December and tempering problems always seem to go together and this year is no different. Things had been going really well until last week when our Selmi Top tempering machine started cooling a lot less effectively. It still worked just enough to temper the chocolate but it made everything so much less efficient, just what we needed for the holiday rush. After demonstrating that the compressor would come on but not stay on and that the machine had plenty of liquid coolant, we narrowed the problem down to low refrigerant, a broken compressor, or some control problem (a circuit not supplying power to the compressor when it should). While we wear many hats as chocolate makers, a refrigeration specialist isn’t one of them. After most refrigeration people told us they only worked on specific brands of appliances, we got in touch with Ceasar at KC Refrigeration. He was able to come out the next day and he quickly got to work diagnosing the problem. After about 45 minutes, he found the culprit: a failed compressor thermal overload protector:

Not only was the part cheap ($3!), but he had a spare with him! After swapping the bad one for a new one, the compressor was able to stay on and the machine was fixed! We feel pretty lucky that it wasn’t the compressor (expensive and time consuming to replace) or something wrong with the machine’s circuit board (even more expensive and time consuming to replace). Now we can get back to making more chocolate!

We’ve had a few nice mentions in the press recently which generated a bunch of orders. Fortunately, Maya, our fulfillment lead, is a monster at packing up orders:

We’re still a bit backlogged but with Maya on our side, that shouldn’t last too long!

We opened the factory and retail part of our Valencia St location for the first time today! While we had few hiccups, overall, things when great. Everyone we met was wonderful and we had a great time talking to people about chocolate and showing them our space.

Special thanks to Brian for manning the front of the house and taking great care of everyone!

It took a little longer than we’d original planned… ok, a lot longer, but we’ve finally moved in to our permanent home at 740 Valencia St! After doing a bunch of planning, we started packing and moving things on Thursday of last week. We took a bunch of the our semi-portable equipment (melangers, temperers) in the first load:

All loaded up

After that, we packed up a bunch of boxes with all of the stuff we needed and loaded them into the truck:

Caitlin wrangling the pallet jack. Where were they in college?

Tyler and Joey unloading

 Me about to drive the truck back to Dogpatch after dropping off a load at Valencia

The real challenge was moving our 2000lb wrapping machine from 1955 as it doesn’t really fit out of the door at the Dogpatch and we weren’t sure if it’d fit past our counters at Valencia. Fortunately, we had amazing help from Snooky and his team (Vic, Mark, and Sean). Snooky and Vic managed to wrangle the machine into the Dogpatch so they were the perfect set of people to help us get it to Valencia:

Snooky, grinning and planning his attack

Just squeaking out the door

We certainly weren’t gonna lift it by hand…

But that didn’t stop us from pretending we were :)

We had about a 1/4 inch to spare on each side!

Wrapping machine in its new home 

After moving everything over, we still needed clean things up at the Dogpatch space and set everything up at Valencia.

Todd and Maya setting up tables 

Tyler, Chiann, and Maya on the roof ladder 

Tod and Lisa did an amazing job giving the Dogpatch space a much needed scrub down and Erica and Lisa (what a champ!) were hugely helpful in getting things set up at Valencia over the weekend. By Sunday, our new space was ready:

(Photo credit:  Molly DeCoudreaux)

It’s hard to imagine the move having gone any smoother than it did; thank you so much to everyone who made it happen!

We were pretty nervous when we ordered our first container of beans (from Madagascar). Fortunately, the beans arrived safely and we’ve been loving them. The whole process went so smoothly that we’ve been working on another container of beans, this time from Venezuela. As we’re not experts in Venezuelan cacao, we’ve been working with our good friend Patrick Pineda. Patrick, aside from being from Venezuela, knows a ton about Venezuelan cacao and how to jump through all of the hoops to actually import it (he imported the first organically certified Venezuelan cacao to the US). Patrick and his farmer friend, Jose Lugo, have been instrumental in actually making the container happen, especially since we haven’t had a chance to visit… yet. Fortunately, all of the hard work is paying off and the beans were loaded into the container two weeks ago:

The container has a combination of beans from several different regions in Venezuela and it should be here at the end of month. That’ll be just in time as we’re about out of our beans from Ocumare, VE. Also, we’re bringing in more beans than we can use and will be selling the rest through Chocolate Alchemy. If you’re interested in some great beans, contact John Nanci.

As promised, here’s our wrapping machine in action:

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

As Todd mentioned earlier, we recently got a wrapping machine. We’ve been really happy with the paper and foil we use and we weren’t willing to compromise on them just to make wrapping easier. Finding a machine that would work in theory was challenging enough; actually getting it to work has been just as challenging. Fortunately, we were introduced to Jim Greenberg of Union Confectionery Machinery and I spent a bunch of time out there with Pablo and Osvaldo to get the machine set up for us. A week or two ago, the machine arrived and I couldn’t have been more excited:

Even after scrambling to find a forklift and forklift operator (Thanks, Juan!) and breaking the crate down, we were left with this:

It’s tough to tell from the picture, but the hallway to our space in the Dogpatch is huge but that doesn’t stop the machine from taking up almost the entire thing. Now that we could see the machine in all its glory, we realized that we had a small problem… the machine is 67 inches wide at its smallest point (with the safety covers off) and our door is only 47 inches wide. After a little bit of scrambling and enlisting the help our friend Snooky and his pal, we realized that we could make the machine small enough by removing one shaft from the machine. Luckily for us, the piece we needed to remove was easy to mark so we didn’t ruin any of the calibration:

Once the machine had the left piece removed and the “super pallet” had been cut to size, it was the moment of truth:

Fortunately, our measurements weren’t off and it just squeaked through the door. Everyone was pretty happy, including Snooky:

After moving a few tables, the machine was maneuvered into its new home:

The machine looks great in pictures but it’s even more fun to see it actually work so I’ll post a video soon.

Our container is finally in the country! It’s on board the MSC Francesca, which is currently in LA, so it has one more short journey before it arrives in Oakland. We just heard from our customs agent that the beans have been cleared by the FDA, but they still need to be inspected by customs because we’re a new importer (gotta make sure we didn’t slip any guns in with our beans). Assuming smooth sailing (har har), we could have access to the beans in just a week or two.

We’ve really been struggling to keep up with demand these last few months. After making sure we had enough great beans on hand and getting some more help at the factory (thanks Chiann, Caitlin, Cynthia, and Natalie!), we started running into capacity limits with some of our machines. Fortunately, we just got three more big melangers from Cocoatown:

Having multiple melangers is really helpful since a single batch occupies one machine for anywhere from 2 to 5 days. It’ll take us a bit to get them set up but once they’re all working, we should be able to crank out some more chocolate!