They gave me a very nice salary, bonuses here and there, consulting fees and a little bit of royalties, but left me with a very small percentage in the brand - 3.5% equity. Strauss was the largest food corporation in Israel, and they basically took over the company. But maybe three years in, if I was making money, it was for sure not enough to continue.
#Max brenner chocolates tv
I had a lot of fame, I was participating in many TV shows, and everybody knew about the brand. Max Brenner was a big success from the beginning, but the success had nothing to do with making money. What were the factors that led up to you deciding to sell Max Brenner?
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His perspective is valuable to entrepreneurs considering selling equity in their business, those in the midst of a nasty split with business partners, or anyone simply figuring out how to start again after a staggering loss. He talked about his initial fateful decision to sell Max Brenner, trying to work in a corporate environment as an entrepreneur, the bitterness that came with losing control of his own creation, being banned from doing what he was best at, and how he came to view those five years in the emotional and financial wilderness as an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. In a candid conversation, Brenner opened up about what he learned while going through his own personal hell. And all of this came about because of those five years of hell." When you see what's going on around the world - climate change, pollution, the gap between the rich and other countries - it feels like finally here is a small way that I, with my 25 years of experience, can do something to make a change. "But what I'm doing today with Blue Stripes is much more beautiful in terms of both creativity and meaningful message. "I think Max Brenner was a phenomenal brand," Brenner says. The purity and the cultural origins of it."īlue Stripes uses all parts (shell, fruit and pods) of the cacao to make impressively healthy products - from cacao water and dried fruit, to cookies, energy bars and protein balls, keto dessert bites, granola, hazelnut butter, and pastry flour. "I was like, wow, this is cacao the way I want to talk about it. "I was shocked that I had dealt with chocolate for 20 years and was so unaware of the potential," Brenner says.
He was aghast to learn that chocolatiers only use 30 percent of the whole "superfood," and trash the rest. Brenner had discovered the myriad uses of cacao - a football-shaped fruit with white, somewhat ghostly-looking "pods" inside - on a trip to a Blue Mountain Coffee plantation in Jamaica. In 2018, the Blue Stripes: Urban Cacao shop opened just a block and a half from the Max Brenner flagship in Union Square. But when the exile was over, he returned with a new venture. And he was banned from creating anything chocolate-related or putting his name or face on any brand for five years ( Entrepreneur reached out to Strauss for comment but didn't receive a response prior to publication).īrenner says those five years were the darkest of his life he moved his family, struggled financially, called up friends to ask for help finding work. Brenner fought down to his last penny, but still lost both Little Brown and his place at Max Brenner. But when the new concept started to find success, Strauss sued him for violating his non-compete. With Strauss's blessing, he opened a separate cafe chain, Little Brown Chocolate Bakery & Coffee, in 2011. And while the brand continued to grow, moving its headquarters to New York and opening 50-plus international locations, Brenner began to feel the loss of control more acutely. In 2001, the company was acquired by Israeli food conglomerate Strauss Group. Word of the chocolate amusement spread, and Max Brenner (a hat-tip to Brenner and his original partner, Max Fichtman) quickly became a household name in Israel. I really turned it into a chocolate amusement park."
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You say, "I'm addicted to chocolate, I want a chocolate fix.' So I created a big syringe full of chocolate so you can shoot it into your mouth. Let's create a "hug mug,' so you can hug your mug close and feel like you are in a chalet on a ski vacation. I said: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? Let's create chocolate pipes that go all around the restaurant. So this was the beginning of Max Brenner. Traditional chocolate stores treat chocolate almost like jewelry, in these beautiful boxes - don't touch it! But when I talked to my customers, they were talking about Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, sexy gifts, romantic childhood memories, the emotional connotations of chocolate. "I felt there was a big gap between the way people talk and think about chocolate and the way they experience it in the retail world.
"The things I was doing in my shop were very out of the box, different from classic European chocolate stores," he says.
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