Montezuma's - great chocolate, but...

I must be one of montezuma's greatest advocates, for the great vegan suitable (and therefore lactose free) dark chocolate products they make. They are the only place I can find nice lactose-free truffles, and make great dark chocolate blocks, buttons, and (as of recently) dark chocolate honeycomb. 

However, a visit to their shop in Winchester last week left me pondering their loyalty scheme, in a less-than-positive manner. Montezuma's currently run a loyalty card which they sign each time you visit. After 10 visits you get a free bag of truffles - all good. 

However, as far as I can tell (and I will be asking!), you don't get a stamp for a particular value of money. This means that, surely, it would be better to queue up several times and make smaller purchases? Mr LFL says not, as the signatures are date stamped and therefore you only get 1 per visit, regardless of what is spent. This is even worse! As only an occasional visitor, I spend quite a lot when I do visit - yet someone who is able to visit regularly as they are local could buy only £5 of chocolate each visit and accumulate a full loyalty card by spending much less than me!

I also raised the point in store, that you don't get signatures for a loyalty card when you shop online. This is my regular way of obtaining montezuma's chocolate, as the shops are not local. The Winchester store responded by giving me a 10% off voucher when you shop online, valid for May, but this was then instead of my loyalty card signature for that visit. 

Overall I think the system needs thinking about. I'm sure some small stickers could be put in an online order to be added to the loyalty card, and signatures/stickers allocated for a certain amount - 1 for every £5/£10 spent perhaps. It is a shame that such a great chocolate company don't seem to have got customer loyalty quite sorted etc... I will be e-mailing Montezuma's and feeding back on their response.

LRLx

Dark chocolate Lindt bunnies!

So, Easter has come and gone... this year I have had some dark chocolate treats to fill the small (ok, fairly large) milk chocolate gap that has been left by this lactose intolerance malarky.

There was great excitement, therefore, when I chanced upon a dark chocolate lindt bunny when doing my tesco online shop. You can see it here: http://www.lindt.ca/swf/eng/products/easter/lindt-gold-bunny-signature-collection/lindt-gold-bunny-dark-200g/

I was so very excited by the prospect of lindt chocolate I could eat, I promptly ordered 2, and ate most of 1 before Easter really arrived! However, on careful reflection (and by the fact there is still 1 intact), I was left feeling a bit... meh. Definitely not as enthralled as I would be. I think it is perhaps because I am now used to fairly dark chocolate, as both Hotel Chocolat and Montezuma's have high cocoa percentages in their dark chocolate. The lindt bunny, although creamier and slightly more melty than the previously mentioned brands, just tasted a bit cheaper. I did enjoy it, and it was very more-ish (more so than the other brands, where a little is often  sometimes enough), but I wasn't as wowed as I expected to be. In addition, and it may be pure coincedence, I did find I had stomach ache and didn't feel great most nights after I ate some. This could be down to the quantity of chocolate consumed, of course, and there is definately no milk in the ingrediants, but it did leave me with clear memories of the sort of symptoms I encountered prior to my lacto free life. Which means, at some point in the future, another experiment will need to be conducted with the remaining chocolate bunny. What a shame.... 

LFLx