Chocolatier's Profiling, 6 hrs a week

Working smack dab in the middle of the mall, you see and hear, a lot. Not only with the customers that actually come up to the store but also the ones just fluttering about. Never having worked in retail really, and certainly never having worked in "food", this has been oh so entertaining for me. I am infinitely amused by people, and their behaviors, reactions and interactions with others. So, of course, I am selling chocolate but also analyzing the crap out of them. How is the saying.......You can take the therapist out of the therapizing, but you can't take the therapizing out of the therapist. Yeah, I just made that up.

Mentally, I have broken up my customers into some categories.

I have customers that come allofthetime. These are what I like to call my "frequent fatties". Most of these are well, robust, and of a sturdy weight. They are great. They look at the chocolate case with complete abandon and borderline lust. Listen, it's chocolate and I get it (I do!) but really, with these folks, you almost don't want to interrupt. These folks eat the chocolate almost before you are done ringing them up and they eat it fast. They complain a bit about the price and how little they get for it. Sometimes, I think to myself that they should be buying a hershey's king size bar and be done with it. Sorry, my blog, my thoughts ;)

People that ask me specifics about the nutritional values of the truffles and chocolate. Making me read calories, fat, and sugars. Breaking down the serving size, saturated fat etc, I call these "the buzzkillers". Taking all the fun out of it. It's chocolate, not jenny craig or wholefoods.

Coming only to ask "do you have samples today" and then not buying anything. Those are my "pretenders". Even though, I too, have done this and will continue to once I leave this job. It's still funny. They pretend to be interested and even comment on this or that, but they walk away....slowly....lingering at the chocolate case pretending to think about it. Nope, I'm on to you.

And then my favorite, we will call them "the connoisseur". This is the customer that asks how they are made, what percentage of dark chocolate is in them, what style of ganache, what is our new pieces, how one piece differs from another. I love having these convos with these folks. It is fun and we both are engaged.

The "storytellers" are the ones that have lived in Europe (germany, belgium, sweden) and have a story about the chocolate "over there" and how much better it is and how they used to love walking through towns and buying fresh choclate etc. These are fun to listen to.

Then we have the "lady's choice" customers. These are people who ask me my favorite and leave it up to me to choose for them. Even though this is fun, choosing chocolate for someone is really not easy. I know what I love but it might not be what you love. The difference bewteen Dark, Milk and White chocolate is immense (I know, I am being dramatic but it's true) so it is really nerveracking for me to do this.

Finally (for today anyhow) there is the "BTDT (been there done that)" customers. These are customers that come with another person. This other person has never been to Godiva and the btdt person is their "guide". Stuff they say is "this is their signature chocolate", "you'll love this one", "they do this one really well", "this one is my favorite", "you just have to try it to really see", "this isn't like other chocoalte you've ever had", etc. etc. etc. Fun, but obnoxious.

Anyhow, I will keep an eye out (of course I will) for new profiles of our chocolate customers. I hope no one from corporate gets wind of my talking smack about the peeps that come to the store. I haven't given anyone my blog (not that they are even one bit interested) at work, so I think we're safe.

This concludes this installment of Chocolatier's Profiling...back to your regularly scheduled blogging.