With all of the events and orders we have coming our way, we’ve started making Friday a dedicated production day. I love seeing all of our hard work wrapped up in little bundles waiting for a new home. The next set of bars looks like it’s just about cooled so time to get back to work!
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!
Earlier this winter, I went on a whirlwind trip to Germany to investigate the packaging options for our bars. I attended the Paperworld conference in Frankfurt and saw so many beautiful handmade papers form India and Nepal. We currently wrap our bars in handmade cotton paper from India. You can see an example in this picture. We love our packaging and hope to create something similar for the factory. Still, we needed to do a little more research, so I took off to Europe for a weekend of learning about paper.
The more I learned, the more I realized what we have to consider. I think we’ll continue to use paper from India because we love the texture and the imperfections that come from screen printing. The vendors I met gave me a much better picture of the paper making process. The paper is made from recycled cotton rags instead of wood pulp, which makes it eco-friendly. Since the work is done by hand, there are many variables in the production. For example, paper made during monsoon season can’t be easily dried outside. It takes much longer to create and will have subtle differences in color and texture. I actually love these slight variations- they reflect the energy put into each piece of paper. But, monsoon season is coming up quickly and it’s the busiest time of year for these factories. We need to place our first orders soon to avoid this rush. When we have everything together and see our first papers, it will be one of the first steps that makes Dandelion Chocolate feel like it’s coming to life!
At the end of the weekend, I came back with a heavy bag of paper samples and a lot of information that will help us create our packaging. We’re still choosing colors and developing patterns, but I met a few sources for really beautiful paper. It was a short trip, fighting jet lag the whole time, but well worth it.
And, as a fun anecdote, Paperworld runs alongside Creativeworld, Hair & Beautyworld, and Christmasworld in the largest conference center I’ve ever seen. There was a motley, and fairly hilarious, group of crafters from all over the world. The space itself overloaded all of my senses- take a look!
