Belgian chocolate — straight out of Greenville (Outsourcing to the USA)

The State.com/South Carolina’s Homepage ^ | May. 08, 2005 | C. GRANT JACKSON

[sully777]

How do the Belgians feel, knowing their chocolate is made in South Carolina?

[Clemenza]

Being that my sister lives in the Greenville area, I'll make sure that she sends me some chocolates.

[OpusatFR]

Gee. Just think of all the effort the State and the Feds made in tax breaks and incentives to get this low tech excuse for continued globalism?

We give the world our tech and engineering jobs and get this garbage in return.

[Stayingawayfromthedarkside]

hmmmmmmmmmchoclate!!!!

[cripplecreek]

I'm not sure but I think Dasani bottled water comes from Michigan by way of a french company.

[Snickersnee]

The world's best chocolate used to be sold at an elegant little shop on Madison Ave, a few blocks south of St. Patrick's. They were Belgian, too, and oddly enuff, the name was "De Granville." I think they got too expensive for Manhattan even, (a 1/2 in. diameter truffle was about $4) and moved on. But they sure were good, to the eye as well as the tummy.

[Clemenza]

I think they got too expensive for Manhattan even, (a 1/2 in. diameter truffle was about $4) and moved on.

Considering that I've seen more excessive pricing in the same neighborhood, I would bet that it was high rent that drove them out of business.

[July 4th]

Dasani is a Coca-Cola product, and produced in the US. You're probably thinking of Perrier.

[scouse]

How do the Belgians feel, knowing their chocolate is made in South Carolina?

Probably the same way the French do, knowing most of their escargots are shipped out of California.

[Larry Lucido]

I've had chocolate in Italy, France, Switzerland, Korea, Japan and Russia. I still think we do it best.

[rovenstinez]

Maybe they need to bring it back to MEXICO. One of the few global words with an Aztec origin.

[Gritty]

How do the Belgians feel, knowing their chocolate is made in South Carolina?

Probably like the Germans do, with their BMWs made there!

[sully777]

LOL Good one. Merecedes builds a few of their more popular brands here. As does Toyota, Honda, Subaru, Mitsubishi.

[cripplecreek]

It might be, I'm unsure of the brand. I recall one of Bill O'Reillys rants about french products. The water is pumped out of the ground near Mecosta Mi but the money goes to france.

[avenir]

"Darcis chocolates can be compared to Neuhaus..."

Neuhaus is high quality, but I was forever turned off when I bought a piece (!) at the Galleria shop for $3 and it was stale. Lindt, above, can be found in your grocery store for about $2 a BAR. The Swiss know how to mass produced killer chocolate that rivals anything the Belgians can churn out, IMO.

[LibFreeOrDie]

Many European chocolatiers now have factories in the U,S.
For example, Lindt has factories in California and New Hampshire. Barry Callebaut has factories in Vermont and New Jersey that make big blocks of chocolate used by pastry chefs and boutique chocolatiers.

But I find that the factory-produced stuff, like Lindt and Godiva, is nowhere as good as chocolates made by hand in local shops. Maybe this guy will be able to keep the quality for a while, but as he scales up production, the quality will suffer.

[muir_redwoods]

The best chocolate in the world, IMHO is a brand called Divine sold by an American company. It is, however a fair-traded product with all sorts of PC sensitivity to the poor peasants who produce the cocoa etc. The cocoa comes from Ghana and the dark chocolate is the best I have ever tasted, better than French, Belgian, Swiss or German, again, IMHO

[Sam the Sham]

What do you mean moved ? I was there two years ago. Have they moved since then ?

[Sam the Sham]

The best chocolate in the world, IMHO is at the Food Court at Harrods.

[pepsi_junkie]

I've wondered why this wasnt happening yet. The falling dollar makes the US attractive for outsourcing to countries in Europe, where costs have been spiraling upward since...well forever. And without the labor problems you see in Europe. Of course the third world is still cheaper than the US but with our country you get some benefits that still make it attractive. We have a robust shipping industry, stable government and economy, great telecommunications infrastrcuture, world class manufacturing capability, etc. These things mean that if you do manufacture in the US you can do so cheaper than at home and still have instant access, flawless supply chain, etc. Worth some extra money compared to India or Sri Lanka if you are making perishable goods for example.

Japan did it with autos in order to circumvent import laws but I don't know of larget scale efforts to use the US as a purely outrsourcing situation, where the goods are made here for shipment back to the host country. Would seem to make sense.