Year: 2009

Back in 2008, candy giant Hershey changed the formulas of many of its “second tier” candies like Mr Goodbar. Today’s Mr Goodbar is no longer “peanuts in milk chocolate”, but instead “peanuts in chocolate candy” (which is actually “mockolate“, a confection made with cocoa solids but no cocoa butter, substituting instead much cheaper vegetable oil).

The new bars taste like crap, of course. However, like all good marketing wonks, Hershey’s PR people are falling all over themselves to tell anyone who will listen that people actually prefer the new, non-chocolate version of Mr Goodbar. If that’s the case… then why does this new product exist:

There it is… yet another sign that the end of the world is coming!

See if you can follow this: Hershey decided that using milk chocolate to make Mr Goodbar was too expensive, so they opted to change the Mr Goodbar formula to use mokolate instead of chocolate. Hershey’s PR reps claimed victory… but “so many people loved the new Mr Goodbar” (sarcasm) that now the company is using the Hershey brand to sell a new product that amounts to the old product… instead of just going back to the old Mr Goodbar formula in the the first place!

In case anyone from Hershey is reading this, it’s stuff like this (not to mention your complete embrace of mokolate) that keep me an M&M Mars fan. As a kid, I ate enough Hershey bars to sink a battleship… but now I’d rather eat a 10 year-old Milky Way bar than anything from Hershey!

Topix is a website that hosts discussion groups for tens of thousands of cities and small towns all across America. They even have a forum for Belmont, North Carolina, and I check it around once a week or so just to see what’s going on there.

I recently saw a thread there praising the H&M Deli in nearby Cramerton. What really got my attention was that everyone seemed to like it, something rare at the Topix board. I decided to check the place out a couple of weeks ago.

(Apologies for the “shaky cam” pictures. I hadn’t planned to do a review of the place and so I only had my cell phone handy!)

The first thing you’ll notice when you walk in is that H&M isn’t just a deli. They’re a full-blown specialty store with wines, beer, cheeses, spices, and other food products from around the world:

The second thing you’ll notice is that these items are frightfully expensive, and not just because most of them are top-shelf quality. Allow me to use Sriracha hot sauce as an example. My local Walmart sells the 17oz. bottle for $1.99. Local Harris Teeter stores sell it for $4.99. H&M sell it for $5.99 $5.09, which is just a rip-off.  (Helpful tip: Asian Market on Wilkinson Blvd. in Belmont sells the 28oz. bottle for $3.99). Having said all that, H&M just might be the only place in Gaston County where you can buy Hawai’ian black sea salt, so if you’ve just gotta have some, it’s probably better to take the 10 minute drive to H&M and pay $15.99 than drive all the hell way over to South Park just to save $4.

Continue reading “REVIEW: H&M Deli”