this that most of the articles/blogs your read on the internet are just someone typing away in their underwear. They have the same ‘truthiness’ as a herd of overly chunky 80 year olds calling each other “hot”.  Anyone can start a blog and almost nothing they write actually has to be true, unless it’s attached to a company website: you don’t even know who is really writing it. Just because there is a picture of a 20 something year old cute kid at the top of the blog does not mean that it’s not written by a 60 year old in a wife beater t-shirt and ripped boxers.

We’ve hit on some companies mis-representing their products before, (Ethics, Fake Chocolate, Spotting fake chocolate) so we will not beat a 80,000 lb dead horse, (really.. if you go cheap and buy from them: you will not get any pity from us..and Dr. House probably has a name for you)… but what about the little guys, the personal blogs and recipe sites?

The problem with a lot of the little sites is that they pretend to be experts, when an expert sees these sites their stomach turns. So much bad information .. the general public has no way of knowing when they are being lead down the garden path. (or up Sh*ts creak… with two days of food poisoning)

While the general public really has no way of knowing when they are being feed a line of BS by a self proclaimed expert ; we are going to give you an example, one that fooled the experts at Mars™ and actually showed up as a re-tweet in their twitter feed (until the problems were pointed out), while it was not ‘dangerous: it did have a lot of errors.

Please read through the following article, and then come back to a quick BS highlight: http://industrialstone.com/farmtheburbs/?p=6848

Here is a high level (most obviously wrong) review:

“White Chocolate is not technically one of the types of chocolate” completely false, The FDA in CFR 163 defines what can be called chocolate and white chocolate is defined in CFR 162.124 (Read the Rules here), those regulations have been out there since before 2002, anyone what says white chocolate is not real chocolate is over a decade out of date or just ripping information from an out of date site.

“ large, hard bars, or one ounce squares.” Untrue: you can purchase gourmet quality chocolate as buttons or in small, break apart bars,  if you know where to look.

“Chocolate begins to melt at 90 degrees”, oh come on.. did this person even grow up with chocolate and the US measurement system? Maybe they need to spend a summer in Florida?

“When making ganache and candy, you will need to temper the chocolate”, total BS, since one of the steps in making ganache is pouring boiling heavy cream over the chocolate: that would knock the chocolate out of temper, why temper chocolate when the first step would result in it being knocked out of temper: at total waist of effort based on truly bad advice.

“slowly melt two thirds of the required chocolate until the temperature reaches 110-113 degrees.” Considering that some types of chocolate scorch at 115 and nothing (as far as crystallization & breaking the crystal bonds) happens anywhere near that temperature range: this is a really bad idea, hot spots in your melting will scorch/totally ruin the chocolate and there is no need to go that hot.

“until the temperature is reduced to 95-100 degrees”:  these temps are too high, the chocolate is not in temper. Depending on the chocolate type: chocolate tempering machines will use 87-89 degrees as the target temperature for chocolate after the seed chocolate has been processed/used.

These were only the most glaring problems with the blog posting, unlike a lot of the posts on the internet there was nothing truly dangerous ( the incorrect information in this post will not actually harm or kill you),  but there are a lot of self proscribed ‘experts’ that have no real world experience in what they are writing about, they have no experience, and no stake if the information they give you is seriously wrong.
The object of the above was not to mock the author, but to show that even articles re-tweeted by a trusted source  (Mars™ @Choc_History a  part of a really big candy/chocolate company) can be riddled with errors, to Mars™ credit: as soon as we let them know about the errors the deleted the tweet, though it was still on their Facebook™ page… (for the non-Twitter™ users out there a tweet is a post on the Twitter™ social site and Facebook™ is another social site).

This was just one of millions of posts on the internet, it happened to be a subject that we have a lot of real world experience in,  we could see the errors without having to consult a stack of books.

So the real question to ask yourself: is the article you’ve been reading on dieting, dating or any other subject being written by a true expert?  When they have a addenda or preferences are they clear about it ( as an example: the author of one chocolate review  site really does not like white chocolate, but at least he states that in the post.. he still reviews it,  but it’s obvious that his personal preferences are not with white chocolate..) .

Many sites are written to attract traffic, with little concern about actual truthfulness or safety concerns: you can generally spot those sites by the abundance of paid ads. The truthfulness of the ads is only monitored by the ad network (such as Google), and since the ad network makes money on people clicking on the ads their response to untruthful ad reports has been less than stellar.

While there are rules and procedures for how to deal with copyright violations (people stealing logos, content or pretending to be another company), there are no procedures or methods of dealing with untruthful or even deadly posts. Basically if you pretend to be another company you can be shut down, but if your recipes or ideas are deadly you can post as much as you want.

