Max Brenner takes a stab at a plump cinnamon roll, which he’s ladled with warm gooey chocolate. It’s 2:45 p.m., but all he’s eaten today is cookies and waffles, the sugary stuff that’s become his very livelihood.
Brenner, who’s real name is Oded and was born in a suburb of Tel Aviv, recently opened Max Brenner: Chocolate by the Bald Man, a whimsical retail and restaurant emporium in Manhattan’s Union Square neighborhood. The 4,700-square-foot outlet—his first in the U.S.—is a cross between a noisy brasserie and a theme park. The front end features hand-crafted chocolates lined in a glass case like jewelry, while the remainder is a casual eatery offering everything from chocolate pizzas and fondue S'mores to sandwiches, salads and other center-plate fare. PR and word-of-mouth is attracting the attention of everyone from local students, kid-toting families, tourists—even PepsiCo’s new CEO, Indra Nooyi.
Against a background of jazz by day and soft rock at night, fixtures made from woods in varying shades of cocoa evoke Central America or Spain, accented by comical hand-painted drawings. “Stop it Max, this is already too much,” reads one sign. Average checks are $13 and annual unit volume is expected to reach a hefty $6 million. A second Lower East Side unit about half the size is expected to open before month’s end.
Brenner, a struggling writer who still hopes to pen his great novel, has opened 20 Bald Man locations in partnership with the Israeli candy conglomerate Strauss-Elite. And it was pretty much an accident.
“As John Lennon said, ‘Life happens while you’re busy planning other things,’” he quipped. At 21, Brenner got a government stipend to travel to Austria and take courses as a pastry chef. “For me, it was better than being a waiter,” he said, figuring he needed to live a life that was “very lonely, sad, sick or something like that,” so he could be inspired to write like the great Russian novelists he’d admired as a youth.
Brenner’s parents, both scientists, thought he was crazy, but he convinced them he could learn a trade and still pay his rent. Along the way, he traveled to Paris, met a chocolate maker and was smitten. “It was the peak of romance and the decoration behind life," he said of the now life-altering experience.
Brenner, a strict vegetarian, isn’t a chef who just wants to spin out new recipes. His mission is to create a “chocolate culture,” extending a world of appreciation and indulgence that goes back hundreds of years. After all, chocolate has many more attributes than taste. “It’s sexy, romantic and decadent,” he argues. Brenner recently discussed his melts-in-your mouth passion with Brandweek editor Karen Benezra.
Brandweek: What does your brand stand for?
Max Brenner: For me, chocolate is a material. It’s like the paint for the painter, or stone for the sculptor. It’s the material for me to express what I actually wanted to write many years ago. Chocolate is unlike many food ingredients. Cheese is a gourmet product. Steak is a gourmet product. Chocolate is a gourmet product that almost equally has so many associations and ideas that are much more than taste. It’s a way to create a very holistic experience that’s very intimate to me, but has broad appeal.
When people see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory they don’t feel chocolate, they feel fantasy in a straightforward way . . . and in a symbolic way, it’s very much like my character, which has lots of contradictions. And that’s what human beings are all about.
You can buy chocolate for $100 a pound and really love this fine [product] and the next day, wake up in the middle of the night have an attack of the munchies and buy a bar for 20 cents. It has all these edges.
BW: How did you develop the concept?
MB: It took me many years to reveal what it is and I’m still discovering something new about its DNA every day . . . It’s more complicated than just being ‘the ultimate place for chocolate.’
With chocolate you want to sit down and indulge. It’s not a restaurant where you come for many hours and spend $50. And it’s not fast like coffee—it’s something in between. It’s to sit after a movie for 45 minutes have a dessert, a hot chocolate and relax and enjoy. It’s an affordable luxury.
BW: So rather than sell chocolate by the bar or by the piece, you’re selling an experience.
MB: I call it a culture. Some people say how can you do that—making chocolate is thousands of years old! But the idea is composed of many elements besides taste. There is a very long tradition of making chocolate, but it’s not a culture like wine. Chocolate was very much narrowed by a tradition of making recipes.
We believe deeply in the concept. We’ve tried it in a few other countries—Australia, Singapore, The Philippines and Israel—so it’s not totally new. And since we’re owned by a big corporation, if we really want to test the concept, it has to work in different neighborhoods beyond Union Square.
I compare it to theatre. I do a lot of shopping, and when I finish, I go to restaurants. It moves me so much, I’ll talk about it to everyone.
BW: What are your plans for the U.S.?
MB: We don’t know yet. The next store is going to be in New York, but the third one might be in Las Vegas or LA.
The idea was to create a very European classical place on the one hand, with hot chocolate, coziness, brown tones and then to break it with whimsical wallpaper and signs that say “Look, Willy Wonka is Alive” with fantasy objects like the chocolate pipes.
BW: What brands do you admire?
MB: Virgin. I love him as a personality. If I think of the brand, it’s really the experience. People love what it represents. It’s controversial. Richard Branson is young, he’s a revolutionary. And he made it perfect. But I also love Starbucks and iPod and things like that that have influenced the culture.
BW: What’s your book about?
MB: One is about dreams and memories. All these interactions between the present reality and what we have in our dreams and the big gap between them.
People have a hard time living in their reality—they’re very non-Buddhist. The Western culture is about either living dreams or thinking about the future, or recalling the past that was so good.
I’m not a philosopher, so it’s not about finding a solution. But it’s all the time in my head.
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