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A Tribute to Chuck

October 5, 2021 by Jennifer Roy

We have a tradition at Dandelion of celebrating birthdays. We ask everyone what their favorite treat is on their first day, and then on their birthday, their team typically surprises them with pizza, a chocolate eclair, or a little cheese plate. There have been a few times when team members have joined Dandelion on their birthday (Anna, Pablo) and we’ve had to scramble to uphold the tradition.

One of our last in-person, unmasked birthday celebrations was in 2019. I happened to record the birthday on my handheld iphone. In the video, you can see about two dozen team members huddling in the hallway while Caitlin lights the candles on top of a plate of cookies and ice cream. And then, all at once, the chocolate factory erupts in a remarkably on-key Happy Birthday for our wonderful Production Mechanic, Chuck.

Chuck joined us over five years ago, half retired but wanting something to keep him busy. He started at Valencia and helped us open the 16th Street Factory in 2019.

He had the biggest heart of anyone I’ve ever met as well as a habit of sending “love notes” to the factory every quarter or so. One went like this:

Hello Dear Dandelions,

Tomorrow I get to begin my sixth year trying to support the production team. What a ride! And I hope it keeps on keeping on.It continues to be a joy to come to work and spend my days with the wonderful people on our teams.
I have said this before but it bears repeating. When you discover someone worthy of your love, add them to the many you already love. You won’t run out. There is no limit to how many people you can love.

Also to repeat, somehow Dandelion finds amazing team members and I just love you all. Thanks to you all for being so thoughtful and helpful.

I continue to know that if I have these feelings and don’t share them the opportunity to say nice things may pass and I will rue the missed chance.

With great love to you all,
Chuck

During Covid, Chuck came to the factory every day to keep the chocolate production line humming so our bean-to-bar chocolate factory could exist through today — with pictures of his family and grandchildren on all walls and surfaces of his tool room cheering him on.

In early August Chuck came to Todd and said, “Todd, I think it might be time to think about really retiring,” which surprised us all. And perhaps Chuck suspected something because the next week, he received a late-stage diagnosis and shortly thereafter entered palliative care. Even from the comfort of his living room surrounded by family, he woke up to join our weekly virtual Wednesday-morning All Hands and told us (again) that he loved us all.

We hoped he had more time then. His wish was to have another Christmas with his family. But as Chuck always reminded us, you should always say “I love you” to those you care about because you never know how much time you have.

We’re a small team today and work shoulder-to-shoulder at the factory. And we’re still feeling the shock waves of losing someone we’ve worked beside, who helped carry the factory during these past 18 months, and whom we cared about very, very deeply.

Chuck, we miss you and we so love you too. It’s hard going into Q4, typically the busiest time for our chocolate factory when we all rally together, without our loyal mascot of so many years.

And yet, if there’s one thing that Chuck would want, it would be for us to make sure we remind those we care about that we love them. And sappy as it might sound and though it’s unlikely we’ve ever met, I want to say we love you all too. Thank you from all of us for supporting craft chocolate, for making our livelihoods possible, and for cheering us on during uncertain times.

Wishing you all health and many good days ahead.

Chuck, rest in peace our dear friend.

Elaine

Remy and the Chocolate Chip

June 18, 2020 by Jennifer Roy

For as long as chef Lisa Vega has been with Dandelion Chocolate, Maybe The Very Best Chocolate Chip Cookie has been part of our DNA. For years, our chocolate chips were made in-house by the kitchen team, who hand-piped over 50 pounds of tempered discs a week. That is, until recently, when the Large Chip was born.

To learn the “making of” story we spoke with Remy Labesque, a talented industrial designer and good friend of ours who collaborated with Chef Lisa and the production team to make the perfect chocolate chip. Remy met Todd when he attended a Chocolate 101 class some years ago and so began a lasting friendship. Remy was working at Frog Design at the time (he’s now at Tesla) and he jumped at the opportunity to re-design the chocolate chip.

When the large chip was launched in May, Remy walked us through his creative process which led to the birth of these geometric beauties.

“The chip project began about three years ago. If my memory serves me, it was driven in large part by pastry chef Lisa Vega, who wanted something specifically tailored for her recipes. There are two chip designs: large and small (the large was released first, and the small will be at a later date). Their mass (3.5 grams and 0.8 grams, respectively), was driven by Lisa, and the prototypes were tested along the way in her recipes as part of the R&D process. Another consideration was that we also needed something that could be enjoyed as a chocolate-eating experience completely by itself — that’s where our unique shape comes into play.

“The shape of a typical store-bought chocolate chip is an arbitrary result of the industrial manufacturing process used to make it. As you might expect, a drop of molten chocolate is deposited onto a flat surface and left to cool. Chocolate chip taste varies widely by brand, but the shape of the chips does not.

