DarkStar has a dark past, the name fits them…
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It seems the mo to purchase other companies for the names. Nothing new as its been done for forever. Buy and sell all the time. But of all the companies to buy chefs its not the brightest day. It be more receptive if it was rainbowvapes or vapable id be cool with that. But the fact that gets me is something is not on the up and up with this. I have never seen any company go bust where they where allowed to keep proprietary product from that company that sold in that manner. Kind of mind blowing me now. From what i read they where not involved in the sale as it was a liquidation type sale so if the guys who created chefs were not involved in the sale and it was all overseen by creditors (as i have read) they have no rights to those recipes or ability to profit from them unless they re purchases them from the creditors before the sale of everything else. This is where im not really hopeful for the former owners. I highly doubt the purchasing company will just sit by. They purchased the rights to and products of chefsflavours. Dont think this will end well
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Unofficially I found this on the deep web:
“purchased the name & trademark associated non tangible’s, which DOES NOT contain recipes…… or so i was informed by the liquidators when i enquired, before entering into negotiations”
The Liquidators worked for Karl and Lewis and the sale agreement did not include recipes as I understand. Recipe names are free game apparently
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Ownership can be a tricky thing. I know Chef’s did not create all their one shots, because once they were done selling them the OG creator released the recipes publicly. Here even. @Psycho_316 I thought I told ya once before that I believe the creator of MFIC was (on the recipe side) @Boogenshizzle aka Joe Melvin from Wizard Labs. If ya go go look you’ll see he has a couple fried doughnut recipes that are public, but not MFIC which was hidden when Chef’s came out with the one shot. But here’s a clue for ya. Take the donut and creams and double the %s for starters.
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Liquidation of a said company kind of includes all property when they are bankrupt. Something seems odd that somehow they walked away with them. Seems fishy
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Nope i missed that ffs lol i wonder if anyone adapted it
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Here’s a snippet from what Joe once wrote. Flavour Art: Zeppola 2-5% used. 4% Seems to be the sweet spot as the main flavor.
Edit: Man, ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies. He could have sold the recipe to Chefs, or could have given the recipe for a portion of sales of it, or he could have sent 4L of concentrate at a time (safest way for him) and they just rebottled it.
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I already knew zeppola was in it you can taste it for real and it seems he uses it a lot
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My issue with it is trying to find the right cinnamon balance. And my fault is im now 100% sure there is vienna cream fa in it. I might have to get it and strip the one i have down. Trying to balance toasted almond with coconut is a little of a struggle. And now i see he uses wow fa as his doughnut base
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I’ve never had it or mixed it. But here’s his notes on FA Vienna Cream.
Flavour Art Vienna Cream: This is one of my favorite creams and is probably the most versatile in my collection. I use this in between .4% and 2% MAXIMUM in a mix as it seems to be the “flavor range” for this flavor. Anything above that and I’m past personal taste and into the either muting other flavors range or losing the intended effect of the cream… I.e… rather pointless…
Fa Vienna Cream .4%: Really gives a nice texture to the juice. A rich creamy texture, similar to a heavy marshmallow. The catch is, it takes 2 –3 weeks for the texture to set. You barely taste it at first but it steeps very nice.
Fa Vienna Cream 1-1.3% Provides a nice smoothness to the fruits. Heavy marshmallow, rich creamy off the bat but steeps into a nice smooth note to edge off certain harsh fruits. While you can taste the texture and flavor off the bat, it usually ends up velvety with less fluffy texture.
Fa Vienna Cream 1.3-2%, I usually get approximately the same as before and this is usually my mixing limit. Once the flavor is above 2% in a mix, it simply seems to “mute itself” over time.
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When did Chefs file for Bankruptcy, I must have missed that…
They did in fact file for a Voluntary liquidation, that is public records:
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I wouldn’t be suprised if he did. Melvin never technically never worked for Wizzard. He was a independent contractor who knew where his bread was buttered.
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My understanding from both sides was the went bankrupt. Chefs was in massive debt. One side side says that they had no say in the liqudation process and another said they did so still confusing
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This was released yesterday via FB: Statement from Chefs for those that were curious about what was going on.
