Man, It's Getting Hot Outside!

As Spring approaches one of the most common questions we hear in our Customer Care Center is... “It’s starting to get really warm where I live.  Can you deliver chocolate to me without it melting?”  The answer is simple - yes we can!

Every year Carson ships almost 4 million candy bars worldwide, and with very few exceptions, each bar arrives to our customers in cool condition.

Check out this link for more information on how we do it!

Carson has partnered with UPS to develop shipping solutions that help keep shipping costs low and chocolate cool. 

Hershey's Around the World

While on Spring Break with Sharon and our daughters, I am once again reminded just how strong the Hershey’s brand is in other countries.  In the gift shop at our hotel in Costa Rica, right next to many other snacks and confectionary treats I have never seen before, is a row of Hershey’s chocolate bars.

This country is not only extremely beautiful, the Costa Rican people are some of the most friendly people I have ever met anywhere.  The beautiful environment along with the local hospitality has made this trip one of my favorite family vacations.  Sharon and I work very hard to balance our passion for the work we do at Carson with the time we love to spend with our daughters who are 10 and 13 years old.

At Carson, we are also blessed to have a bilingual account representative from Costa Rica, Carola Stiver. Carola is helping us provide better service to our many bilingual customers as well as give us guidance in creating new wrapper designs that will appeal to our Spanish speaking customers.  Keep an eye on our web site, as we are putting up new Spanish designs on a regular basis throughout 2007 and beyond in all of our markets and occasions. If you would like to place an order with us in Spanish, please call and ask for Carola.  She will be glad to assist you in placing an order for any of our existing designs, which we can translate to Spanish, or help you create a custom design just for you.

History of the Chocolate

The cost of Cocoa is going up which may mean the cost of chocolate increasing is not far behind.  Here is an interesting recent article on Cocoa and how Hershey tries to handle the cost of this fluctuating commodity.

I am somewhat of a news fanatic, and in this world of 24 hour nonstop news feeds, staying current is never a problem.  One topic I receive “news alerts” about involves the chocolate trade and in particular The Hershey Company.  On our website we have information about the history of chocolate.  There is also much information available on the web about the evolution of The Hershey Company.

One book I would recommend to anyone who not only likes chocolate but also is interested in the story of how two of the largest companies in the world began is The Emperors of Chocolate .. Inside the Secret World of Hershey and Mars by Joël Glenn Brenner 

We have several copies at Carson Wrapped Hershey's, and I encourage all of our team members to read this book, because it is a wonderful glimpse into the world of Hershey and Mars. Want to know what “M&M’s stand for and how the letters connect these 2 fierce competitors?  Read the book and you will have the answer to a great trivia question on your next night out with friends.

A Note of Thanks...

As if my job wasn’t wonderful enough, the best part is what I am about to share with you. It’s so much fun to hear from customers after they receive their personalized Hershey’s bars.  Some customers write us with touching stories about the special contribution we’ve made to an event such as a 50th wedding anniversary… some write to say how crazy the guests at their birthday party were for these unique favors… some write just to say that they were pleased with how easy the ordering process turned out to be and how the finished product exceeded their expectations.  Your feedback helps to inspire our creativity and excellence and makes a great day at Carson even better!  Thank you all for taking the time to share your kind words and for your referrals!

Here are just some of the many comments and stories that our customers have shared with us.

Dear Carson Chocolates,

On behalf of myself, my fiance, and my family, I would like to extend the most sincere thank you to your company. We have been so impressed by not only your product, but also by the reliability and ease we felt in the ordering process. My parents own a small business that prides themselves on customer service and satisfaction. We are therefore usually disappointed by companies that make the ordering/shipping/receiving process so difficult. With Carson Chocolates we would feel comfortable not only purchasing in the future, but also recommending you to all of our friends. Throughout the process of planning for our wedding, we have had an unusual amount of RSVP's that came back "yes," and have had to purchase additional chocolate bars last minute. We knew that they would come quickly, be made accurately, and would arrive in perfect condition. We thank you for making this step an easy and pain free one. Thank you! Thank you!

