#Last Call: The foods we obsess over, just a little

This afternoon, Aimee Levitt wrote, “Quick, name a specific food you love so much you would willingly join a Facebook group so you can post comments and interact with 15,000 other people who also love this food.” That’s because a ridiculous amount of Aldi shoppers banded together on Facebook to do exactly that, heaping praise upon the “Aldi Red Bag Chicken,” aka Kirkwood breaded chicken breast fillets. The Facebook group grew to such a fever pitch that Today profiled it on its website.

This is the sort of brand loyalty that food manufacturers dream of, and work very hard to engineer in shoppers. And, through some combination of strategic marketing and actual product quality, it works! Lifelong customers are a very real phenomenon in the grocery space.

While there are plenty of products I am utterly loyal to—Heinz Ketchup, Viva Paper Towels, Dunkin’ coffee grounds, Domino powdered sugar—there aren’t too many I can imagine starting a Facebook fan club for. There’s only one, in fact: Palmer seasonal chocolates, a candy I will defend till the end of my days from the naysayers who point out the chocolate’s faint cardboard notes like that isn’t exactly what you remember Halloween tasting like as a kid. I could see myself keeping up a healthy discourse on Palmer and encouraging other devotees to share their stories and baking ideas. I would allow its merits to be respectfully debated, but play stringent moderator to anyone who comes for these inoffensive chocolates with malice or rudeness. I could see myself making that a part-time unpaid job, simply for love of the game. Do you have any foods that inspire you on a fanpage level? Will we see you profiled on Today’s website sometime soon?