Of course in the chocolate field deadly recipes are rare, sketchy food safety methods are more common (always wash and dry strawberries, anyone that tells you different should be buried in the back yard with only their head exposed.. and then covered in honey.. it’s the ‘green way’ to solve the problem).

Just like there are so called experts that say “don’t wash strawberries”, there are similar (actually worse) examples on the internet as there is no governing authority. It’s much worse than a bunch of severely overweight 45 year old moms calling each other “hot”, all information you read should be suspect: what is their level of experience?, Are they routing traffic to other sources with paid ads? Does the article look like it was written by a non-native language speaker? (Romanian, Indian, Pakistani….  spam ad sites are very common.. and the pages content is often unreliable.. they are just looking for you to click on their ads).

That some people look to these sites for diet and health information amazes us, as they are often written by people without any valid experience (IE not a real Doctor or anything qualified or reputable), run on servers outside of the US, by people or organizations looking to raise money for causes you would not agree with , and put out there just to push questionable products and ideologies. Some of the sites many actually be being run just to raise funds for terrorist organizations: you have no way of knowing, yet many people go to them seeking “authoritative” information on diets, health care and other possibly critical (deadly if not properly treated)  questions.  Just as a weird example: there are over 35 pages of search results  for  the Google search “insulin smurf” , why would a short blue cartoon character need treatment for diabetes? Do you think any of those search results are correct/safe/reliable? Would you risk your life on it?.  

With all the above being said, we have repeatedly proved to Google that one of the top advertising and ranking companies for ‘chocolate covered strawberries” does not actually use chocolate, yet the paid ads are still out here and Google gets a pile of money from them for the false ads. If you can’t trust the search engines to get something as relatively simple as chocolate right: why do some people blindly trust their health to them?

Just as you’ve seen a huge jump in gas prices: the same thing has happened in the cocoa market. Local conditions are preventing/restricting exports.

Without the cocoa bean there would be no chocolate of any type, it is the only source of cocoa powder, chocolate liquor and cocoa butter. Without the cocoa bean your only option would be the fake chocolaty flavored vegetable oil that other companies try to pass off as chocolate.

The downside to using real  gourmet chocolate is that  it is expensive and has been getting more expensive.

Below is a cropped screen shot taken from the International Cocoa Organization (http://www.icco.org), they keep track of the wholesale prices.

As you can see the cost of the cocoa beans has sky rocketed since 2005, it’s now twice what it was then and while the chart does not show it yet, the prices have continued to climb to record highs, as I write this the price for just the raw cocoa bean is over $3600 a ton.   Prices have changed due to availability, better wages for the growers and speculation by commodities traders. 

It’s really hard to export when people are running around blowing things up and shooting. Chocolate and gas prices have jumped, you’ve seen the effect at the pumps and FedEx and UPS have raised their fuel surcharges to cover their higher costs. That means we pay more for shipping and as a result we have to charge more for shipping.

Packages do not fly around the country without jet fuel, and after they land: the delivery trucks need their fuel as well.  Some chocolate covered strawberry companies have taken to using two day service as the basic delivery method for chocolate covered strawberries, we feel that a product delivered this way ends up with a very short shelf life and is not as fresh, and if anything goes wrong: the product is quickly ruined. You can tell when a company is using these methods by seeing if they charge a rush surcharge for Tuesday delivery or a special surcharge for next day delivery.

Saving a few dollars on shipping costs may look like a bargain, but if the shipment is delayed for any reason (weather, security, the business not opening on time, or a dozen other possible issues) then you are talking about delivering strawberries that were made 4 days before, those berries are going to be pretty rough and most likely ruined. There are no magic gel packs that are going to last 3 days, UPS and FedEx do not offer door to door refrigerated deliveries for any amount that you would be willing to pay for a single box of strawberries, and even if it were available a refrigerated strawberry still has a very limited shelf life.

To deliver chocolate covered strawberries nationwide you have to do some things right, you can’t ship them cross country and have have them show up next week, the best strawberries are delivered after spending a minimal time in transit (next day works best).  So even though you may order today for a delivery next week: we will make them up just before we give them to FedEx/UPS and if everything goes correctly they arrive the next day.  This results in a gift that is fresher than one sent by other methods (such as a planned two day delivery).

If a few weeks Valentine’s Day will be upon us, and a good portion of the country will be doing something for their special someone.

Today we’ll look at two types of situations, one where the public thinks something is wrong and others where something is actually wrong.