Sincerely,
Kelsey Bentley

---

Good morning,

I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank you for the wonderful & fast job done on my daughters Sweet 16 favors. We kind of waited until the last minute to order them because the original Banquet Hall we had booked closed down suddenly & we were not sure if we were even going to have it. Luckily we found somewhere & will be having it.

You had enclosed a card with this email address to let you know if anything was wrong with the order so I wanted to email you and tell you that everything is right with my order and thank you so very much. I would definitely recommend Carsons to anyone that is need of personalized favors. I am having a 70th birthday party for my Mother next year so you will be hearing from me then.

Thanks again .
Susanne

---

I ordered birth announcements through Carson with both my children.  Let me just say, your company does a fantastic job.  I received my order very quickly (done and delivered within 3 days both times).  For my daughter, who was a summer baby, I was so impressed when the bars were shipped with cold packs to prevent melting.  Your selection is wonderful - I did a photo announcement this time with my son.  And the announcements are beautiful!  (Everyone was impressed that I had something to pass out so quickly - I did the order on-line during a
nighttime feeding, got it in a few days, and people thought I was really "together" - ha ha!)  Anyway, I recommended your company to all my pregnant friends.  You've been a pleasure to work with!

Thanks,
Michelle

---

Hello.

On Monday I called customer service and placed a rush order for my boyfriend's surprise 30th birthday party, taking place this Saturday that his mother and myself are planning. I've a tendency to procrastinate, so your rush service saved me!

I ordered 100 mini Hersheys bars. They arrived in perfect condition with the icepack still cold!  I even sampled one for myself! Your company saved me a lot of time and a huge headache.

Yikes, the pressure of being a good hostess for my boyfriend, an attorney, and his mother, the executive banker. You did all the work, and I'm taking all of the credit!

Your company is one of the few online companies with top notch customer service.  I communicated once by email and twice by phone in which everyone was very professional and courteous.

Thank you!
Janis Edralin
San Antonio, Texas

 

Carson Goes Red

Carson Wrapped Hershey's Chocolates has been INSPIRED to join the Go Red movement organized by the American Heart Association.  We have partnered with the local Chapter in Cincinnati to sponsor the upcoming May Go Red For Women Luncheon.  The luncheon is an empowering and enlightening corporate event to create awareness, provide education and raise funds in the battle against women’s #1 killer: Heart Disease.

We have donated custom 5oz Dark Chocolate Hershey’s bar created for the May luncheon to sell as a Golden Ticket Fundraiser during the event.

To learn how you can help visit: www.goredforwomen.org and get involved today!
To read about the benefits of dark chocolate click here.

Carson & the Marvin Lewis Community Fund

Carson Wrapped Hershey's Chocolates is a proud partner in sponsorship of the Marvin Lewis Community Fund, headed by Cincinnati Bengals Head Coach Marvin Lewis. The MLCF helps empower, educate and inspire individuals in the Greater Cincinnati region through its efforts. We have teamed up with Cincinnati Bengals football team head coach Marvin Lewis and his Marvin Lewis Community Fund to support its efforts in the Greater Cincinnati region. www.marvinlewis.org.

In October of 2006, we sponsored the Football 101 event, which was an NFL initiative held at Paul Brown Stadium. This fundraiser was held for 450 women, who learned the technicalities of football in a relaxed and entertaining atmosphere, with Coach Marvin Lewis and his Cincinnati Bengals coaching staff.

To read more about Carson Wrapped Hershey's partnership with the Marvin Lewis Foundation click here.

To learn more about Coach Marvin Lewis’s Community Fund, visit: www.marvinlewis.org

St. Patrick's Day Recommendations

You all know what’s coming up on March 17?  St. Patty’s Day!  Okay, so I’m Italian but aren’t we all Irish on St. Patty's Day?  Well, I could use some Irish luck.

If you are like me and love to throw themed parties, then check out these green party favors.  My guests will be green with envy this year.

So many choices….where do I start?

I could hand out custom chocolates decorated with shamrocks, Leprechauns and Celtic symbols for good luck & good fortune. Or lucky pots filled with chocolate gold coins, Hershey's® Miniatures® and sweet Irish Blessings, a golden organza bag filled with Minis® and lucky Irish clovers.

