The dark secrets of the world's billion dollar chocolate industry

The only American to have reached the very top of the world’s luxury chocolate industry has revealed the money’s-no-object excesses, the shameless power grabs, and the celebrity-schmoozing that go on behind the scenes of its best-known brands.

As the US director of stores at Godiva through the 1980s and 1990s, Brad Yater helped transform it into the most popular super-premium chocolate in the US, valued at $1 billion and beloved by the rich and famous.

And in his new book, Chocolate Covered Money, he has revealed for the first time the industry’s ‘dirty little secrets’, from persuading the Pope to be a brand ambassador, to how he foiled a plot to defraud US immigration - with devastating results.

‘Celebrities of the 1980s and 1990s shopped at Godiva’s branded stores,’ he writes. ‘The dirty little secret was they all got their chocolate for free. We never charged celebrities because their publicity was priceless.'

He adds: ‘I will never forget the year I invited Pope John Paul II to do his Christmas shopping at our store in Brussels... It turns out the Pope owned his own private L-1011, a widebody jumbo jet. 

'His staff said his eminence would fly in from Rome on a certain day … little did I know the Pope had his own surprise... [he] had invited two of his best friends to join him Christmas shopping - Elizabeth Taylor and her Royal Majesty Queen Paola of Belgium.

'There the three of them were, standing in a Godiva store, oohing and aahing over the displays.'

Brad also recalls Whoopi Goldberg causing a stir at the San Francisco store while she was filming Sister Act in 1992 – she came shopping still wearing her nun’s habit.

'She chit chatted with the staff... It turns out the caterer must have been shopping for Whoopi all during the shoot because Whoopi knew the names of various Godiva pieces and clearly had her favorites. 

'The staff packed up our largest boxes of free samples for her and had shopping bags full of Godiva chocolates taken down to the car that was waiting to take Whoopi to her hotel.'

He adds: 'People were walking by the windows and taking pictures from the sidewalk... The next day our store had free publicity all over the local news in San Francisco.'

The brand even had a lucrative relationship with the King of Pop - not that it ever made the news headlines.

‘Michael Jackson was the only non-employee in the world to have keys to a Godiva store,’ writes Brad.

He wanted to bring his children, Paris and Prince, to the Topanga Plaza store but feared the frenzy it might cause, so planned a top-secret, after-hours visit instead in the late 1990s.

‘The mall closed at 6pm on Sundays,' he explains. 'By 7pm, everyone in the building would be gone, including other mall employees. 

'Michael was invited to bring the children to the shop any time after 7pm and let themselves in using the key. They would have the entire store to themselves without anyone to bother them.

‘We decided on a date. Mall security knew that a VIP would be parking on the roof of the garage and entering the building through the service corridors after hours. At closing time, the shop staff kept the lights on and the alarm off, just as if they were not closing, and everyone went home for the night.

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‘The chocolate case was illuminated with 50 kinds of chocolate. I left a clipboard on the counter. Michael could write down a list of anything the children ate or took home. A bill would be “sent to the studio,” which is code for “charged-off as a marketing expense,” since no bills are ever sent to celebrities’ studios.’

When the staff arrived the next morning, he recalls that the Jackson shopping list featured just 10 pieces of candy and three chocolate-covered strawberries. The star had also left a stack of hundred dollar bills on the counter as payment.

When his ex-wife Debbie Rowe - who had engineered the visit - was told of the largesse, she responded: ‘That sounds like Michael. He has no concept of money. For all we know he thinks that’s how much a few chocolates cost!’

But, after 13 years with Godiva, rumors of an imminent sale were circulating, and Brad started to sniff around for another opportunity - which led him to a bizarre interview with the Greek brand Leonidas in Monaco - which was something straight out of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

The performance included repeating a bizarre secret password - ‘five, four, three, two, one, the chilly wind blows over the snowy plane, one, two, three, four, five’ - and, once he'd gained access to an empty Leonidas store, he had to dial the combination to a mystery passageway by turning trays of chocolates as if working the combination of a bicycle lock.

‘I wound up in a glass elevator with a fingertip recognition scanner, leading to a hidden quay where a tender was waiting to take me to a 250-foot mega-yacht anchored off Monte Carlo,’ he writes.

‘I felt as if I had stepped out of the real world and become a character in a fantastical gaslight scene from someone else’s alternate reality. But in my mind, I knew this was all really necessary for security reasons.’

'We’ll show you how it’s done,' one of the shareholders said to him, as she regaled the group with tales of chartering Concorde to New York to do her Christmas shopping at Bloomingdale’s.

Brad took this to mean that they would 'demonstrate to an American how real money was made.'

Indeed, he admits now: 'Until I started working for the Greeks, I never knew that much money existed.' 

After a successful interview with the mysterious trio of shareholders, he was provided with a car and driver to whisk him back to the train station. But the Greeks had a final surprise in store.

‘As the car started to weave through the cobblestone streets... we drove past the street where I had entered. I looked out the window, and the Leonidas storefront was gone,’ he writes.  

There were more unexplained happenings to come during his nine years as USA CEO of Leonidas. But one of the strangest was when he uncovered what he believed was a plot by a rival to defraud the US Immigration Service - all of which happened during a period he was off work recovering from an injury.

'I was not pleased to find out that someone from Leonidas had been physically visiting US stores to “check up” on things while I was hospitalized,' he writes. 'Her name was Myrtle. 

'The problem was no one had bothered to clear that with me. Whoever this Myrtle person was had not called me to introduce herself.'

Once back at work, he decided to contrive a face-to-face meeting with Myrtle during a corporate retreat at a castle in the Black Forest, Germany.

Cornering her in a corridor, he writes that she was ‘cordial in person. But she made my skin crawl, and my intuition was that she was up to no good.’

His suspicions were confirmed when some members of the board asked him to help solve a 'problem'.

'It seemed that Myrtle’s husband was getting transferred to Hartford by the company he worked for. Myrtle wanted to go too but could not because she did not have a visa and without it, she would not be able to work in the US.'

Brad was then given a copy of a lawyer's letter to sign, outlining Leonidas' 'sponsorship' of Myrtle, which would allow her to transfer from Brussels to Connecticut. 

'In order to justify her visa application, the two-page document outlined supposed responsibilities Myrtle would carry out in the US that only she was capable of performing.

'I categorically denied having any part in this fraud being perpetrated. I found strong language to explain that what Leonidas was doing was illegal on many levels. Not only was Myrtle not actually going to be working for Leonidas, Myrtle, in fact, I came to find out, had no skills, no education, and no experience.

'Suddenly it all made sense. Myrtle had been lobbying for a way to get to move to the US by making it appear that I needed “help” managing the brand. It was entirely probable that she had also been at the very least undermining me and at worst sabotaging my chain of command.'

He agreed to take the letter - but then rewrote it to bring a decisive end to Myrtle's plan.

'I turned the document into an anti-sponsorship document, so I could mail the letter to US Immigration to persuade them to reject rather than approve Myrtle’s application.'

His letter had the desired effect. Myrtle’s name was added to the No Fly List and she was banned from entering the US for ten years.

'This situation could have possibly been avoided had people been straightforward in their dealings,' he writes. 'It all boils down to people underestimating me and not realizing that I have eyes in the back of my head and will find out everything that goes on in my stores, one way or another, sooner or later.'

Chocolate Covered Money by Brad Yater is published by Post Hill Press