A campaign born from nostalgia for the iconic Cadbury Pink Snack has taken the Irish social media by storm. Following the announcement last week by Mondelez Ireland that the Pink Snack would be discontinued, Gerard Maguire, owner of 64 Wine in Glasthule, Dublin decided to take action. Checkout caught up with Maguire to learn more about the #SavePinkSnacks campaign.
Maguire describes the birth of the campaign as "a spur of the moment thing – I'm half regretting it now!" On hearing Cadbury's plans to stop producing the iconic bar, Maguire instantly remembered eating it in front of the TV in his childhood and thought it was a shame to lose the quintessential chocolate wafer bar.
With this in mind, Maguire went to his local Musgrave cash & carry with the plan to stock up on Pink Snacks to sell in his own wine shop. "The staff looked at me like I was mad; I suppose not many people are buying Pink Snacks." Nonetheless, a thorough search provided the shop owner with a pallet's worth to pile up amongst his wines and luxury confectionaries.
The campaign has become about more than just a bar of chocolate. Maguire is also concerned about the loss of jobs with the planned closure of the Mondelez factory in Tallaght and redundancies at its other factories. Having opened his shop just before the recession, he is well aware of how essential it is to have the consumer on your side. To him, it's not about party politics or the blame game; it's about how our choices as consumers affect our communities.
"It's about you and it's about me, and our choices. If we hadn't stopped buying Pink Snacks, those 200 jobs wouldn't be gone," he points out. "A lot of those workers are semi-skilled, maybe they've been there 10 or 15 years. They aren't going to find something else."
Finally, since 'stocking up', is Maguire now selling many Pink Snacks? "I don't know how much I've sold, I've given a lot away!"
© 2015 - Checkout Magazine by Jenny Whelan.
