A luxury chocolatier is betting that mass retail can carry premium positioning. Cacao Market by MarieBelle New York has placed its 50-piece Dark Chocolate Truffles in select Costco warehouses across Brooklyn, Long Island, Staten Island, and New Jersey, with the product also available nationwide on Costco.com — marking the brand's most significant retail distribution push since its founding.
The Numbers
The 50-piece box is priced at $21.99 and available through participating Costco locations and via Instacart for a limited holiday window. A three-box bundle — totaling 150 pieces — is listed on Costco.com at $84.00, implying a per-box cost of $28.00 in that configuration, a modest premium over the single-unit warehouse price. The pricing strategy places Cacao Market's truffles firmly in the accessible-premium tier, well below the brand's flagship luxury offerings while retaining artisan positioning.
Channel Strategy
The Costco entry is supported by in-store sampling through the retailer's Roadshow program, which gives emerging and established brands structured access to warehouse foot traffic on a weekly rotation at participating locations. For Cacao Market, the Roadshow component functions as an acquisition tool — converting trial into basket purchases in a channel that skews toward bulk and gifting categories, both of which align with holiday confectionery demand.
The move reflects a broader pattern in the premium chocolate segment, where brands built on boutique or direct-to-consumer foundations are pursuing club and mass channels to scale volume without discounting brand equity. Competitors including Vosges and Compartés have pursued comparable warehouse and specialty-mass placements in recent years. For MarieBelle New York, which operates boutiques in New York City and Japan and handcrafts product from a Brooklyn factory, the Cacao Market sub-brand serves as a deliberate vehicle for that expansion — preserving the parent brand's luxury positioning while capturing a wider consumer base.
Brand Context
"Bringing our Dark Chocolate Truffles to Costco allows us to introduce more people to high-quality chocolate at a price that makes them perfect for indulging, sharing, or gifting," said Maribel Lieberman, CEO and Founder of MarieBelle New York. The comment underscores the dual-brand architecture the company is employing: MarieBelle as a high-end destination, Cacao Market as the volume-oriented complement.
Cacao Market's product line spans chocolate bars, truffles, caramels, pearls, dragées, and European-style hot chocolate, with packaging designed around geometric motifs attributed to the work of Jacques Lieberman. The aesthetic differentiation is a deliberate shelf-impact strategy in a club environment where packaging must perform at scale. The dark chocolate truffle's cocoa-dusted finish and described "velvety center" are consistent with current consumer demand trends favoring dark and single-origin profiles over milk chocolate formats, according to category data tracked by confectionery analysts. For more on premium chocolate's retail expansion, see our coverage of confectionery retail trends and holiday gifting strategies in foodservice.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
