The dark secrets of the world's billion dollar chocolate industry... and what happened when Michael Jackson got the literal keys to the candy store

EXCLUSIVE The dark secrets of the world's billion dollar chocolate industry...

and what happened when Michael Jackson got the literal keys to the candy store By Ruth Walker For Dailymail.Com Published: 16:26, 28 September 2024 | Updated: 16:26, 28 September 2024 e-mail View comments The only American to have reached the very top of the world’s luxury chocolate industry has revealed the money’s-no-object excesses, the shameless power grabs, and the celebrity-schmoozing that go on behind the scenes of its best-known brands. As the US director of stores at Godiva through the 1980s and 1990s, Brad Yater helped transform it into the most popular super-premium chocolate in the US, valued at $1 billion and beloved by the rich and famous.

And in his new book, Chocolate Covered Money , he has revealed for the first time the industry’s ‘dirty little secrets’, from persuading the Pope to be a brand ambassador, to how he foiled a plot to defraud US immigration - with devastating results. ‘Celebrities of the 1980s and 1990s shopped at Godiva’s branded stores,’ he writes. ‘The dirty little secret was they all got their chocolate for free.

We never charged celebrities because their publicity was priceless.' He adds: ‘I will never forget the year I invited Pope John Paul II to do his Christmas shopping at our store in Brussels..

. It turns out the Pope owned his own private L-1011, a widebody jumbo jet. Pope John Paul II brought his friends Elizabeth Taylor and her Royal M.