Archive | locations

Chuck Visits the Chocolate Machines at Dandelion Chocolate Japan

December 16, 2019 by Chuck Dewey

Chuck is our Chocolate Production Mechanic who helps to keep the factories running here in SF. His engineering skills are second to none; he’s never met a machine he couldn’t woo into working at its best. In November, 2019 he was asked to bring his knowledge and elbow grease to our factories in Japan, and take in a little bit of the local culture. Below, Chuck shares a few highlights from his trip.

Chieko and Kaija invited me to come inspect and repair the machines they use at Kuramae and Honjo, and I found that Dandelions are the same everywhere you go: hard working, kind to people and to machines, and very welcoming to this old man.

The river between Honjo (on left) and Kuramae

What a clean and beautiful place to have a chocolate factory and café.

Chieko and Kaija (and the DCJ team) take very good care of their chocolate-making machines but, before something serious breaks, they wanted to create a proactive preventive inspection and servicing plan. Luckily for me, I got to visit for about a week and help them implement the plan. One of the Japanese chocolate makers, Ozaki, got the nod from Chieko to add to his duties the care and feeding of the machines. (They don’t eat much.) Ozaki and I worked side-by-side for a careful inspection and preventive maintenance session for each machine. He is ready to do the hands-on work that will keep the DCJ machines in tip-top shape and minimize surprise failures.

Luckily, DCJ chose and installed identical machines to those that we use in California. The machines don’t get worked as long and as hard as they are in the US, and they’re all in great shape. We had some minor touch-ups that got implemented and a few more that Kaija and Ozaki will implement going forward.

Just like all travelers to Japan, I lost a day as we crossed the International Date Line but got it back on the return trip. That really messed with my sense of time.

I arrived on a Saturday and made a valiant effort to gather some energy for my first visit to Dandelion Chocolate Japan at Kuramae on Sunday morning. Kaija and Chieko and the chocolate makers gave me a warm hello.

Dandelion Chocolate factory and café at Kuramae with beautifully weathered wood front; to the right, Dandelion Chocolate ChEx (Chocolate Experiences classroom)

Retail space with traditional Dandelion Chocolate chalkboard (Thank you, Elaine!)

Upstairs guest tables and chairs make a comfortable tasting experience

The Kuramae factory and café are much like the Valencia factory in San Francisco

After a nice greeting with the DCJ team, Kaija laid out the plan for the week and led me on a tour of the welcoming Kuramae factory and the strictly-functional Honjo factory. We discussed all of the equipment and our action items. We would take care of Kuramae first and get some serious plumbing out of the way. While the plumbers worked at Kuramae, we attacked the projects at Honjo. I met Ozaki on Monday and we were side by side for the rest of the work.

On Thursday we went shopping for tools. We traveled by train and found a huge “everything” store that looks like a Home Depot or a Lowes on the ground floor, then continues to many floors of anything you might need to keep your home operating.

Kaija and Ozaki waiting in the train station

Just like everything I saw in Tokyo, the factories are immaculate and extremely orderly.

We had plenty of tasks to fill the week, but worked at a comfortable pace that left time to experience a wide variety of tasty delights. The baristas know how to make great hot chocolate and coffee drinks just like at home.

Cafe latte for an old mechanic

One day the wonderful pastry chefs made udon for the whole staff. I got to join the lunch!

Every meal became a flavorful adventure. One rainy day we even ate an American-style hamburger. It relieved Kaija’s hankering for a taste of home. I have to say, they even did that well.

On Saturday night Kaija and her friend took me to a traditional restaurant that required shoes off at the door and to sit on mats on the floor. The food was amazing! I was surprised that this old man was able to stand back up after dinner.

What a great experience it was visiting Tokyo and our Dandelion Chocolate colleagues in Japan!

Chuck enjoying Japan and some okonomiyaki

The Story of Dandelion Chocolate Japan: The Shops, The Culture, and The Secret Ingredient to Japan’s Hot Chocolate

June 28, 2019 by Karen Solomon

Hi! It’s me, Karen S., and I’m the content manager and the editor of the blog. I’ve been in love with Hello Kitty since 1976, I lived in Japan in the late 1990’s and I’ve returned to visit a couple of times, I studied taiko drumming for several years under Seiichi Tanaka, the man who brought the martial art of giant drums to North America, and I can roll an avocado maki like a champ. In short, I am a lifelong Japanophile. Pair this with my deep love of chocolate, and you can see why I would want to learn all that I could about Dandelion Chocolate Japan.