My bar of choice is the St. Patrick's Day candy bar to celebrate the good times.

Dark Chocolate Has Health Benefits Not Seen in Other Varieties

By Daniel DeNoon - WebMD Medical News
Source: www.webmd.com/content/article/73/81921.htm

The Studies
Taubert's team signed up six men and seven women aged 55-64. All had just been diagnosed with mild high blood pressure--on average, systolic blood pressure (the top number) of 153 and diastolic blood pressure (the bottom number) of 84.

Every day for two weeks, they ate a 100-gram candy bar and were asked to balance its 480 calories by not eating other foods similar in nutrients and calories. Half the patients got dark chocolate and half got white chocolate.

Those who ate dark chocolate had a significant drop in blood pressure (by an average of 5 points for systolic and an average of 2 points for diastolic blood pressure). Those who ate white chocolate did not.

In the second study, Serafini's team signed up seven healthy women and five healthy men aged 25-35. On different days they each ate 100 grams of dark chocolate by itself, 100 grams of dark chocolate with a small glass of whole milk, or 200 grams of milk chocolate.

An hour later, those who ate dark chocolate alone had the most total antioxidants in their blood. And they had higher levels of epicatechin, a particularly healthy compound found in chocolate. The milk chocolate eaters had the lowest epicatechin levels of all.

Chocolate for Blood Pressure: Darker Is Better
What is it about dark chocolate? The answer is plant phenols -- cocoa phenols, to be exact. These compounds are known to lower blood pressure.

Chocolates made in Europe are generally richer in cocoa phenols than those made in the U.S. So if you're going to try this at home, remember: Darker is better.

Just remember to balance the calories. A 100-gram serving of Hershey's Special Dark Chocolate Bar has 531 calories, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. If you ate that much raw apple you'd only take in 52 calories. But then, you'd miss out on the delicious blood pressure benefit.

A hint: Don't replace healthy foods with chocolate. Most people's diets have plenty of sweets. Switch those for some chocolate if you're going to try the truffle treatment.

Got high blood pressure? Try a truffle. Worried about heart disease? Buy a bon-bon.

It's the best medical news in ages. Studies in two prestigious scientific journals say dark chocolate -- but not white chocolate or milk chocolate -- is good for you.

Dark Chocolate Lowers Blood Pressure
Dark chocolate -- not white chocolate -- lowers high blood pressure, say Dirk Taubert, MD, PhD, and colleagues at the University of Cologne, Germany. Their report appears in the Aug. 27 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association.

But that's no license to go on a chocolate binge. Eating more dark chocolate can help lower blood pressure -- if you've reached a certain age and have mild high blood pressure, say the researchers. But you have to balance the extra calories by eating less of other things.

Antioxidants in Dark Chocolate

Dark chocolate -- but not milk chocolate or dark chocolate eaten with milk -- is a potent antioxidant, report Mauro Serafini, PhD, of Italy's National Institute for Food and Nutrition Research in Rome, and colleagues. Their report appears in the Aug. 28 issue of Nature. Antioxidants gobble up free radicals, destructive molecules that are implicated in heart disease and other ailments.

"Our findings indicate that milk may interfere with the absorption of antioxidants from chocolate ... and may therefore negate the potential health benefits that can be derived from eating moderate amounts of dark chocolate."

Translation: Say "Dark, please," when ordering at the chocolate counter. Don't even think of washing it down with milk. And if health is your excuse for eating chocolate, remember the word "moderate" as you nibble.

Let Me Introduce Myself

Since this is my first post to our blog, I feel it necessary to at least tell a little about myself before we get rolling.  Here is a little story of how a trial lawyer turned to a honest life of chocolate.

After graduating from the University of Dayton School of Law in 1994, I settled into practicing law in Butler County Ohio, just north of Cincinnati.  This was about the same time Ed Carson, the founder of our company, began his venture into the business of selling personalized Hershey Bar birth announcements that proclaimed HERESHEIS®.