"Hi everyone,I’m very pleased to announce that Chefs is now back open with a 25% discount on all products to welcome you all back. Some of you will know me as the managing director of DarkStar, but I’m now equally committed to Chefs Flavours!
The relaunch on the whole has been amazing and we’ve been working around the clock to get orders out to customers, but there has been some negativity, so I want to address that here so we’re all on the same page. How did DarkStar come to own Chefs and what is the deal with the recipes? I’ll explain.
Chefs Flavours Ltd, the company that owned the Chefs Flavours brand, went insolvent last year which was a massive blow for the DIY scene, so we got in touch with the liquidator to see what we could do about bringing it back. We offered a substantial sum for all the digital assets which was accepted. Because of the staging of the insolvency process it was not an option to buy the whole company as the staff were let go and the physical assets auctioned off very quickly. As the highest bidder we paid a very fair price. We later found out that a substantial amount of the money we paid went to a company fully owned by the previous owners.
The idea of re-launching Chefs without their well known One Shots was obviously not an option as they are integral to the Chef’s brand. The specific recipes were not included in the sale as these were the intellectual property of the previous owners. This seemed fair - plenty of other vape companies have gone under and the recipes remain a secret - but it didn’t put us off because DarkStar is very good at developing new recipes. We do it all the time with our DS Labs prototype range which releases every month, and DS has won lots of awards for our flavours, although we really had to step up our effort for this project! The time and effort that went into this was immense - the whole DarkStar team has been working flat out for months.
Throughout the project our sole aim was to restore Chefs to its former glory. Not just with One Shots, but with everything the DIY community could want - VG/PG, nic shots, mixing accessories, coils and cotton, and of course single flavours. We bought in so many new flavours from manufacturers we’d never dealt with before to begin satisfying the demand of Chefs customers. These were used in development of the One Shot recipes and are also available to buy individually. Look at the difference in the offering on the Chefs site compared to the DarkStar site and you’ll see what I’m talking about.
A few days before launching, the previous owners of the insolvent company, who benefited financially from the sale of assets, came back with a new company. This was not expected and obviously not great news for us, but we pushed on anyway. When we did relaunch, a smear campaign was launched against us from their previous employees and associates from within their new group. We’ve been publicly accused of lying, scamming and fraud among other things.
As I have mentioned, we do not own the old recipes, but we have spared no effort or expense in developing the new ones. Hundreds of samples were created and tested against the old recipes, and they are among the best products we’ve ever produced. At current prices they are exceptional value for money. To make sure customers are not misled, from the very beginning, we have had ‘New and Improved’ at the very top of every product description where this applies along with new mix percentages and an all new look. Label design and artwork has been completely refreshed and updated. In addition, to ensure customers know exactly which legal entity they are doing business with, at the checkout page before customers pay they are presented with large bold text saying ‘Darkstar International Limited’. This did not have to be there as it can easily be a ‘trading name’, but it was my personal choice to have that there, and it’s been there from the very beginning of day 1.
That said, perhaps we could have been clearer. The launch was planned to take place in a market where the previous owners were not participating, and I hope you can understand we were under a lot of pressure to launch when we realised what their intentions were. Our intention was to keep as much the same as possible and to improve where we could, but perhaps elements of the marketing were clumsy given the circumstances and for that I apologise. If anyone feels misled in any way of course we will make it right. Just send us an email.
My intention with Chefs is to invest into it and develop it as you want it, so we need an open dialogue. We need to know what we’re doing well and what we’re not. I don’t like having restrictions on speech, but given the circumstances I hope you’ll understand that we will not permit discussion of the previous owner’s current company on this group.
Thank you all for reading. I hope to serve you well."
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Makes for an interesting read but from what I’m getting from the current site I will still be dealing with Nomnoms if I decide to splurge which quite honestly isn’t going to be any time soon anyway.
If I lived in the UK I might have given them a go but I don’t.
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I’m glad I upsized and stocked up on the top CSC flavors.
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There will be no csc line again as all intellectual property remains with the original owners
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I read that as soon as it was posted and kind of laughed. Its darkstar v2 not chefs thats for sure
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