It’s hard to do branded tweets in honor of national days of remembrance, as companies seem to consistently forget, whether it’s for 9/11, Memorial Day, Veterans Day, or Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.
This year, one of the worst offenders is the so-called craft chocolate company Mast Brothers, which is using Martin Luther King, Jr.’s message of love to promote its own questionable products, both on Twitter and Instagram.
The posts follow December’s news, first revealed in a four-part series from a Dallas food blogger and then confirmed and reported by Quartz, that the ubiquitous bearded brothers of Brooklyn, in their early years, were calling themselves “bean-to-bar” chocolate makers despite selling remelted industrial chocolate. They also echo the company’s initial demurrer to the Dallas food blogger posts, signing an email to Grub Street, “More chocolate, and more love, please,” as well as the #MoreLoveMoreChocolate hashtag that sprung up immediately after the Quartz story was published.
Mast Brothers has since insisted that it never sold remelted bars as “bean-to-bar,” but a publicist for the company did not, on request from Quartz, provide a list of which of the early bars were actually bean-to-bar and which were remelted. Sales of the bars have fallen dramatically in the aftermath at some retailers, Grub Street has reported.
While there’s nothing wrong with a little bit of love, it’s unclear what two white guys selling pseudo-elitist chocolate have in common with a man whose legacy is built on equality.