My Analysis: How Purdy Chocolatier Utilizes An 100-year-old Receipt To Achieve Success

Himalayan Pink Salt Caramels, the masterpiece that made by Purdy Chocolatier, becomes a hit in chocolate market. The most interesting point is how it uses an 100-year-old receipt to make an wonderful and refreshing flavour.

1. The Origins

“Our head chocolatier, Gary Mitchell, noticed a trend in the sweet and savoury category, and so he took a vanilla caramel recipe from 1907 and started to play with different salts and textures. He tried grey smoked salt and Cabernet salt, but landed on pink Himalayan salt, partly because of its story: It’s from the oldest salt mine in the world, it has 84 trace minerals, and it’s pink!”(1)

My Analysis: Differentiation Strategy Really Helps!!!

As we all know that most of the chocolates on shell are sweet. But Purdy Chocolatier’s Himalayan Pink Salt Caramels are different because of the salty taste, which will undoubtedly provide customers with a new and unique flavour on their tastebuds. What is more, the company claims that their salts are the purest one because all of them   are deposited in the Himalayan Mountains during the Jurassic era. Because of their ” Pure salts from Himalayan Mountains”, the company adds extra value to their product and leave a good ” salty chocolate” image to their customers, which differentiates their products from other chocolate makers.

2. Early Trials

“He applied the salt in different ways: baked in, infused, topped. Then he presented the caramels to our product development committee, which includes me and our chocolate scientist and president, Peter Higgins. If it passes the taste panel, we do a full batch in our test kitchen.”(2)

Their strict steps of experiments and tests aim at producing the best salty chocolate to achieve customers’ value proposition.

3. Moment Of Truth

“We put it into local shops to get customer feedback. We normally do a full costing and market evaluation to see whether the customer is willing to pay a price that will give us an acceptable margin, but ultimately, it’s the customer who decides.”(3)

After their experiments, their new chocolate should be tested by their customers. Purdy Chocolatier focus on customers’ feedback in order to make improvement based on the feedback and therefore provide them with the best chocolate. What is more, the company is strengthening the contact with their customers, which will maintain a good customers relationship and leave a good impression in customers’ minds.

4. Roll It Out

“Manufacturing in Vancouver is key to what we do. Because we use no preservatives, our product has a short shelf life. We can make everything here and have it shipped it to our 70 stores across the country the same week. If we manufactured anywhere else, we’d have to change the model completely.”(4)

The short shelf life is a big problem for the company because their products can not maintain for a long time. Therefore, the company must have high-speed delivery system. However, as the scale enlarges, I think they are supposed to allocate more manufacturing factories near to the markets. In that case, they can reduce their delivery cost and satisfy the larger markets’s needs punctually. What is more, it is necessary for the company to improve their technology to make products’ shelf life longer. For instance, they can try to improve their packing technology, like vacuumizing their chocolate to extend their shelf life.

Source:

(1)(2)(3)(4): http://www.canadianbusiness.com/innovation/how-to/purdys-chocolatier-pink-salt-caramel-reinvention/

Pictures:

http://www.purdys.com/Himalayan-Pink-Salt-Caramels-P406.aspx

http://www.purdys.com/