We hope you are not hitting the snooze button on your romance richter! Valentine’s Day is a quickie away, and before you know it s/he will be looking at you wondering if you really just handed him/ her a crappy Teddy Bear from the drugstore. We recommend that you get your dark chocolate fix and save the world at the same time by ordering from the Rescue Chocolate Company, which began operations in January 2010 with the launch of two flavors.
Peanut Butter Pit Bull and Pick Me! Pepper are the first two flavors that this Park Slope, Brooklyn company has launched. As the names suggest, this is a company on a mission. A sizable chunk of the profits on the sale of its products is donated to animal rescue organizations around the country.
In addition to the usual data found on chocolate wrappers, such as the special ingredients and flavor, Rescue Chocolate bars also deliver a pithy pitch to do good on behalf of the animals. For example, Peanut Butter Pit Bull advocates against breed-specific legislation; its wrapper sports the company’s mascot, a pit bull who looks decidedly un-ferocious and downright cuddly. Choose Me! Chipotle lobbies for pet adoptions from shelters rather than pet shops or breeders.
Additional flavors are planned for roll-out later this year. Fosterrific Peppermint will drum up support for foster parents for homeless dogs and cats. And The Fix will urge pet-owners to… do just that to prevent unwanted litters.
But do the words spay and neuter really have a place on a chocolate bar wrapper? Rescue Chocolate founder Sarah Gross says, Absolutely!
According to Gross, People want their shopping dollars to do double duty. It’s not enough to just go out and buy a really great chocolate bar. They like it when their money is paid forward and given to a socially responsible cause. No cause is dearer to me than the issue of homeless pets in our shelters.
Gross is banking on that message resonating with the animal activists, shelter volunteers, neighborhood cat ladies, and ordinary pet owners out there who, in addition to living with animals, also like to eat chocolate. She intends to take her bars to pet adoption events, humane society fundraisers, and pet store check-out aisles, as well as the usual retail outlets like grocery stores and candy shops. She also wants to see the bars in veterinary offices, noting that a happy (chocolate-eating) pet owner makes for a more relaxed pet.
And heads up to the health-conscious. Thanks to chocolate’s high flavonoid content, the food is touted as an anti-cancer, anti-aging, pro-memory, pro-concentration wunderkind. And if all that doesn’t hit the mark, Rescue Chocolate is also completely kosher and VEGAN to boot.
The company makes a virtue of its small size, emphasizing that its products come from real people with vision rather than anonymous focus groups. There is also a spotlight on the young and edgy, the way we like it. Founder Gross is 24, although she has already had experience developing a best-selling chocolate bar for another artisan chocolate company, Gnosis Chocolate, based in Queens. She came to the chocolate business via a roundabout route involving work as a professional ballet dancer, Pilates instructor, and animal shelter volunteer. A native of Texas, she has resided in New York City for the past 3 years.
Her plans for the future of the company (and the world!) are big. She wants to take her chocolate bars to all 50 states in the next 12 months, and go international within 5 years. And she looks forward to the day, in the words of her rescue partner group, the Mayor’s Alliance for Animals, when no dog or cat of reasonable health and temperament is killed merely because he or she does not have a home.
Salivating yet? Rescue Chocolate is available for purchase online now at RescueChocolate.com.
GGA readers can enter code “GGA10” to get their 10th bar free when ordering nine!