In February, Associate Editor Alyse Thompson visited Finca El Cacao, a 2,500-hectare cocoa plantation in Nicaragua owned and operated by Alfred Ritter GmbH & Co. KG. The company, eager to open up its supply chain and highlight its progress in the Central American country, brought Alyse and German journalists to the plantation to show them how they do things.

When I arrived at my early morning media appointment with Mars Chocolate North America Wednesday during the Sweets and Snacks Expo,* I was expecting the usual — a look at the company’s new products, followed by a discussion about said products, followed by them handing me a glorious bag of samples filled with said products (preferably with M&M’s characters on it). And while we did eventually get to all that, we didn’t start there.