When I started my job here, I was entirely delighted to learn about our multiple locations in Japan. But when I started poking around on our website and such, I realized it was really hard to get info about our business across the Pacific. I’ve always wanted to know more, and I was beyond delighted when Tomo, one of our partners, recently spoke in depth on our Japanese presence at a company meeting. I quickly asked Elaine for an introduction, and over green tea and dried edamame snacks, he and I spoke for over two hours, with me taking notes as quickly as possible, to get a better understanding of Dandelion Chocolate Japan.

KURAMAE

This is our first and flagship location in Japan that opened in 2016, and it contains a full factory, as well as a café, a retail shop, and the Bean to Bar Lab next door.

A lot of thought went into choosing the location for this first store. It would have been easy to plunk an American chocolate shop into the middle of a high-traffic modern touristy area, but Seiji, who brought Dandelion Chocolate to Japan, wanted the shop to feel like it belonged to the local community, and for it to be a mixture of old world and new. This area of Tokyo, south of Asakusa, is near a large temple that attracts many visitors from outside Japan. But it’s also quite close to an elementary school and a park frequented by locals. Seiji really loves this spot because of its blend of traditional culture and modern day life, and its outdoor café is very popular.

Kuramae is the only place to tour our factory in Japan. And as of March, 2019, they are making about 3,000 bars a month. They have made several single-origin bars, all sold in the shop along with about the same amount of our bars made in SF.

On these retail shelves and in others across the country, there are collaboration products that you can only find in Japan, including a mochi made with cocoa nibs, ground chocolate, and sweet red bean paste, and a chocolate tile made with pressed sugar.

This is also home to the production kitchen that bakes pastries for most of our other cafés in the country (though Kyoto and Ise also have kitchens). And, since its expansion in December, 2018, the kitchen also creates the retail products sold in the Japanese stores, including the shortbread cookies served with hot drinks, and the gâteau au chocolat.

Guests can sign up for a factory tour to learn how we make chocolate, or sign up for classes like Chocolate 101 and 201. And, guests can also find events like taste pairing sessions, interesting talks from chocolate industry leaders and scientists from all over the world, and occasionally, even local musicians.

In December, 2018, the Bean to Bar Lab opened up next door, and this is our showplace of chocolate education from all over the world. Not only is this where the classes and talks take place, but this is a second retail shop featuring a curated selection of well-made chocolate from about eight or nine other makers. Here we also teach hands-on classes such as baking with chocolate and ground chocolate taught by professional pastry chefs. Read more

The famous chalkboard: Elaine is the original artist of the beautiful chalkboards in our San Francisco shops. She helped launch the chalkboard in Kuramae in collaboration with Tomo, and Tomo went on to design the chalkboard displays in the Ise, Kamakura, and Kyoto locations, as well as some pop-up shops.

ISE

This was the next Japanese location to open in December of 2016, and it contains a retail shop and café. This cool, old building features some exposed brick in the interior—just like we have on Valencia Street—and it used to be the office of the post office and telephone company.

This area is a destination for local and global tourists alike who visit the area for the iconic Ise Jingu shrine—many of whom, as is the custom, come here to buy small gifts to take home. Seiji was immediately inspired by the building and the holy power of the shrine. Both Tomo and Seiji love to come and visit this shop because of the general feeling of the building; it feels cozy and harmonious with its lush surroundings. We have a good partnership with the building owners and some really kind and regular customers. There is a general peaceful feeling about the place. Read more

Hot chocolate in Japan: We are certainly known for our hot chocolate, and in Japan, that same beloved drink has a little twist. Each of our Japanese locations adds just a dash of a special elixir to make their hot chocolate unique. In Kyoto, we add just a bit of honey and ginger to make the flavor more complex. Our other shops add their own signature black tea to the house hot chocolate to make it less sweet and more thirst quenching. And some of our locations, like Kuramae and Kamakura, use tea from local tea houses and producers. Tomo says it’s just a splash of tea—just enough to give the drink a bit of complexity and bitterness (much like the way bitters are used in cocktails).

