Ethel's Chocolate Lounge. "We're literally eating bon-bons while our husbands are hard at work," says Tiffany Lopez, expressing her delight with Ethel's Chocolate Lounge, as quoted by Amy Chozik in The Wall Street Journal. Tiffany was indeed "sipping tea and eating truffles off a silver platter," no less, at Ethel's Chocolate Lounge, ethelschocolate.com, in Lincoln, Park, Illinois, one of three such lounges in the Chicago area. Just like the focus groups said she would. Ethel's, as it turns out, is brought to you by Mars, Inc., whose research revealed that "even the most diet conscious consumers ... would occasionally splurge on 'premium' chocolate -- in terms of calories and money -- if it were part of a broader social experience. Yes, they'd certainly go for a place to "chocolate and chitchat." (Emphahsis mine. Show's how much we're starved, pun intended, for more 3rd place environments in our lives.)
So women are from Mars after all (sorry). "Ethel's is about maximizing the chocolate experience," says John Haugh, president of gourmet chocolate and retail at Mars. Indeed, a "four piece serving of Ethel's chocolate has about 160 to 220 calories, about the same amount as a latte made with whole milk." The ambiance, meanwhile, is all pink-and-brown, including "plush pastel-colored furniture ... striped wallpaper and whimsical lighting." The concept is loosely based on the chocolate lounges of "17th century London." And the pricing is pretty mainstream: "An average serving at Ethel's is a four-piece plate of chocolate priced at about 90 cents to $1.50 apiece." As for the chocolates, they're pretty mainstream too.
Focus groups said they'd rather have "standards like milk chocolate and creamy caramel" than fancy candies with mysterious fillings -- although Ethel's does offer "a few unusual flavors like key lime and peanut butter and jelly." This move into retail is a logical one for Mars. Chocolate is a $14.5 billion industry in America, but the packaged kind "has posted annual sales increases of less than 3 percent from 2000 to 2004," according to the National Confectioners Assn, candyusa.org. Sales "at upscale coffee and cocoa stores," however, "rose 20.6 percent in the same period." (Emphasis mine. More proof that we will always spend more to have an experience, rather then just buy a product.) Ethel's (named for the "late matriarch of Mars") has been around in the form of Ethel M. mall stores since 1981, but those didn't have any seating. Chicago will have six Ethel's Chocolate Lounges by the end of the summer, and Mars says it "plans a national rollout later this year."
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