Spike in prices: are they gouging?
Roses and chocolate covered strawberries are perishable; they cannot sit in a warehouse for months, or even a few days, and still be any good.  (last year we stopped someone from ordering a Valentine’s Day Chocolate Covered Strawberry gift box that he planned to put in the closet for a few weeks.. it would have been an ugly surprise)

From the growers perspective:

Everybody wants the same thing on the same day, plants (strawberry and rose) have to be planted and prepped so that on this one day of the year they have the most product available, that is not an easy thing to do. It’s extra work (and fertilizer) to make all those flowers and strawberries ripen at the same time. Cold weather can quickly ruin all those roses and create shortages (like we are expecting this year).

Those same strawberries and roses need to be harvested by hand, that means bringing in a lot of extra people, training them to harvest correctly, and then the labor for the actual peak days of harvest. All those extra people are more expensive than normal because all the other growers in the area also need extra staff.

Logistics: Trucks, trains and plains:
It’s the middle of winter, if you think about it: Where are flowers being grown this time of year? Certainly not New York, Vermont, Colorado or Utah, it is ski season after all, snow and flowers don’t mix. That means the roses have to brought in: trains are to slow, and trucks are only used for the final part of the trip from the airport to the refrigerated warehouses. That means tons of are being flown into the country & even if you fill a cargo plane with flowers: it really adds to the cost.

Strawberries are only grown in a few places this time of year, California, Florida, Mexico as well as a few other places that are far outside the country. There are no ‘special’ large long stem strawberry plants, these are the biggest strawberries that are available on the existing plants, but the extra size and different of methods of harvesting and packaging (to prevent bruising) all add to the price.  All it takes is one cold weather event (freezing) in any of these areas and a significant amount of product will be lost. January freezing happens in Florida or California every few years, ruining the product that would ripen into the fruit or blooms that become the fruit that would be used at Valentine’s Day.  The growers try to limit the damage from the cold weather through various methods: helicopters to circulate air over the fields work in some situations, in others they have to encase the plants in ice and hope for the best. I’ve been hearing about really cold weather in Miami, so the chances are that the Florida strawberry crop is not going to be that useful during the peak time of year.

Grower summary:
The prices are higher because everybody wants the exact same thing on the exact same day during a time of year that it’s risky to grow.  That peak effort has a lot of higher costs in all segments from forced ripening, picking, and delivery.

Florist and strawberry manufacturers, we’ll take these two separately.

Florists:  local florist are in a rough spot, they have generally smaller locations and there often is not enough room to properly handle the huge volume of flowers that have to be stored and prepped for delivery, they also don’t have the delivery staff needed for all those deliveries. This means they need to get extra storage space and a lot of extra staff for deliveries. Even the sites that ship from warehouses need extra space for the big day. That extra space and staff costs a lot of money.

Strawberries are even more perishable than flowers, they have to be dipped the same day they are shipped to preserve freshness. Volume for the peak day will be over 100 times higher than other days of the year. All that extra production means extra staff, and that staff needs days of training. Extra shifts are a given: regular employees will probably be working 18-20 hours a day for three days straight. That is a lot of expensive overtime.  We also have to get extra storage space for supplies (boxes, gel packs, insulated containers and the rest), perishables (fruit) and finished/boxed product.  For the fresh fruit and the finished product ready for the FedEx/UPS pickup, refrigerated trucks solve part of the problem, but they are not cheap. Plus there is a lot of hardware,  such as all the extra melters, dipping stations, tempering.. even tape guns that are needed for all those extra people.

That box of machine made chocolates you saw in the drug store was probably made several months ago, it’s not the same type of product as something perishable like chocolate covered strawberries.

Summary: At least some of the price rises you see in the gift industry are market and conditions driven, the costs are a lot higher but so is the volume.

But what about the other unethical companies in the gift industry?
Nothing has changed in the last year… and parts have gotten worse.

Companies that advertise chocolate covered strawberries but the product is not made with chocolate? They are still at it (read more and even more), unforgettably fake chocolate is not what they advertise.

Companies that are being sued for the easy saver scam? Visa and MasterCard or the California Attorney General have not shut them down  (read more), not being able to trust a a company to protect your credit card information is very basic and their customers say they violated that trust.

Companies advertising “fresh from the grower” who really truck their flowers around the US to regional warehouses? (They even say they are fresher than local florists but those several days on the road to their regional warehouses say differently (it’s the same group as the “Easy Saver Scam”)) plus they even use local florists to deliver some of their flowers.

Surprise “care” fees at checkout? Of course.. (same people as above)

Corporate discriminatory Religious policies? Yep they are still at it (read more)

Fake Free shipping? The FTC seems to be sleeping on this one. They are not supposed to raise prices and then claim free shipping.