KAMAKURA

Tomo feels that this location is probably the one most similar to West Coast culture, with its ocean views and mellow surfers and swimmers who stop by to fuel up. Opened in February, 2017, this café and retail shop is in the oceanside Shonan area of Yokohama—a place that’s warm with a good beach for those escaping Tokyo for the weekend. Kamakura is also an old samurai town, and as a result, there are many Zen temples to visit, and it gives the region a very simple and clean vibe.

This location is our only one in Japan to have a separate breakfast menu, and the popular chocolate croissant is a hit with commuters into the capital who stop by on their way to the morning train. There are also plenty of locals who linger at the tables long into the morning. This is also the location of the Zen and Chocolate class (which helped inspire the Mindfulness Tea class at our Los Angeles pop-up). The city is working hard to present itself as the “mindfulness city”, and we are so happy to be a part of that. Kamakura is also known as a city of flowers, as evidenced by the many hydrangeas that bloom in June and July. Read more

KYOTO

The café and retail shop in Kyoto is something of a tourist attraction, as local and international tourists visit the area to take in Japanese culture, including the numerous temples. In June of 2018 this location opened its doors. And to make it feel like it’s part of its community, there’s also a Zen garden on premises.

The Cacao Bar of Kyoto

Kyoto is also home to the Cacao Bar, a sit-down space for special menu items, events, and educational opportunities, and we opened that in August, 2018. Expect more classes and workshops in the future, as Cacao Bar may soon be under renovation to make room for more types of experiences. Read more

OMOTESANDO

Welcome to Harajuku! This high-speed, high-fashion, and high-traffic area of Tokyo is known for its clothing and design industry. And since February, 2019, those in the know step down the pink staircase into the Bean to Bar Lounge basement for mochas and much more. This small shop is very popular for its café and retail items, and there’s usually quite a crowd hungry not just to eat and drink, but to learn more about the diversity and origins of cocoa. And, its location next to the stylish Hay furniture shop has more people “discovering” us every day.

Food nerds, take notice: this is the only location in Japan serving our single-origin soft serve ice cream (from Zorzal Estate). And if you’re a fan of our café’s brownie bite flights, you’ll also want to know that this is the only place to find the macaron bite flight: three small macarons with three different single-origin chocolate creams inside. Read more

Dandelion Chocolate Japan, I cannot wait to visit! And, of course, to embark upon the Nippon hot chocolate tour (not possible…yet!). Anyway, I’ve learned a lot, and I thought that some of you might want to hear about it, too. Oh, and Tomo casually mentioned putting together a Japanese tour that takes guests from one Dandelion Chocolate location to another. If you think this sounds like a good idea, please let us know in the comments below. Thanks!

The 16th Street Factory Opens April 19th!

April 15, 2019 by Karen Solomon

After four long years of construction, permit mayhem, and more setbacks than Annie would care to recall, our new home on 16th Street between Alabama and Harrison in SF will open its doors to the public on April 19th. Inside you’ll find our largest chocolate factory to date; the comfortable sit-down Bloom chocolate salon serving breakfast and afternoon desserts; a multipurpose classroom and event space; a casual cafe for hot chocolate, mochas and pastries on-the-go, and our third retail shop in San Francisco.

The Factory

If you’re interested in chocolate machines, you should come see Caitlin and her production team’s new hydraulic-powered Bean Room, their bright yellow 70-kilo Diedrich roaster, vintage Refining Room ball mills and roll mills, and so much more. Choose your own adventure for getting to know how we make chocolate: either sit in the new bleacher seating sipping a Mission Mocha, or sign up for a tour of the factory floor. Speaking of tours…

Classes and Tours

School is in session in our flexible, multipurpose classroom and event space, and Cynthia and the Chocolate Experiences team have an expanded menu of chocolate classes, tasting sessions, making sessions, factory tours, and trips to origin to deepen your knowledge of craft chocolate at every level. Tasting, History, Sourcing, and Making courses are now available for sign up, as well as numerous kid’s classes, hands-on family learning, and family-friendly factory tours. We now have the capacity for private events like team building, baby showers, birthday parties, or whatever kind of gathering you’re planning. Our philosophy has always been that learning is more fun when there’s a hot chocolate at the end.