“The shape of our chip is faceted: The edges of a Dandelion Chocolate chip taper to thin-as-we could-make-’em without compromising structure. This is because the thermal mass of a thin piece of chocolate melts more quickly on the palate. So when you put a Dandelion chip on your tongue, the thin, chiseled edges warm-to-melt nearly instantly. The 3D shape, while simple, we believe is also novel. And this is noteworthy because the world of industrial design is running out of simple forms that haven’t been claimed for something already. Beyond that we’re proud to have optimized the chocolate chip eating experience as a result of rethinking the humble shape itself.”

While the chip was created for baking, many of us at Dandelion Chocolate have reached for them to nibble because the mouthfeel is different from our bars; but make no mistake, there is nothing like the taste when these chips are baked in a gigantic chocolate chip cookie.

The chips are being released by origin, and the first two are especially suited to baking and confections:
Costa Esmeraldas from Ecuador, 70%, 2018 Harvest, with notes of chocolate buttercream frosting and banana; and Hacienda Azul from Costa Rica, 70%, 2019 Harvest, with notes of chocolate almond biscotti and buttery caramel.

We want to thank Remy for bringing his know-how and love of chocolate to the project. It’s great to finally to be able to share his story with you.

12 Nights of Chocolate 2019: Dec 4 – 15

November 8, 2019 by Jennifer Roy

This year marks our seventh hosting the 12 Nights of Chocolate, bringing together chefs from the Bay Area and beyond to take over the chocolate factory with a dinner series for charity. We lay down one rule: use our chocolate in any application on the plate. That’s it! After months of planning, texting, cajoling, we’re excited to announce the line-up for this year with 46 incredible chefs participating!

Way back in 2013 when Todd and myself sat down with Emily Luchetti (who’s joining us this year with April Bloomfield, Traci Des Jardins, and Loretta Keller ) to discuss how we could do something fun while giving back to the community, it was Emily’s idea to host a 12 Nights of Chocolate chef series, and we jumped at the idea. Our first year we had six chefs and had no idea that it would evolve into an event where some of the best chefs in the country collaborate alongside up and coming rising stars.

Some highlights this year include an elegant coursed dinner with Laurent Gras from Saison alongside Nick Muncy from Michael Mina, plus a special guest chef; a demo with Stella Parks aka @bravetart involving a six foot Yule log, a night we’re calling Bakery, BBQ, Booze where our factory will be taken over by 4505 Burgers & BBQ, Jane the Bakery, Manresa Bread,Kantine, Breadbelly, Cowgirl Creamery, Stonemill Matcha, Fort Point Beer, Neighbor Bakehouse, Tartine Bakery & True Laurel, plus more. And of course, our annual screening of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory in a Chocolate Factory – and we encourage you to bring your kids!

We hope you’ll join us as we bring our chocolate and chefs community together for 12 Nights. The dates are December 4th through 15th, and we’ll be hosting all of the nights, unless otherwise noted in a beautiful loft above our 16th Street factory.

As years past, all proceeds benefit the SF-Marin Food Bank, where in 2018 alone Dandelion Chocolate raised funds to provide over 65,000 meals.

Tickets sell out quickly, so click here to get the line-up and book your tickets.

12 Nights of Chocolate 2018

November 9, 2018 by Jennifer Roy

In just a few weeks, we’ll be hosting our sixth Annual 12 Nights of Chocolate!

Each year, Dandelion Chocolate invites chefs to take over our factory to create a unique holiday culinary experience for charity. This year we have 38 chefs participating, and there’s only one rule: use Dandelion chocolate on the plate. Each evening is unique in that we ask chefs to create a menu that is entirely their creation – from elegant seven-course dinners to chocolate beer, concretes and burgers! All proceeds from the event go to the SF-Marin Food Bank. In 2017, we helped to raise over 65,000 meals.

The dates are December 2nd through 13th, and we’ll be hosting all of the nights, with exception of movie night, in a beautiful loft space on the second floor of our soon to open chocolate factory on 16th and Alabama Street. Our annual Willy Wonka movie night will take place at our Valencia café.

Donation bins will be located inside our cafe on Valencia Street as well as the event space for the duration of the event. Stop by to drop off cans and non-perishable food anytime during the holiday series.

For the amazing chef line-up and tickets click here.

Los Angeles Pop-Up Debut with Salt & Straw Ice Cream

August 31, 2018 by Jennifer Roy

When Salt & Straw ice cream invited Dandelion Chocolate to be the pop-up shop in their Los Angeles-based Arts District DTLA scoop shop (829 E. 3rd St.), we were thrilled and jumped at the opportunity. We could not think of a better way to introduce ourselves to the LA community than inside our favorite ice cream maker’s store.

