"We love debuting new products on the cover, but having a food item is rare." This is our hit,'" says Amanda Haas, the brand's culinary director. "Looking back, I'm just amazed that they were like, 'no, this is going to be it. It sold out almost immediately, prompting Williams to put it on the cover of the brand's holiday catalog the following year-serious territory, given that the coveted space is often reserved for big-ticket gifts and gadgets. "We knew it was a good idea, but we couldn't anticipate that it'd become a phenomenon," one of the creators told Lauren Tarzia, Williams-Sonoma's public relations manager. After 20 rounds of recipe testing, they created a blend they felt had just the right ratio of dark chocolate, white chocolate and peppermint, so it wouldn't be cloyingly sweet or overwhelmingly minty. Chuck Williams-yup, the 'W' of the brand-was a huge fan of retro candies, and back in 1998, he challenged a team of three food merchants to come up with throwback treats that'd harken to back to his time as a kid visiting candy stores at Christmastime. Its popularity may be surprising to some, but not to the man who helped create it.
Copycat williams sonoma peppermint bark full#
View full post on Instagram They Focused on Nostalgia Over 'New.' We headed to the company's headquarters in San Francisco to get some answers. It's just dark chocolate, white chocolate and crushed peppermint, so why has it become so popular that Williams-Sonoma goes through a million pounds of chocolate each year, just to keep up with demand? And how has it sparked all kinds of spin-offs (and copycats, from rival retailers and chocolatiers alike)? At its core, peppermint bark is easily replicable, even for home cooks with a lengthy track record of burning Pop-Tarts.
The candy's fan following-and the fact that it comes from a company better known for stocking a rainbow of Kitchenaid stand mixers and Le Creuset pans-can be dumbfounding at first. In the 18 years since Williams-Sonoma first launched its peppermint bark, the brand's seen the simple, nostalgic candy go from popular stocking stuffer to cult favorite, becoming such a snowballing hit that the kitchenware company has started to view the holiday season-AKA the time when retail companies everywhere are pulling out every shiny new gadget and doorbuster deal to get people through the doors-as "peppermint bark season." An entire section of the store is devoted to the red, white and silver tins, hawking 19 products featuring different ways to enjoy the bark, from brownie mixes to coffee syrups to infuse your morning latte. They don't care that the temperature outside may be 89 degrees, or that there's still 110 days until Christmas they're ready to get a dose of holiday cheer, and they want it in the form of peppermint-topped slabs of chocolate, thank you very much. Not long after Labor Day, people start asking for it.
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