June 30th, 2006
Gossip, Gossip
Finale seems very close to opening its third branch in Coolidge Corner. Each day more and more posters of blown-up cakes and mousses cover the windows, which indicates to me that there's finally something worth peeking at inside. I can already hear BC girls shrieking, "Ooohh, I LOVE FINALE!!!". I'm sure you do, you sugar-crazed twit, much in the same way you LOVE the red sox.
Well, I don't love Finale. I've sampled their goodies on numerous occasions as they were the desserterie of choice in college, probably because they were 10 times closer than any chain supermarket. Patronizing Finale was touted a bit as "helping your own", for the concept orginated with three Harvard Business School students. I'm sure few need convincing that HBS students are hardly an underserved population, but that's not why I don't go to Finale.
It's more about worlds colliding. Finale's mission, as described on their website, was to "be the Robin Hood of Dessert – making super-premium desserts available to everybody, not just to the affluent who frequent fine-dining restaurants and fancy hotels." An excellent idea in theory, not practice. First, the majority of Finale desserts are as expensive those offered in upper-tier restaurants, understandable given they're currently nearly comparable in quality, and thus require similar expensive ingredients. Second, in making their desserts "available to everybody", Finale effectively renders them common, therefore unalluring to rich and cultured, who will inevitably spurn that which can be acquired by just anyone.
Where does that mean for Finale? Nothing, right now. Three Boston locations hardly makes your business ubiquitious, but four, five, six….Expansion and mass production detract from quality, inventiveness, suprise, and everything else that probably made the very first Finale a success. Starbucks suffers from similar issues but continues to thrive because consuming coffee is desirable once or twice a day to most working adults. The greater diminishing utility of flourless chocolate cakes is obvious. Even when that special occasion comes around, I predict people will grow more uncomfortable stopping at Your Neighborhood Finale to pick a torte, as its very convenience erodes the value of the gesture.
So ends my rant on Finale. I have little to say on the current status of their cakes, cookies, and tarts; the ones I've tasted have been very good, but I prefer the confections at Stephanie's on Newbury or The Greenhouse in Cambridge or Teresa's Baked Good Graveyard in Brookline.