Our pop-up shop inside Salt & Straw’s Arts District DTLA scoop shop.

In 2017, Dandelion Chocolate’s Executive Pastry Chef Lisa Vega taught a class with Salt & Straw’s co-founder Tyler Malek at the Culinary Institute of America in Napa. Lisa made her chocolate “Nutella” celebration cake and Tyler made nib-infused ice-cream. Soon after, Tyler and the Dandelion kitchen team collaborated to create the Smoked S’more ice cream flavor for their limited edition chocolate menu. Since then, all of Salt & Straw’s San Francisco scoop shops have served a rotating flavor that includes Dandelion Chocolate. A friendship made in chocolate ice cream heaven!

Tyler, Lisa, Meredyth of Dandelion Chocolate and Salt & Straw

Tyler of Salt & Straw, Lisa and Meredyth of Dandelion

In the LA pop-up shop, we will be offering a curated selection of our bars, hot chocolate mix, cocoa nibs, and ground chocolate, as well as our book, Making Chocolate: From Bean to Bar to S’more. And, of course, visitors will be able to taste samples of our chocolate. Norah, one of our long-time employees who now lives in Los Angeles, helped bring the pop-up to life, and we are so grateful for all of her hard work!

The pop-up will run through February 2019 during regular store hours, 11am to 11pm daily. Please stop by and say hello!

We’re Brewing Cacao Nib Coffee at Our SF Valencia Street Café

June 22, 2018 by Jennifer Roy

Jennifer has handled the public relations for Dandelion since 2013, and she’s an avid drinker of coffee in the cafe. For this piece, she spoke with Voga Coffee’s co-founder and CEO Eli Salomon who, along with Josh Avins, CTO and scientist behind the technology, and Jason Sarley, co-founder and Chief Coffee Officer, are the creators of the Ground Control vacuum coffee machine.

Voga Coffee's Cyclops coffee machine in the Dandelion Chocolate cafe

The Ground Control Cyclops coffee brewer behind the counter at the Valencia Street cafe.

If you’ve been in our café on Valencia Street recently, you’ve probably seen a very futuristic-looking machine topped with hand-blown glass bulbs. It’s a new coffee machine called Ground Control® Cyclops from the innovative folks at Oakland-based Voga Coffee. We’re the first café in the world to have this machine, and it just won the Specialty Coffee Association 2018 Best New Product award. We’re thrilled to be serving both brewed coffee and brewed cacao nib coffee with Ritual’s beans.

Why add another machine in our café, and how did we meet the team from Voga? Eli Salomon of Ground Control was testing the machine near our Alabama Street factory, and he asked if he could experiment with brewing some of our cacao nibs. How could we say no? When we finally got to taste our nibs brewed with delicious Ritual coffee, we had an “aha!” moment where we were blown away by the taste. The cacao nib coffee is smooth, nutty, and full-flavored coffee without any kind of bitter aftertaste. Todd, Dandelion’s co-founder and CEO, exclaimed: “How could we not have a machine that brews the most delicious coffee made with our nibs?”

Keep your eye on the Cyclops when you next visit our Valencia café.

Since launching the brewed coffee and the cacao nib brewed coffee at the end of May, 2018, the feedback has been very positive. People love it! Cacao nib coffee makes you less jittery than regular coffee, and it has a more uplifting buzz. Along with the normal caffeine kick, it must be the theobromine from the nibs that helps give your mood a boost.

How does the Cyclops work? Salomon explains, “Traditionally, it’s been impossible to brew cacao nibs, because their high-fat content clogs brewing filters. When we first spoke with Dandelion, our team suggested the possibility of using Ground Control’s high vacuum brewing process to overcome this hurdle that has plagued the chocolate world for hundreds of years. After Voga ran a few brewing experiments, it became clear that our innovative, patented brewing approach was exactly what was needed to coax the delicate, beautiful flavor of Dandelion’s impeccably sourced single-origin cacao. It was through this effort that the world’s first cacao brewer was discovered.”

He adds, “In addition to brewing a delicious cacao-based beverage, Ground Control’s unique multi-stage brewing method extracts multiple layers of flavor from coffee or cacao, resulting in a delicate, multi-dimensional cup. Drinkers of Ground Control brewed beverages have marveled at their smooth, clean cup profile and the significantly pronounced sweetness that soars from the cup. Ground Control’s unique, carefully controlled process not only eliminates harsh bitterness but also presents delicate, nuanced flavors that would otherwise be obscured.”

Currently, we’re offering a Ritual single-origin brewed coffee from Guatemala as well as the cacao nib coffee with our Camino Verde, Ecuador nibs. We look forward to having you come by to try it. Let us know what you think!