In the gift industry it seems like the government is not really doing it’s job correctly, and the largest players in the gift industry seem to be running amok while the regulators sleep, which seems to be a pattern in the enforcement segment of government. We are too small to play games like they do, and frankly we’d rather spend the time making a better product (and web site) than pay a bunch of lawyers to separate you from your money.

Most of the public does not know that parts of the government make rules for what is allowed to be called certain names.  The lawsuit was filed because according to tests the “Beef” didn’t meet the minimum government specifications to be called that name. Did you know “chocolate” has a legal definition? 

So how does that affect you?
Valentine’s day is coming up, and a group of companies are advertising “chocolate covered strawberries” and the product does not meet the legal definition to be called Milk, White, or Dark (bittersweet) Chocolate.

The easiest way to show that the product is not chocolate is to look at the ingredients as cocoa butter is required to be called “chocolate”.  If there is no cocoa butter: it was not dipped in “chocolate”.

But what about “chocolate flavored”?
The term “chocolate flavored” is allowed to be used when the product does not contain cocoa butter but does have other ingredients from a cocoa bean (chocolate liqueur, cocoa powder..), but it must be labeled “chocolate flavored” and not just as “chocolate”.  Since the minimum required 20% cocoa butter is the one and only ingredient in white chocolate that comes from the cocoa bean: once you remove the cocoa butter you cannot call it “white chocolate” or even “white chocolate  flavored”.

But what about Chocolate Cake?
Chocolate cake or even chocolate pudding are what are called a “common sense exclusions” as “the public” knows that a chocolate cake is not a big slab of chocolate but that there are other ingredients in the cake. This common sense exclusion does not apply to “chocolate covered strawberries” because those companies are saying the product is dipped in chocolate , a substance they do not use.

Eventually a law firm will file a lawsuit  and collect some big fees on this type of false advertising as well, as those companies “chocolate covered strawberries” don’t meet the requirements to be called “chocolate” , or even “chocolate flavored” since there is no such thing as “white chocolate flavored”.

Truth in advertising matters to us, as does the correct use of the legal term “chocolate” that is why we dip our chocolate covered strawberries in true gourmet chocolate unlike the companies that we list on our “Wall of Shame”.

Counterfeit products, false advertizing claims and credit card scams are things the public hears about every day, but as we was researching the many online complaints about Edible Arrangements we found something more disturbing:

Religious Intolerance.

Edible Arrangements is a franchise system, similar to many restaurant chains, the stores are owned by individual operators and the overall concept/franchisor is owned by someone else.

A few months ago 170 franchises filed a lawsuit against Edible Arrangements International, Inc, some of the things listed in the lawsuit are the type things you’d expect,

• changes in mandating suppliers,
• forced software purchases (which have to be made from a company the CEO controls),
• forced customer list sharing (privacy concerns with that one),
• changes in the payment percentage to the individual stores for internet orders (they lost 80% of the payment),
•  changes in mandatory days the stores are open…

All valid and fairly normal grievances.  When I looked into the last change I found some things that disturbed me.

Edible Arrangements International (the parent company or franchisor who also runs DippedFruit.Com) is run by Tariq Farid, a  U.S. citizen  who was born in Pakistan.   Our biggest concern is best described by the following quote from a franchisee:

 “They have now released new hours mandating we have to be open on Sundays, however they allow” … “ Muslim owned stores to be closed Friday. Christian owned stores are told they have to be open on Sunday…NO EXCEPTIONS will be made. This is Religious Discrimination!”

We have a problem with this, this is America, the same rules need to apply to everybody. If one religious group must have their stores open on their holy day then the same should apply to other religious groups as well. When a company discriminates against store owners of a particular faith then something is wrong with the mindset of the discriminators.

For many Christians Sunday is not a “mandatory” day of rest, there are some Christians who observe on Saturday and I seem to remember that there was even a religious group who observed on Wednesday. Some Christians can go to services on Saturday night and have it “count” as Sunday…  but that is not the point, having one set of rules for people of one faith and a different set of rules for people not of that faith is un-American, divisive and only serves to create ill will.

To us the day of the week does not matter, if you are showing favoritism towards one group by allowing them to close on their day of observance then the same rules need to apply to people of all faiths.

Personally we don’t care that Mr Farid is Muslim, that’s not the point: the point is that he is setting rules retroactively, rules that discriminate against people of other religious faiths.

Online sources:
http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/edible-arrangements-franchise-c335037.html
http://www.franchisepublicity.com/edible-arrangements-franchisor-responds-to-franchise-lawsuit/