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Neighbors, new and old

July 3, 2012 by

We’ve been pretty busy for the past few weeks making lots of chocolate for a very large order. But, we’re done(!) and looking forward to the rest of the summer. The opening of our space on Valencia is on the horizon and we’re doing lots of planning and prepping. It’s exciting and terrifying that the space will be ready within the next few months!

In addition, we’re working with our neighbors in the Mission and our neighbors in the Dogpatch on two great events this month. We’ll be teaming up with 18 Reasons and Pete Slosberg (of Pete’s Wicked Ale and Cocoa Pete’s) to host a beer and chocolate tasting on July 25 from 7-9 PM at 18 Reasons, 3674 18th Street. We’ll talk about the overlap between the processes of making the two foods and taste how well they work together. Tickets are available here.

We’ll also be showing off our current kitchen space as part of SF Made‘s Dogpatch factory tour on July 13 from 2-4 PM. On the tour, guests will stop by Maison de Monaco, Barbary Brix, Sutton Cellars, and our factory. It’s a great area, full of small businesses making beautiful products, and SF Made will make a perfect tour guide. Tickets for this event are available here.

We hope you can make it one of the two events, we’re looking forward to both!

Chocolate Dreams

May 20, 2012 by

One of the fun things about being at farmers’ markets is entering into serendipitous conversations with curious passers-by.  A couple weeks ago at the Noe Valley Farmer’s Market, Cam and I met a very nice man named Carlos who, intrigued by our signboard, came over for a closer look.  He tasted some of our chocolate, and then proceeded to recite (from memory!) a poem by Arnold Adoff.  The poem is included in a book of poetry dedicated to chocolate.  Called Chocolate Dreams, the collection is ostensibly meant for children, but I think it can (and should) be appreciated by anyone who enjoys chocolate, poetry, humor, or any combination of these things.

Mr. Arnold Adoff was kind enough to grant us permission to share the poem with you in its entirety.  A big thank-you to Carlos for bringing it to our attention, and an even bigger thank-you to Mr. Adoff for writing such lovely poems in the first place!

 

Her
She
Bar
 

Far
Star
I
See
You
Shining
Brown
In
My
Dark
And
Hungry
Sky

I
Wink
Back
Once
And
Fly
To
Meet
Your
Melt

 

Reproduced with permission from Arnold Adoff’s Chocolate Dreams.  New York: Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, 1989.  Please visit Arnold Adoff’s website for more information about the poet.

Come by and impress us with your artistic, musical or literary love for chocolate!  Alternatively, just come by to say hello.  You can find us at the Mission Community Market every Thursday from 4-8pm, and at the Noe Valley Farmers’ Market every Saturday from 8am-1pm.

New York, New York!

April 17, 2012 by

All set for the Next Big Small Brand Event

A couple of weeks ago I was lucky enough to accompany Todd to New York for the Next Big Small Brand Contest.  Picture this.

A room full of people excitedly salivating at the prospects of trying six different companies’ delicious attempts to win over the judges in their favor, a panel of celebrity judges (celebrities in the food world at least!), and two humble chocolate makers fresh off the plane from sunny California…fine let’s be honest, from not-as-sunny but still really awesome San Francisco.  The room is buzzing with foodies intent on exercising their honed taste buds to suss out who is going to be the next hottest food entrepreneur.  Questions fly.  Todd and I explain the nuances of our chocolate and how we can tease out the amazingly different flavors from just cocoa beans and sugar.  We refill the sample bowls, smile with delight as people’s expressions turn to shock and joy while taste traveling around the globe from Colombia to Venezuela and last, to Madagascar.

Many characters and a few familiar faces later, it is time to announce the winners…Todd and I make our way onto the stage.  After thank you’s all around, without a drum roll they announce people’s choice, a fellow SF company, Black Jet.  And the Next Big Small Brand Winner is…New York SuperFoods.  WAIT WHAT?  NOT DANDELION?  Hold up.

So we didn’t win.  But we met some amazing people, now have a beautifully done video about what we do, and NY SuperFoods is an awesome up-and-coming company who could really use the branding help to go big.  We were so lucky to be a part of the event and had a blast spreading the word about our chocolate to the other coast.

While we were in New York, we took the opportunity to stop by and see friends at the Meadow and Formaggio Essex (both carry our chocolate).  The Meadow’s display was beautiful and the shop was an oasis of calm in the craziness of New York.  Formaggio is located in food mecca with different vendors around the periphery reminiscent of markets in Europe.  We are so excited they are selling our chocolate.

The Meadow

We also took a field trip to the Bronx (I made it to 4 out of 5 boroughs while I was there!) to see Jim Greenberg at Union Confectionary who has a 1950’s Otto Hansel wrapping machine for us to check out.  He showed us around his wonderland of vintage temperers, panners (used to make chocolate covered nuts, etc), and other candy-making equipment.  The crowning glory (besides our excitement at seeing the wrapping machine) was a mini model chocolate factory built for the 1896 Chicago World’s Fair that purportedly inspired Hershey to move from confections to making chocolate.  It is crazy to me that factories used to be run from one engine attached to a series of giant leather belts…feeling pretty good about working in a “modern” chocolate factory.

The mini model chocolate factory that inspired Hershey to start making chocolate!