The Chocolate Salon

Bloom, our chocolate salon, is nestled next to the windows that face the street, and for weeks now, curious eyes have been peeping the glimmering brass wall and ceiling tile, the deco-inspired geometric tile, oversized banquettes, and the supermodern lighting. Lisa and the kitchen team are putting the finishing touches on recipe testing, plating, and menu planning the likes of market quiche with greens and cacao fruit vinaigrette, and brûlèed brioche with Camino Verde, Ecuador chocolate hazelnut spread and cocoa nib cream. And Indica and Michelle in Creative have been hunting down teaspoons, saucers, serving vessels, and so much more to match the quality and thoughtfulness of the food they will serve.

Café and Retail Shop

If you’ve grown used to grabbing a mocha at the Ferry Building or on Valencia Street, you’ll also be able to get your drink fix here. There’s a full café onsite serving all manner of grab-and-go hot, cold, chocolate, and coffee drinks. In addition to our full pastry selection, there will also be a few new menu items in the mix, such as Kouign-Amann with a generous dollop of chocolate ganache at the center. The retail shop will stock all of our gift boxes, plus single bars and bar sets, and of course, tastes of all of our origins to help you pick a new favorite.

We cannot even begin to calculate the labor and the love that have made this dream of ours a physical space that we can now touch and see. The first batches of beans are roasting, the tempered chocolate is flowing, and that familiar scent of fresh chocolate is wafting into every room. And very soon, you’ll be here with us to engage with the best chocolate we can make.

Closer Every Day: Construction Update and a Peek Inside Our 16th Street Factory

March 11, 2019 by Annie Kamin

Annie, our Chief of Staff, has been working on a Herculean task for, quite literally, years. She is in charge of the buildout of our just-out-of-reach 16th Street Factory in San Francisco. From plumbing snafus to signature cards, electrical work to signage, she’s left her mark on nearly every bolt, hinge, and joist of the space (opening in about a month). This story is her recall of the trials by fire of one of the largest projects of her life, and a preview of what’s inside.

Much like an expertly crafted bar of single-origin chocolate, building a chocolate factory takes equal parts skill, patience, determination, finesse, creativity, and, in all honesty, perhaps a whisper of insanity.

It’s fun, but it definitely has not been easy.

We’ve been working on building our 16th Street Factory for over four years, and at long last we are in the final stages of construction. I’ve been working on this project for just about two years now, and it has been hard to imagine this space as anything other than a construction site filled with the familiar and comforting sounds of hammering, welding, and drilling.

Chocolate machines inside the 16th Street Factory

Say hello to the TECHNOCHOC

For the past few months, we’ve been moving past more of the work that yields invisible progress (conduit runs to junction boxes, refrigerant lines, anything plumbing related) and we’ve started working on the finishes throughout the factory. With each light illuminated and each counter installed, the space is brought to life just a bit more.

It’s slightly bewildering, but even more thrilling, to think of the day in the not-so-distant future when I’ll be able to enter a room using a door with a handle instead of walking through the giant void where a window is supposed to be. The chaotic hammering, sawing, and drilling will soon be replaced by the quiet hum of the roaster, the gentle whoosh of the winnower, and the hypnotic white noise of our stone melangers hard at work.

I never thought that a question as simple as, “When will you be open?” could be so difficult to answer. We are so close to completion, but still have the lingering uncertainty of our final inspections ahead of us. Are there enough exit signs? Are the soap dispensers in all of the right places? Will they tell us we need ANOTHER PERMIT? If we manage to pass all of these inspections with flying colors, with colors, or even with a simple checkmark, we’ll be ready to open around the end of April. If we don’t, well, we’ll fix what needs to be fixed and try again the next week. Regardless, we are in the final stages of construction, and the building will without a doubt be open to the public soon…very soon.

Banquettes in the Dandelion Chocolate 16th Street Factory

Banquettes in progress

When you work on a project all day, every day for years, it can be easy to lose sight of the scale and the beauty of exactly what it is you’re doing. We’re building something that has some elements that San Francisco hasn’t seen in decades, and others that the city has yet to experience.

Yes, but…what’s inside??

The 16th Street Factory will have a café that is reminiscent of our Valencia St. location, but it will be slightly smaller and geared more toward folks who want to stop in, grab a Mission Mocha and a cookie (yes, for breakfast), and get to work.