Don’t worry; you still get one of our signature shortbread cookies with every cup.

Our Week in NYC

December 2, 2017 by Jennifer Roy

We’re almost at the end of our nine-day pop up in New York City, and…WOW. We are just so humbled.

Day in and day out, our tiny little corner café in Chelsea has been flooded with such warmth and enthusiasm, and we can barely keep the s’mores in stock! Chef Lisa and her team have doubled down in their little commissary kitchen, rolling out impossible numbers of cookies and tarts and brownies and more. We’ve made more hot chocolate this week than we thought we ever could, and we’ve been teaching chocolate making classes to the best and most welcoming crowds.

We have a few more classes and book events before we hit the road back to California on December 3^rd, so come see us before then! The full list of events is here.

Thank you New York. We really do love you.

(And we hope we’ll be back!)

Thank you Gennaro Pecchia for the photos!

12 Nights of Chocolate 2017

November 13, 2017 by Jennifer Roy

12 Nights of Chocolate is an annual fundraising event where we invite the best chefs in the city (and beyond) to take over our space and create an experience, and there’s only one rule: use our chocolate, and run with it.

This is our fifth year and we couldn’t be more excited to announce the amazing line-up of chefs – 15 Michelin stars – not that we’re counting! Every evening is so unique, creative and different from the next: State Bird Provisions will be cooking from their just-released book; the ultimate ice-cream social with Salt & Straw, Revival and Smitten; Manresa Bread, Neighbor Bakehouse and Jane The Bakery are teaming up for “Bakery Night”; Toothache Magazine celebrate their forthcoming issue with Nick Muncy, Shawn Gawle, Kim Alter (Nightbird), Val Cantu (Californios), Rupert & Carrie Blease (Lord Stanley) – an all-star line-up.

The dates are December 4th through 15th and most evenings will take place in a beautiful loft space on the second floor of our upcoming chocolate factory on 16th and Alabama, and others at our Valencia cafe. As in years past, all proceeds will go to the SF-Marin Food Bank, for whom last year’s event raised over 65,000 meals.

A donation bin will be located inside our cafe for the duration of the event. Stop by to drop off cans and non-perishable food anytime during the holiday series.

For tickets and more information, click here.

The 12 Nights of Chocolate are Here!

November 9, 2016 by Jennifer Roy

We are thrilled to announce our fourth annual 12 Nights of Chocolate taking place December 1st through 12th. Each year, we invite chefs to take over our cafe and create a menu that follows two rules: use our chocolate, and don’t hold back. Over the years, we’ve hosted some of the best chefs in the country who have created menus ranging from quail and duck with mole, to the classic Mont Blanc dessert made by a three star Michelin chef. All proceeds go to the SF-Marin Food Bank, for whom last year’s event raised over 60,000 meals. This year, the evenings range from a seven-course tasting menu—both sweet and savory—to a family-style brunch after dark, with cocktails. More information and tickets here.

The Bar That Broke The Mold

November 24, 2014 by Jennifer Roy

When Josh and Evan, the discerning founders of Cool Hunting, sat down with me in the café at Dandelion to talk about a “collaboration,” I was intrigued. Their concept was to create a chocolate bar like no other, and when they brought in the boundary-breaking design firm Snarkitecture to design the bar and packaging, I knew we were onto something.

Despite the fact that Dandelion production is so very oversubscribed at the moment, we were up for the project for a few reasons. To begin, it’s a labor of love. Secondly, all of the profits will go to support Southern Exposure, a local non-profit organization.

It’s been a year, and we’ve finally arrived at the finish line. The result is a unique edible artwork in the form of a delicious chocolate topographical landscape.

The bar, once unwrapped from its silver foil, reveals a continuous fracture around the perimeter. Along this uneven edge, the bar splits into two pieces, revealing two perfectly opposite textured landscapes.

While the Break Bar looks simple, it was quite a challenge to develop. Creating the mold took several remakes. The first turned out to be too hard to temper, and the subsequent tries left a trail of broken bars which, to confess, we enjoyed immensely. Finally, we got it right.

When it came to actually making the bars, the production team was up for the challenge. Little did they know what they were in for. There’s three times more chocolate in a Break Bar than our regular bar, so getting the air bubbles out is no easy task. And to get the sharp edges we were looking for, each bar needed the tender attention of a hand-held hairdryer.

Even wrapping the bars is difficult. The foil is much thicker than what we regularly use, and the paper is difficult to handle.

In the end, for the sake of art, community, and chocolate, it’s all been worth it. To purchase the Break Bar, find it here.

PS — We’re producing a limited edition of 500 bars. One out of every hundred will include a “White Ticket,” which rewards the purchaser with a non-edible Snakitecture sculpture in the same form as the Break Bar.