I even managed to squeeze in some touristy fun.  Todd was a great sport about being a “tourist” for the day (he is from Connecticut, which for you West coasters with hazy East coast geography is right next to New York).  Between calls back to the shop to make sure everything was going okay in SF, I managed to get him to pose for a picture at Grand Central Station and we may or may not have taken a whirl on the Staten Island ferry just to get a closer look at Lady Liberty.  We also did some “research” about what makes the best hot chocolate by sampling what NY had to offer.   We will be unveiling our results when our Valencia Street space opens.

Look at those goofy tourists at Grand Central Station

All in all, a great first trip to New York and being part of the Next Big Small Brand Contest was an amazing experience.

Back out on Bartlett Street

April 10, 2012 by

We have 3 more pairs of hands around the chocolate factory these days, and they’re all pretty fantastic. Caitlin joined us in January and Natalie and Cynthia have been helping out for the past few weeks. All together, we make a great chocolate-making team.

You’ll have a chance to meet Cynthia this Thursday at the first Mission Community Market of the season. She’ll be there every Thursday evening, with help from the rest of us, from 4-8 PM on Bartlett Street between 21st and 22nd. The Mission Community Market is one of our favorite events. Last year we got to know a great group of customers and fellow vendors. For us, the market’s a lot like our office hours. It’s only a few blocks from the site of our factory space on Valencia, so it’s a great time to meet people in our neighborhood and share our chocolate. Come say hello!

If you’d like to learn more about chocolate making, take a look at Chocolate 101 in our online store.

Chocolate on Two Coasts!

April 9, 2012 by

I’m taking a trip to Boston this weekend and so is our chocolate. We met one of our retailers, Formaggio Kitchen, at the Good Food Awards in January. They won for their in-house charcuterie and had a chance to taste our chocolate while visiting SF. Awesomely, they were one of the first shops to bring our chocolate to the east coast, introducing it to a whole new set of customers. They snapped this photo at one of their first tasting sessions, saying that our bars are a perfect after-dinner treat.

While I’m visiting this weekend, I’ll host a tasting on Saturday from 11 AM – 2 PM at their shop in Cambridge. If you live nearby, come visit! I’ll have our three bars to taste and I’ll be ready to answer any questions about making chocolate from the bean. Hope to see you there!

If you’d like to learn more about chocolate making, take a look at Chocolate 101 in our online store.

Getting ready for the weekend

February 10, 2012 by

We’re working hard this Friday, getting things together for the Noe Valley Farmers Market tomorrow and for our event at Love & Luxe.

We’ve had Venezuelan bars at the Noe market for the past few weeks, but tomorrow we’ll bring the last 9 bars we’ve made. We’re making progress toward getting more Venezuelan beans. We have a few bags from Ocumare on their way shortly, and hopefully part of a container coming in a few months. For now, come and get the last bars we have on hand!

I’m also busy making chocolate gems for our event tomorrow night at Love & Luxe. This is the closest I think we’ll come to making heart-shaped chocolates for Valentine’s. I needed a way to transport the gems to the event without them scuffing, so I’m using the foil liners that came free with our new molds. I think the gems look pretty festive this way. If you’re strolling through the Mission tomorrow night, stop by and say hello.

Celebrate Valentine’s Day with us

February 3, 2012 by

We’re teaming up with Love & Luxe, a beautiful jewelry store by the site of our Valencia Street space, to celebrate Valentine’s Day. Join us next Saturday night, February 11, for A Love Supreme from 5 – 10 PM at Love & Luxe, 1169 Valencia Street. Admission to the event is free and you’ll find unique Valentine’s Day gift ideas all around. We’ll be there with our chocolate and Blue Angel Vodka will offer samples of their own.  Even better, 5% of Love & Luxe jewelry sales and proceeds from the sale of work from the Visual Aid Pillow Project will go towards Visual Aid. It should be a blast and I hope you can come by.

Good Food Awards

January 13, 2012 by

We’re back in the factory, some of us still in our party clothes from the Good Food Awards. Cam’s back to work at the temperer, but couldn’t wait to change out of his tie and fancy shoes. It was a fantastic night, full of people who love what they do, and I’m pretty happy to be among them.

Todd accepted our award for our Costa Rica 70%, Batch 2, and we got our first medal. It’s pretty awesome, in the shape of a chocolate bar with a big bite out of it. Tonight it’s hanging on one of our shelves, keeping us company while we winnow a big batch of Madagascar and make a few more bars for the morning. Now that our temperer’s working again, we’re working really hard to get ahead and it feels great to be making bars.

Tomorrow you have two chances to catch us. Todd and I will be at the Good Food Awards Marketplace from 9 AM – 2 PM at the Ferry Building. Our regular Saturday customers can find Cam and Chiann at the Noe Valley Farmer’s Market. I think the excitement of tonight should carry us through to tomorrow’s early start.

 

Market Update

December 8, 2011 by

It’s been a long week… and it’s only wednesday. For the last few months, we’ve been scrambling to keep up with demand (great problem to have!) but this week one of our machines (our temperer) started acting up. This has put  a pretty big dent in our production capacity and, while we’d love to come to the market, we have some outstanding orders from our wholesale clients and we can’t let them down.

So, that means we’re going to have to skip tomorrow’s Mission Community Market in order to make more bars. We’ll miss you all but you can still grab our Madagascar bars as part of the market gift boxes.

While it’s not a market, we will be doing a small tasting outside Bi-Rite from 3-6 on Saturday. Stop by, say hello, and try our new Colombian bar! It has a lot of the same super-chocolatey flavor that we loved in the Venezuelan, but it definitely has its own soul. Hope to see you there!