I loved practicing law. Never could I have imagined the excitement and opportunity every day would bring to make a difference for someone or something. It also is a very demanding line of work... evenings, and nights and weekends... it really just never stopped. Eventually you come to grips with the fact that as a trial lawyer with several hundred clients, you never really get caught up or relax.  If you did reach that point, that would mean that you were probably a broke trial lawyer which would carry another set of issues. Luckily for me, I never had any worries over staying busy, but I sure had plenty about keeping up.  All of that said, I would not trade the 10 years that I actively practiced law for anything, because it basically taught me that the more you learn the less you know, and boy did I learn a lot.

Ed Carson was busy between 1994 and 2003 also, keeping up with the demand for his personalized wrapped Hershey'€™s chocolate bar favors.  What had started out as a simple birth announcement business where people hand wrapped orders and shipped them out of a small warehouse space, became a business with 50 employees and the latest in printing and computer technology, shipping out over 5 million Hershey bar favors a year to people all over the world.

Somewhere in the middle of it all, Ed and I came together .. He needed my legal services and I needed the work, so it seemed like a match made in heaven.  For several years I helped Ed navigate everything from copier lease issues, domain name squatters, copyright infringers and construction complications.  I tell him today, he did a lot of owner financing over the years to allow the sale of the business to me.

So how did I get here you ask... very simple.  Over the years I knew Ed, I came to be fascinated with his business.  Not so much the processes, but fascinated with the impact his personalized candy bars had on the people who ordered them.

I remember sitting in the front reception area waiting to meet him for an appointment and watching as a customer came to pick up an order at our facility.  The first thing they did was open the box, just like Charlie in the movie Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, with almost a giddy anticipation.  The look on their faces when I watched them admire their name on their own Hershey chocolate bar was all it took... I was hooked. 

For years after that I would always say to Ed when we were together, €œ"Ed, if you ever decide to sell the business, call me first please."  I was almost joking, and doubt he took me seriously, but in the Spring of 2003, I did get a phone call from Ed who said he was considering retirement and was I really serious about my interest in the business.  I told him, without thinking, that yes I was interested and that evening I went home to tell my wife the great news about our opportunity to work with chocolate all day long!  Of course you can only imagine her excitement when her trial lawyer husband came home with this to tell her... she thought for certain I had finally snapped and gone off the deep end. 

So the end of the story goes like this... Sharon and I both left our careers, and security and partial sanity to buy Carson Wrapped Hershey'€™s from Ed Carson.  Now everyone thought we were crazy, and looking back they were probably right.  I tell those who ask me how I got here this same story, but it always ends like this... after a good day at Carson it was Sharon's idea to buy the business and after a bad day it was mine ... and that'€™s the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help me God.

by Scott Frederick, President of Sales & Business Operations

Can You Do This? Can You Do That?

Our answer is always YES!  But not everyone wants to pay an extra design fee for changes or custom artwork.  Our solution…continuously look for ways to expand our product offerings. 

For the last 4 years, Carson’s Graphic Art Department has been working nonstop to bring new options to you, our customers.  We started with a total revamp of our Birth Announcement collection.  Then we moved onto the Wedding Favors.  Along the way, many other categories were lightly touched upon as well..  And last year, in 2006, we spent over 6 months creating new wrapper designs for the Birthday collection. 

Last December, time was spent altering many of the Birthday designs for new Fill-in-the-Blank Valentines.  What a hit!  Over the last two months, we shipped more Valentine orders than ever before.  (Someday I would love to have a Valentine cover for our catalog – but that’s another topic.)

In 2007, we are trying to do a new category or group every month.  Here’s a look at our current design process, while working on a recent collection..  The artists and marketing associates went on a field trip to research for the Baptism/Christening section.  After gathering lots of great ideas, we had a brainstorming session to share directions we could go,  so the marketing department reviewed the list and narrowed it down to a manageable number of ideas.  After selecting ideas to work on, the graphic department created rough drafts for management’s review.  If the rough draft is in line with what we think you, our customers, are telling us you want, the artist finishes the work on the design.  The designs are proofed, printed and tested.  Then it becomes a NEW product on the website. 

Right now we are working on the Thank You gift collection.  If you ask, can you do this or that on my wrapper, the answer is almost always …YES.