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Still busy, busy, busy!

September 14, 2011 by

The warm weather’s just arriving in San Francisco, but we’re getting back to work with the start of fall! We’re back from all our summer vacations and catching up on production. We have a round of wholesale re-orders to fulfill, so we’ll be busy for the next week or so. We’ll definitely let you know all the new places you can find our bars.

We have one piece of exciting wholesale news now. Last night, I dropped off our first round or bars at Bi-Rite. The Bi-Rite Market is a San Francisco institution, and we’re excited to have our chocolate stocked on their shelves. If you stop by 18th Street to pick up a few groceries or a scoop of ice cream, you can also grab one of our bars from Madagascar, Venezuela, or Costa Rica!

Also, our bars from Madagascar are back! The bars at Bi-Rite and the bars we’ll have at tomorrow’s Mission Community Market are from our latest batch. The flavor is fruity and a little sour like we’ve come to love, but the notes are distinctly different than those in our last set of bars.

Finally, we’ll be back at the New Taste Marketplace this weekend. Over the past year, the New Taste has helped us get feedback about our chocolate and find a market in the city. If you’re free on Saturday, I hope you can come by. It’s a great place to check new food businesses, and we’ll be there with lots of bars to try! It’s 12-5 PM at 500 DeHaro Street.

Meeting Bertil

September 6, 2011 by

Last week, I went home to Texas to visit my family. While I was there, I took off for the day to meet Bertil Akesson. He grows cacao in Madagascar and Brazil. His farm in Madagascar supplies most of the world’s best chocolate makers with ripe-tasting, fruity beans. He’s worked for years to refine his growing, harvesting, fermenting, and drying techniques.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get to meet Bertil at his farms in either Madagascar or Brazil. Instead, we met, ate, and had a great conversation at an Indian restaurant in downtown Houston. We already know that sourcing great beans in quantities large enough to sustain our factory will be one of our biggest challenges, so it was exciting to talk directly to someone that has so much experience with cacao. The closer we can get to the trees, the better the chocolate we can make.

After preparing our palate by eating a bunch of Indian food, we tasted each other’s chocolate. In addition to exporting cacao, Bertil makes single plantation chocolate from criollo beans on his own farm. Whenever we taste different chocolate bars made from the same beans, we’re always struck by how different the final product is. Both our bars and Bertil’s bars, though, tasted remarkably similar, with both packing the same fruity punch. As we posted earlier, we just received 5 new bags of beans from Bertil’s farm in Madagascar and I think there are more in our future!

 

 

State of the Union

August 13, 2011 by

We’re out on Bartlett every Thursday night at the Mission Community Market. It’s been a fantastic way to meet customers in the factory’s neighborhood. We’re really looking forward to the day when we have our doors open in the Mission! Every Thursday night we get a few of the same questions. I thought I’d take a minute to give you all an update.

The most common question, and the one we’re most eager to answer ourselves: when will the factory be open? You may remember, we put our 312 notice up in the window of 740 Valencia Street a few months ago. Thankfully, that process is complete, and we’re working on the next series of permits we need to open our space. We found out a week or so ago that we’ve received the Change of Use permit for the building. Now our landlord’s waiting on some building permits before he can start the initial construction. A short time after that, we should be able to start our construction. Fingers crossed!

We also have exciting news about our packaging. A few months ago, we hired two incredibly talented graphic designers, and we’re working toward a new iteration of our packaging. We get a lot of compliments on our current version, but we think we can take it up a notch. There are things we love about what we have now, especially the overall aesthetic and the color scheme. But, the first designs we’ve seen from our graphic designers have blown us away. As soon as we have things ready, we’ll give you a peek.

Things are also busy on the wholesale front and we’re keeping extremely busy making chocolate. We always say that it’s a great problem to have, but we can’t seem to make bars fast enough these days. You can pick up or try a bar at Chocolate Covered, Fog City News, Mission Cheese, The Chocolate Garage, and Serendipity. We’ve heard that our Madagascar bars seem to be the most popular in lots of these shops.

Also, we’re making great headway on sourcing our next set of beans. As I write, I’m sitting in front of a roaster testing out some new Ecuadorian beans. It smells a little like chocolate poptarts in the room as the beans roast, and I’m excited to taste our first batch from this sample! In the next few months, we should have a few new bars to add to our lineup.

Finally, like most summers, we’ve all been busy traveling. Cam just got back from the muggy east coast. In a few days, Todd and Cam are both taking heading off to Vermont and then Hawaii for friends’ weddings, and I’ll be in Texas later this month. While Todd and Cam are in Hawaii they’re hoping to meet Seneca of Koka Chocolate. Seneca is one of the founders of Bittersweet Cafe in San Francisco and Oakland. Now he’s growing cacao and making chocolate on Oahu. While they’re gone, I get to take care of Cam’s very snuggly dog, Tatsu.

 

That’s all for now, back to making chocolate!

Two Chocolate Garages

August 8, 2011 by

On Saturday we spent a really inspiring day in another chocolate garage in Palo Alto. We have our own garage, our lab, in East Palo Alto. But, The Chocolate Garage is just a few blocks away, founded by Sunita de Tourreil. We met Sunita a few months ago, and she’s been a wonderful neighbor. Her mission at The Chocolate Garage is to educate. She supports new makers, connecting them to other experts in the industry and introducing her customers to their bars. Her mission is to bring attention to “Happy Chocolate“- chocolate that tastes delicious, but also has integrity in its cacao sourcing and connection to the farmer. We really appreciate her approach. When our space is open in San Francisco, we also hope to have a large educational component of our factory operation. It’s rewarding and exciting to teach chocolate lovers about all the care and effort involved in making chocolate.

