Construction: Done!

Those of you walking by Valencia street last week may have gotten a sneak peek into our space. We took down the window coverings for a few days while the storefront was being installed. If you popped your head in, you may have noticed — the construction is done!

We’ve gotten the final hand off and our construction team is moving on to new projects. We still have a few odds and ends (putting up our sign, small touchups, sound system, etc) and a few more inspections that need the final sign off. After that, we still have a lot to do — some of our machines are not quite ready for the new space and we are still figuring out our new roaster:

We’re also purchasing our furniture, setting up the cafe, and hiring a few more team members. We hope to get the chocolate production running in the new space in the next few weeks and open the cafe sometime (hopefully) shortly after.

I should also mention that we had the most amazing construction crew — George, Ed, and team at Pacific Construction were awesome. We’ve heard that with most construction projects, you know you are halfway done when you’ve run out of money. These guys were on time, under budget, and got all of the details right. They worked extra hours to fix problems that they weren’t responsible for and when curveballs came up that caused delays (e.g. health department) they split the difference or incurred the cost themselves. If you are building something in the bay area, I would highly recommend that you give them a call. Here are George and Ed posing with our new roaster: