As reported recently, Scharffen Berger has agreed to be bought by Hershey Foods. ...

What’s the implication for the sale? The stated purpose is that Hershey’s is looking for a way to crack the gourmet market and I guess they did not think they could do it on their own because no-one would take them seriously. (I can’t imagine why not.) The story does say that all the staff will stay on, which is a good sign, because if either John or Robert were leaving soon it would mean they were cashing out. That’s not a bad thing in and of itself because they’ve managed to achieve a great deal and deserve to be rewarded for their efforts.

I saw John recently at the Fancy Food Show and nary a hint was given. I suppose that I should have taken it more seriously when I realized that their 41% milk chocolate has the same sour milk notes that Hershey’s milk chocolate does. A brilliant idea, really, a gourmet version of Hershey’s milk chocolate that people aren’t ashamed to say they like. One challenge I see, though, is that many people will stop cutting SB a lot of the slack they’ve been given. As a unit of Hershey’s tieing into the Slow Food movement will be less credible and because of Hershey’s size, people will now expect SB to have a real marketing and advertising budget.

This is great overall for the artisan chocolate manufacturing industry and I imagine we will see many plans that have been in the works get a lot more attention than they have been getting as people try to become “the next Scharffen Berger.”