Los Angeles had the sweetest weekend yet, what with the first ever Indulge LA on Saturday and the LA Chocolate Salon the very next day. Because I was participating in Indulge I debated attending the salon again this year up until the last minute. I was also dragging my feet because this event seems to go down hill every year and ticket prices were $30 at the door. But of course I went so I could replenish my yearly supply of Amano bars and hope to discover some stunning new chocolate to blog about. And honestly I’ll have to admit, I wanted to compare it to the previous days festivities a bit.
Loot from the LA Choc Salon 2011
Amano, Pacari, Chocolatique, Marti, Kallari, David Bacco, and Bootleg.
Over then next week or so I will be going more into depth about my experiences with these companies individually, because they deserve it!
This annual chocolate show is located at the Pasadena Convention Center from 11-5 and this year they changed locations within the venue, possibly to downsize. I’m not sure if they had less vendors, but it didn’t really feel like it. It also felt like they sold a lot more tickets because it was so crowded. In addition to pre-sale specials of $20-25 I heard they did some groupon type deals for even cheaper. When I arrived around 1:45 many of the wine vendors were already out of wine. No matter to me because I was there to have chocolate, but for a $30 ticket price a little wine would have been nice. Unlike Indulge no wine glasses were included in the ticket price and little plastic cups that were piled in the trash can were hard to come by. Talk about eco-friendly.
There were horrendously long lines all the way around the perimeter of the room and many of the crowded clustered booths in the center had lines as well. Also these lines were creeping along, if they were even moving at all because some people were standing in them and others were just pushing there way to the front of the tables. Maybe if it wasn’t so crowded in there people wouldn’t have felt the need to form lines, rather than be rude to other attendees by pushing, shoving and cutting in front of them. I think this was a result of a very poor layout and needless to say changing to a smaller space was probably a bad idea.
They did have guest speakers and some Q&A with some of the chef’s and chocolate makers. But because the set up was crowded it was a little awkward and hard to hear unless you were seated down in front. While standing in line nearby I was surprised to hear one of the chef’s curse into the mic during a Q&A because there were so many kids present. Not very professional in my opinion. I think it would have been very useful to include a program of who was going to speak and when, so if you wanted to catch something in particular you wouldn’t miss it while standing in line or stuffing your face.
I actually stood in line for 45 minutes like an idiot to get bars from Amano and say Hi to Art Pollard, the chocolate maker. Only to be disappointed about thirty minutes in when he went to the front to give a discussion. But I did get to catch the end of his talk where he spoke about his back ground and how he got into making chocolate which I found interesting. At one point the coordinator actually interrupted him to get on the mike and tell people there was no need to stand in line for the Amano booth because there were other empty tables with chocolate. Really….? Ever think they wanted AMANO chocolate. Hmmm.
I really feel for the vendors who choose to participate in these events by paying hundreds of dollars for booth space and are then expected to give out hundreds more in product. Top quality chocolates are not cheap and require a lot of labor and I think the organizers of this event are taking advantage of small companies, who are taking the blow from disappointed consumers who think the vendors are being stingy with samples. I also think it’s interesting that when people go to events like this they feel a sense of urgency with tasting everything really quickly and then high tailing it out of there. By four o’clock the place had cleared out considerably and while many vendors were out of samples and/or product to sell, some weren’t. The atmosphere at this time was a lot more inviting and friendly and I was able to talk with people with out feeling rushed to move along. Although the fact that the layout wasn’t very well thought out became even more apparent when there was less people in there. I think
a map and list of the vendors along with a schedule of the speakers would have been nice. I mean what are they spending all this cash flow on?
Stay tuned from some real reviews of some superior chocolate I purchased while there!
I totally agree with your perspective, as both a past observer and participant. People attending feel entitled and the vendors feel overwhelmed. It’s not a well-organized show and the planners don’t seem to care as people complain more and more every year and they still don’t try to fix the problems.
It isn’t perfect, but those of us who take our art seriously we always try to spend time with the guests taking our time to spend with all that are interested in chocolate. And, at Choclatique we NEVER run out of chocolate. We gave away over 6000 pieces of our uncut hand-crafted chocolate and love to see how people react when they come back for more and we don’t turn them down.
This was my first time in attendance at the event. I agree that things felt a bit rushed and definitely crowded. And even so, you took the time to take a photograph with me and I am grateful for that. Thank you for being so approachable and professional.