The Channel Move
Cacao Market by MarieBelle New York is placing its 50-piece Dark Chocolate Truffles at select Costco warehouses across Brooklyn, Long Island, Staten Island, and New Jersey, with the single box priced at $21.99 and available through Instacart as well. A three-box bundle — totaling roughly 150 pieces — lists on Costco.com for $84.00. The launch targets holiday gifting traffic and is slated as a limited-time offer.
The Cacao Market line is the accessible sub-brand of MarieBelle New York, the luxury chocolatier founded by Maribel Lieberman that has operated out of a SoHo boutique since 2001. Where the flagship focuses on high-end ganaches and artisan presentation, Cacao Market is designed to bring the same Brooklyn-made craftsmanship to everyday and gifting price points — a positioning that makes a warehouse-club slot a logical step rather than a brand stretch.
What's in the Box
The truffles are finished with a cocoa coating over a dark chocolate center that the brand describes as velvety and deeply flavored. Packaging carries the vibrant geometric aesthetic drawn from the artwork of Jacques Lieberman, which differentiates the SKU visually on a warehouse shelf where bold imagery tends to do more selling than category signage.
Beyond the warehouse pickup, Cacao Market will run Costco Roadshow sampling events weekly at participating locations — an in-store trial tactic that club-channel brands have long used to convert occasional shoppers into repeat buyers on perishable and specialty-food SKUs. For a premium confectionery product entering a channel where most chocolate competes on value and pack size, that trial moment is a meaningful part of the commercialization plan.
Retail Context
The mass and club channel has become an increasingly important distribution pathway for premium confectionery brands, with consumers demonstrating a willingness to trade up on chocolate even in a value-oriented shopping environment. The gifting occasion provides additional cover: a 50-piece box at $21.99 reads as affordable luxury when positioned against comparable specialty-retailer offerings that often run higher. The holiday window is also when chocolate sees its strongest volume in the club format, making the timing deliberate.
For single-store operators and convenience retailers tracking premium snack and gifting trends, the MarieBelle Costco placement reflects a broader pattern: craft and artisan food brands that once confined themselves to boutique or DTC channels are stepping into higher-velocity retail to build household awareness before potentially broadening distribution further. Whether Cacao Market follows this placement with a wider rollout beyond New York and New Jersey will be a signal worth watching as the holiday season progresses.
"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.
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.