Melangers making chocolate in the 16th Street Factory

The melangers are spinning on our first batches of chocolate made in the space

There is also the option of following a not-so-secret path that starts at the café and leads you down a small set of stairs, past our circa 1920’s freight elevator, and onto our catwalk that provides an intimate look at the roasting, winnowing, and melanging processes. At the end of the catwalk is our bleacher seating, where anyone who wishes to visit the factory can sit, relax, and watch our chocolate makers hard at work.

Chocolate salon inside the 16th Street Factory

The chocolate salon is underway

Sound exciting? That’s only a third of the factory! Directly adjacent to our café is a gleaming, gorgeous room that is home to our chocolate salon, an elevated pastry and chocolate dining experience that will offer a decadent breakfast menu, our chocolatey take on afternoon tea, and eventually, plated desserts in the evening. We’ve applied for a beer and wine license for the space, but, shockingly, we’ve hit a few snags and we are still working on securing it.

Our Chocolate Experiences team will be offering classes, both new and classic, and more opportunities for private events and event rental in the space. We also have a small amount of workspace where our teams can plan and coordinate to help the business run.

We are so proud of what we’ve built and we cannot wait to share it with you all. Stay tuned for exciting updates on our progress, an opening date, and more via our newsletter and Instagram. I’m looking forward to hosting you in our newest factory very, very soon.

Office space inside the Dandelion Chocolate 16th Street Factory

Upstairs office space in the works

A Visit to ÓBOLO Chocolate in Santiago, Chile

October 10, 2018 by Ryan O'Connell

Ryan is a chocolate maker at our 16th Street factory, as well as a frequent traveler and motorcycle enthusiast. Inspired by the Chilean kung fu film Kiltro, he bought a motorcycle to ride to the Atacama desert of northern Chile, ultimately crossing into Argentina to catch the final stages of the world-famous Dakar Rally. While in Santiago, Chile, he had to visit our friends at ÓBOLO Chocolate to taste their amazing 70% Cacao con Nibs bar. This is what he found.

In January of 2018, while in Chile, I had the opportunity to stop by ÓBOLO Chocolate in Santiago’s Barrio Italia neighborhood. This mainly residential area of Santiago, although not as busy as other areas, has a decent level of foot traffic with plenty of cafes, restaurants, shops, and small factories peppered throughout the area. ÓBOLO, located on Avenida Italia, is rather unassuming from the outside; I missed it the first time I passed by. The color of the chocolate brown building foreshadows what can be found inside. Established in 2014, ÓBOLO is Chile’s first bean-to-bar chocolate maker. ÓBOLO makes two-ingredient chocolate bars as well as flavor-infused, dark milk, and inclusion bars.

Walking in, as would be expected, the aroma of chocolate hits you immediately. To the right, bags of Peruvian (Pangoa) cocoa beans. To the left, a product display table with cocoa beans and cocoa powder. Straight ahead, a display case with various chocolate bars and treats like chocolate-dipped candied ginger.

The People

The company has just five employees. Chances are you will be greeted by the owner and founder of ÓBOLO, Mark Gerrits (an expatriate from the United States). Mark was introduced to cacao back in 2001 while living in Ecuador’s Amazon region working with direct trade practices and cocoa producing communities. If Mark is busy in the back, you’ll probably meet one of the other team members – Geraldine Mondaca (a Santiago native and ÓBOLO´s uber-friendly store manager) or Gabriel Marques (the Head Chocolate Maker from Venezuela).

The Equipment

The production equipment at ÓBOLO is robust and pretty standard for a chocolate maker of its size, and also an amazing display of homemade tools that get the job done. They’re roasting cocoa beans with a modified homemade 10kg nut roaster. For a winnower (the machine that removes the cracked papery husk from roasted cocoa beans), they use a machine that was designed and built for them in Perú. They also use a 100lb Diamond grinder to make their chocolate, and their tempering machine was a familiar site. Just like us, they use a Unica machine to temper the chocolate at the right temperature to make a finished bar snappy and shiny. (Here’s more info on how chocolate is made.)

The Challenges

After speaking with the team, they mentioned that the winnowing process was bulletproof. It was also interesting to learn about the biggest challenges in their production. Like any chocolate maker, consistency in tempering is an issue. Some finished bars just look richer, darker, and shinier than others; the root is usually an imbalance in the quality or quantity of ideal crystals. Developing the flavor profile of each harvest year to year is also tricky. The roast and conch of each new batch of beans (the part of production that contributes to flavor development and mouthfeel) can be challenging to get right. Daily and weekly production and logistics flow is also tough for a small maker who is trying to be conscientious of their product. The planning, documenting, and traceability of each bar is something that ÓBOLO works at with gusto.

