Rick and Michael Mast have been deemed as "one of the craft chocolate world's great ambassadors". They have been introduced to the mainsteam as the bearded guys who make artisanal chocolates. They have already been featured in the New York Times and Vogue. Recently though, there are sudden turn of events that may just be the beginning of challenges if not totally close their chocolate empire.
An unknown blogger named Scott published this kind of expose. It was then re-confirmed by Quartz as chocolate that does not appears what it's supposed to be. This is the worst if not a sad story gone wrong about chocolates. The Mast brothers, creator of Mast Chocolate are allegedly making re-melted commercial chocolate, instead of their claims to have been making their products from bean to bar; and that they are just repacking these chocolates into beautiful wraps for sale at $10 apiece.
As for these brothers, in their press release states that these rumors are not true. They stand by their claim that since their inception in 2007, they have been making their chocolates from just a single source. They also have marketed themselves as the first chocolatier to ever market a product that comes from making chocolate in small batches. They want to give their consumers the sense that they supporting country farms instead of those globalized chocolate manufacturers.
Known as the creator of the world's prominent artisanal chocolate brand in Brooklyn, now, they have been shunned by chocolate experts. According to Aubrey Lindley of Cacao, in Portland Oregon, the chocolates that the Mast brothers are selling were of a fine texture that can only be achieve by someone who makes chocolate in an industrial manner, and not a small equipment that the Mast brothers claim they do . Later on, it was even declared that their chocolates are inedible by Lindley's standard.