Because she’s our neighbor, it’s been very easy to drop by and visit Sunita. A few weeks ago, she came to our garage to try bars Todd brought back from the FCIA event in D.C. and to see our process for roasting test batches. Then on Saturday, Sunita hosted us during the Palo Alto Farmers’ Market. She holds open hours during the farmers’ market, and has many regulars that stop by after shopping for produce. It’s a nice space with comfortable chairs and couches, and it draws in people eager to taste new chocolate and learn about the process of making bars from the bean. Each Saturday she puts together a tasting, and I encourage you to drop by at some point. During the hours we were there, we met lots of her regulars and shared our bars. We chatted about our factory, but also got to talk about the delicious mulberries at the market and the way the market came about in the early 80’s. The Chocolate Garage has a great community.

After our morning with new customers, Alex Rast of Seventypercent.com dropped by to taste our bars as well. He was in town from England, and graciously offered to give us feedback and a lot of incredibly valuable information about process improvements and formal tastings. Alex works with Martin Christy and others at Seventypercent.com to give comprehensive reviews of chocolate bars. His palette is exceptional, but more impressive is his scientific knowledge of bringing out flavor from the bean. He had all kinds of insights, and we will undoubtedly use his feedback to improve our bars. Though, he did offer one piece of advice that we may ignore. He told us that the best way to cleanse your palette is with watery polenta, which he described as having the consistency of gruel. No doubt he’s right- maybe we should go ahead and give it a try! We look forward to keeping in touch with him. He’s a great resource, and we really appreciate the introduction from Sunita.

Where to find us

August 2, 2011 by

We’re keeping busy making lots of chocolate these days. We’ve increased production to fulfill a few new wholesale orders for shops in San Francisco. You can now find our bars at Chocolate Covered in Noe Valley and soon at Fog City News downtown. Both of these shops carry really well-curated collections of chocolate makers. We’ve gotten to know the owners of each shop, and both Jack and Adam are incredibly knowledgable and encouraging of new makers. If you go to check out our chocolate, be sure to ask for other favorites and recommendations.

Outside the city, you can also find us at Serendipity in San Carlos. It’s another wonderful shop dedicated to great chocolate. Fatima has a collection of local chocolatiers and makers. She also serves delicious coffee and chocolate drinks. I hope you can check it out!

Around town

July 21, 2011 by

We’re keeping incredibly busy these days. We’ve had a few events that have connected us to San Francisco chocolate lovers with great palettes. And, there are more coming up soon!

Tuesday night, Adam of Fog City News hosted a tasting event in his space. He brought in customers who have tasted as many as 200 different bars of chocolate. We introduced them to our bars from Tanzania, Costa Rica, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, and Madagascar. We also asked for their help tasting different roasting profiles for a new batch of beans we have from the Dominican Republic. We were happy to have honest feedback from people who have tried a lot of chocolate and know what they look for in an excellent bar. They offered their opinions of our bars, our concept, and our packaging. It was a great opportunity for us.

Next, we’ll be at the Mission Community Market as usual today from 4-8 PM out on Bartlett Street. Last week we sold out of bars from Madagascar before 5 PM, but we promise to have more this afternoon.

Then, on Sunday, we’ll be at Pot + Pantry in the Mission for a great event hosted by FARMcurious. You can read more about the event here. We’ll be participating with Punk Domestics and Karen Solomon, author of Jam It, Pickle It, Cure It. It should be a great morning- you’ll be able to learn to make cheese and cocktail infusions, taste some chocolate, and walk away with a signed copy of Karen’s book. We’ll be there from 11 AM – 3 PM. Hope you can come by!

Last but not least, we finished putting together our wholesaling package. You can now find us on the dessert menu at Mission Cheese. Hopefully, in the next few weeks you’ll be able to pick up our bars at a few other shops in the area. We’ll let you know where, but keep your eyes out!

Busy, busy, busy

July 12, 2011 by

You may have noticed that we haven’t posted in a while. We’ve been busier and busier making chocolate. It’s a great problem to have. There are orders pouring in, and we’re working hard to keep up! You can catch us each week at the Mission Community Market, and this weekend we’ll be at the New Taste Marketplace from 12-5 PM at 500 De Haro Street. For each, we’ll have single origin bars from Costa Rica, Madagascar, and Venezuela.

We’ll also have posts up in a few days with new updates. Todd traveled to the FCIA event in D.C. and we have a few new machines and process improvements to share. Look out for more soon.

You can also check us out here, we’re the Ourtisan of the week!

 

Mission Community Market

June 28, 2011 by

Starting this Thursday, you’ll be able to find us each week at the Mission Community Market! We’ll be out on Bartlett Street, between 21st and 22nd, from 4-8 PM. The Mission Community Market started last year, aiming to create a new community gathering space. There are a lot of great vendors, with produce, prepared foods, and delicious things for dinner. We’re really excited to meet some of our future neighbors; we hope you’ll come check it out. We’ll have single-origin dark chocolate bars from Madagascar, Venezuela, and Costa Rica, with lots of samples to share. See you Thursday!

Market this weekend

June 22, 2011 by

Come visit us this weekend in Berkeley! We’ll be at the Firehouse East Bazaar, which coincides with the Juneteenth Festival. Both promise great food and lots of arts and crafts vendors. We’ll be at 3192 Adeline at MLK Boulevard, across from the Berkeley Flea Market and we’d love to see you there. We’ll have single origin bars from Venezuela, Madagascar, and Costa Rica.

312 notice

June 20, 2011 by

We’re inching along in the construction process. Last week, our 312 notice went up in the window of 740 Valencia. Assuming no one in the neighborhood objects to the change of use of our space, we can submit for our next round of permits next month. This means we’re one step closer to build out!