It can be easy to take for granted how much energy, passion, care, teamwork, and coordination go into making great chocolate at any scale, and I learned a lot by watching a small craft maker. It’s amazing to see how far the bean-to-bar New American Chocolate Movement revolution has reached, and I can’t wait to visit again.

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!

San Francisco/Tokyo Dandelion Employee Exchange Program

June 29, 2018 by Kaija Bosket

Kaija is a lead chocolate maker at the Valencia Factory in San Francisco. In February 2018 she lived in Tokyo for a month as part of the DCJ (Dandelion Chocolate Japan) and DCA (Dandelion Chocolate America) employee exchange program. She loves making chocolate, exploring new places, and, of course, eating good food.

Why does Dandelion have an employee exchange program?

Todd, one of our founders, used to do a lot of exchanges when he was growing up (Mexico, Russia) and he learned so much from those experiences. He wants to offer cross-team learning as well as exposure to different culinary palates and team processes.

What were your first impressions of life in Japan?

I was amazed at how clean and quiet the trains and subway stations were! Traveling around was a treat.

What was hard about your life there?

Kaija and the Dandelion Japan delivery van

This is Kaija being much taller than the Dandelion Japan delivery van.

The height difference was my biggest challenge. I’m 5’11, and I felt like a giant by Japanese standards. At work we had to make a few modifications so I could work comfortably.

What else was unexpected?

Communication and transportation were surprisingly easy. People were super nice and helpful and the transportation system was easy to navigate.

How was your job in Japan similar to the work you do as a chocolate maker on Valencia Street?

It was still making chocolate the Dandelion way. It was the same process, values, and team spirit. Everyone puts 110% into their work and everyone loves what they do.

How was the work different?

DCJ works with smaller quantities of cocoa beans at a time than DCA. There is also a different flavor preference for how the chocolate should taste. In the Dandelion Chocolate Japan bars, they like the chocolate to have more sour and fermented notes. We also tend to have different reference points for flavor. For example, when we taste espresso, they often taste tea.

Work life. Kaija makes chocolate with her co-workers in Japan.

What were some highlights of the trip?

Getting to work with the DCJ chocolate makers was such a treat as well as getting to meet other makers at the Craft Chocolate Market, an event hosted by Dandelion that gathers craft chocolate makers from all over the world. We also traveled to Kamakura, Ise, Osaka, and Kyoto and tasted samples from a variety of Japanese confectionaries, bean-to-bar makers, and bakeries. I also saw my first real, growing cacao tree at the Kyoto Botanical Gardens!

Was there a lowlight of the trip?

A few coworkers and I had horse sashimi at an izakaya in Tokyo. Everyone else loved it but it was probably the only thing that I ate in Japan that I didn’t enjoy.

Would you do it again?

Absolutely! It was super inspiring to work with chocolate makers all the way on the other side of the globe. I can’t wait for my next chocolate adventure!

Arigatogozaimashta, Kaija! The Dandelion Kamakura cafe will see you again soon.

Sharing Gola Rainforest Chocolate

May 24, 2018 by Kristy Leissle

We are so excited to share Dr. Kristy Leissle’s most recent blog post about how the Gola Rainforest bar came to be. Dr. Leissle was the person who introduced Dandelion to the project team, and after Greg visited Sierra Leone in October 2017, we bought the beans and became the first U.S. chocolate maker to make Gola Rainforest bars.

Dr. Leissle is a scholar of cocoa and chocolate. Since 2004, her work has investigated the politics, economics, and cultures of these industries, focusing on West African political economy and trade, the US craft market, and the complex meanings produced and consumed through chocolate marketing and advertising. Her recent book, Cocoa (Cambridge: Polity, 2018) explores cocoa geopolitics and personal politics. Dr. Leissle is Affiliate Faculty in African Studies at the University of Washington. She lives in Accra, Ghana.

