Pressroom - Last Minute Valentine's Day Gifts
IF YOU ORDER the $39.99 Valentine’s Day Special at gourmet truffle shop dans.com, you’ll receive a plush 9-inch-tall Teddy bear, valued at $9.99. The Random, Mass.-based chocolate shop stocks 200 assortments of handmade truffles. All the truffles have an outer milk- or dark-chocolate shell and are filled with fruits, nuts, caramels or more chocolate.
The Valentineís special at dans.com comes with a free plush bear, valued at $9.99.
The V-Day special, which comes in a red velvet heart-shaped box, contains a few samples of each of the chocolate shop’s 12 flavors. The names sound more exotic than the ingredients. “Razz-matazz,” a round truffle, has a dark-chocolate shell with a raspberry puree filling. The “transcendental toffee,” a rectangular truffle, contains a “mind-expanding combination of almond and hazelnut filling with crunchy toffee tidbits.” Other flavors include locha mocha, carmalita, mintastic and coco motion. You can read complete descriptions of them in the shop’s ” ‘Put-back’ prevention guide,” located in the “About our chocolates” section.
The company’s truffles contain only fresh ingredients so they won’t last forever, unlike your love for your Valentine. But they will stay soft and smooth for 90 days.
The chocolate shop’s founder, a man named Dan, also has a good heart. Five percent of the sale of any product at dans.com is donated to one of eight charities — ACCION International, American Forests, America’s Second Harvest, CARE, City Year, Jane Doe, New Orleans Musicians and Teach For America Clinic.
The company will ship Valentine’s Day orders until 6 p.m. on Feb. 13. For orders less than $49.99, two-day overnight shipping costs $7.99 and overnight shipping runs $11.99. That’s an increase of $2 or $4 above the usual $5.99 ground shipping charge.