When I heard the news , I felt as though someone had told me that a good friend was moving away. I am shocked especially since just the week before, at the Fancy Food Show, the local Scharffen Berger folks confidently told me that business was good and ‘chocolate is recession proof’. It is clear that their bosses waited until after the show to make the announcement. Am I surprised that they are whisking our own Scharffen Berger away? Not really. When a corporation as big as Hershey’s goes shopping to create a portfolio of special chocolates and confections to create an Artisan division we can’t be too surprised when they eventually decide to take their purchases home, literally. California is a very different place to do business. I once worked for a San Francisco cooking school that was purchased by a company based in Mississippi. Talk about culture shock. They kept sending us recipes that included cups and cups of mayonnaise and cream of mushroom soup. They didn’t know why we wanted to keep the recipes that include crème fraiche. I got out of there as soon as I could.
The discussion of whether or not the founders of Scharffen Berger sold out is moot and boring. Would you, could you turn down millions of dollars for a business you had worked hard to build? Nevertheless, this latest turn of events just doesn’t feel right. I think that we in the Bay Area are offended by the buying up of local food businesses because we have a proprietary attitude toward our bounty of food riches. We are the ultimate Culinary Benefactors. We pride ourselves in recognizing a quality product when we taste it. It is our enthusiasm and our dollars that help these businesses to succeed. Employees take a chance and hop on board because they are told that they are on the ground floor of something exciting and new. They work just a little bit harder. And in the end, they are rewarded with a severance package and a not so chocolate-covered future.