As a scholar of cocoa and chocolate, it is not often that I get involved on the trading side. But since early last year, I have been working with the UK-based organization Twin & Twin Trading, whose vision is development through trade, facilitating specialty chocolate market access for cocoa farmer associations in Africa. That means I help farmer groups to promote and sell their cocoa to specialty buyers—who may be paying premium prices for quality, and who may make these farmer groups visible to chocolate shoppers by putting their names on single origin bars.

Apart from Madagascar bars, it is relatively rare in the US to find specialty, single origin chocolate that uses African cocoa, at least compared with bars that use cocoa from Central or South America, or the Caribbean. I started writing about the invisibility of West African cocoa in premium chocolate some years ago; little did I think at the time that I would be part of a team helping to promote the region to specialty buyers.

Gola’s warehouse manager, Vandi, scoops up a handful of cocoa beans to assess them; photo by Kristy Leissle

But one container at a time, that’s what we have been doing, starting with Gola Rainforest cocoa producer organizations in Sierra Leone. With assistance from Twin and other partners, farmers in four chiefdoms on the edge of the Gola Rainforest National Park have organized into three associations to sell their cocoa: Malema chiefdom, Gaura chiefdom, and Tunkia and Koya chiefdoms, which, being a bit smaller than the others, joined together to sell their cocoa. Together, these farmer associations are working to conserve the Gola Rainforest, which is home to many threatened and endemic species, including the elusive pygmy hippo, and to strengthen their cocoa business practices.

Twin and its partners in Sierra Leone have been working for several years with these farmer associations to provide agricultural training, and to support best practices around cocoa harvest, fermentation, drying, and storage. My role has involved building capacity for farmer associations and the Gola staff around marketing, so that they can strategize from an informed position when negotiating with buyers.

Vandi with bags of cocoa at the warehouse awaiting shipment; photo by Kristy Leissle

When I started this work, bags of cocoa were sitting in the Gola warehouse in Kenema. Knowing we had superior quality cocoa and a unique opportunity to launch Sierra Leone onto the specialty cocoa map, we aimed high—the first container, the team agreed, should be pitched to the US craft market. To the best of our knowledge, no craft maker in the US had produced a single origin specialty chocolate bar from Sierra Leone before. As confident as I felt in the cocoa, though, I wasn’t sure if any of them would be willing to consider it. In my work over the past fifteen years, I have found that, apart from a very few exceptions (such as John Kehoe and Gary Guittard at Guittard Chocolate, or the folks at Tcho Chocolate), people are generally dismissive, wary, or simply uninterested in West African cocoa for any kind of premium product.

But some people in the chocolate industry are starting to think—and act—differently when it comes to African origins, and especially West Africa. In our conversations about Gola cocoa, these individuals spoke with humility, recognizing that they had a lot to learn about West Africa’s vast cocoa farming systems, and they were eager to begin. Among them were Greg D’Alesandre, who sources for Dandelion Chocolate, and Gino Dalla Gasperina, who founded Meridian Cacao Company. I had a lot to learn from them, too—and all of us had something to learn from the people growing the cocoa and the Gola staff who work with those farmers. Greg and Gino decided to visit Sierra Leone, to see the farms, learn about the trainings, and discuss priorities and visions with the Gola team, as buyers and sellers of cocoa.

Photo with Greg (Dandelion Chocolate), Gino (Meridian Cacao), and the Gola team, on the wall at the Gola Rainforest Lalehun research center, where we held the season review last week; photo by Kristy Leissle

And then Greg made the decision to buy the cocoa, which meant Dandelion would make the first ever Gola Rainforest Chocolate bar! Will you forgive me for saying how very proud I am, how even now I have tears and goosebumps, remembering the collective effort it took, and from my gratitude to everyone for working with such dedication and tirelessness, such faith in Gola cocoa? So many people gave this their all, from the cocoa farmers through the Gola buying officers, the agricultural extension team at Jula Consultancy, the trading team at Twin, and right up to Ron Sweetser at Dandelion, who developed the profile for the bar—and, by doing so with enormous care and love, showed everyone just what Sierra Leone Gola Rainforest cocoa can do as a single origin craft chocolate bar.

I will leave it to others to give their assessment of the chocolate, as my own (five star) review of the (most profoundly chocolate) bar (I have ever tasted) will necessarily sound biased at this point. But if you are one of those people who likes chocolate, I do think the Gola Rainforest bar might be one that pleases you (so much that you buy out all the stock in your local shop and eat it for breakfast and create fashion accessories out of the wrappers).

Greg and the team at Dandelion took the first opportunity to share the chocolate with the women and men who had grown the cocoa. The three Gola Rainforest cocoa farmer associations held their season review last week, and I traveled to Sierra Leone to participate. Part of the work was to celebrate the successes of last season, and part of it was to strategize for the coming season. For this, I led a session on chocolate markets, outlining the different categories of chocolate and what advantages and disadvantages there would be to selling into each value chain.

Presenting to Gola cocoa farmer associations, while business manager Yambasu translates into Mende; photo by Felicity Butler

We talked too about the relationship between Gola and Dandelion, and with other potential buyers, and what they had discussed with Greg and Gino when they visited. I showed maps to chart the journey the Gola cocoa had taken once it left Sierra Leone, and photos of Dandelion’s Valencia Street factory, so that the farmers could see where it was manufactured into chocolate.

Showing where the Gola Rainforest bar is for sale at Dandelion’s Valencia Street factory; photo by Felicity Butler

Photos showing farmers their chocolate bar on sale at Dandelion’s Valencia Street shop; photo by Kristy Leissle

Admiring the Dandelion Chocolate bar wrapper, which says “Gola Rainforest, Sierra Leone”; photo by Felicity Butler

Staff members had taken turns translating my talk into Mende. But when I said that theirs was the first specialty chocolate bar from Sierra Leone in the US craft market, no translation was needed—the cheers and smiles were immediate!

Celebrating Gola’s success at the season review meeting; photo by Björn Horvath

Then it was time to share the Dandelion Gola Rainforest chocolate bar.

Dandelion Gola Rainforest Chocolate! Photo by Felicity Butler

Aminata, Supervisor of Cocoa Extension Team & Gender Coordinator for Gola, shares Dandelion’s Gola chocolate with her colleague Janneh; photo by Felicity Butler

Mohamed Fofanah, Managing Director of Jula Consultancy, tastes Dandelion chocolate; photo by Björn Horvath

So much of my teaching, research, and writing has been about the negative stereotypes that persist about Africa, and how these damage or undermine so many possibilities for real, material change. Superior cocoa grows in Sierra Leone, and farmers work hard to cultivate and process it. It is not easy to swim against the tide of negative stories about Sierra Leone and indeed all of West Africa. But this is necessary work.

Do the people who work so hard every day to grow excellent cocoa, and who buy and haul and store it, who steward it until it sails away on a container ship—do they not deserve to have their experiences, their labor, their cocoa recognized and esteemed? We all want to be seen, and for our work to be valued.

I think that even more than when they tasted the chocolate, when the farmers, buying officers, and agricultural extension staff saw the words “Gola Rainforest, Sierra Leone” on the Dandelion bar wrapper, they felt what they had achieved. I saw people’s faces light up with pride. I hope that there is more of the same to come.

Madame Jebbe, Women’s Leader of the Gaura Cocoa Farmers’ Association; photo by Felicity Butler

It is my privilege and joy to work with the farmers and association executives in Gaura, Malema, Tunkia, and Koya chiefdoms; with the staff (especially Björn Horvath and Katie Sims in Kenema) at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), which has worked for decades to conserve and protect the Gola Rainforest and whose idea it was to start a cocoa business in the forest edge communities in the first place; my excellent colleagues at Twin & Twin Trading (especially Hannah Davis, who managed Twin’s contributions from the start, and Deborah Bickler, who kept us all going); Gino at Meridian Cacao, who has been generously helping to build capacity and cocoa expertise for both Twin and Gola; and, of course, Greg and the team at Dandelion Chocolate. Thank you for bringing Gola Rainforest Chocolate into the world.

Team members from Twin & Gola, looking forward to the future of Gola Rainforest Cocoa! Photo by Kristy Leissle

This post originally appeared on ChocoBlog by Dr. Chocolate, May 18, 2018.

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!

Five Weeks in Tokyo: A Photo Essay

September 7, 2017 by Brandon Monteleone-Chin

Last month, our longtime barista and former chocolate maker, Brandon, spent five weeks in Tokyo as part of our exchange program with Dandelion Chocolate Japan. Brandon, of course, also happens to be a talented photographer. Here’s a peek into his time there.