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A Visit to Areté Chocolate

February 26, 2019 by Ryan O'Connell

Ryan is a chocolate maker at our 16th Street factory, as well as a frequent traveler and motorcycle enthusiast.

Before Areté Fine Chocolate moved from Milpitas, California to Spencer, Tennessee in spring of 2018, Eric, Snooky, and myself had the pleasure of seeing the glory of what was, at the time, still their semi-operational facility before they’d fully packed up for their move. Areté Chocolate is owned and operated by David and Leslie Senk. As of our visit, David and Leslie were Areté’s only employees.

After meeting the Senks and seeing their process, it was abundantly apparent they are people of high personal and professional integrity, which very much shines through in their careful processing and top-shelf chocolate. Throughout the day, as our conversations meandered through chocolate theory, some noteworthy similarities and differences between us stood out:

We both believe in the importance of data collection to understand outcomes in the chocolate making process.
We both believe that when the chocolate is tempered may make a difference in its flavor. Aging chocolate and its impact on flavor is something we look forward to testing in more depth.
Areté removes the radicle from all of their beans, which is something we’ve always wanted to do and are we are working towards.
Much of their process is a result of custom and creative adaptations to fit their evolving needs while not sacrificing quality. Similarly, improving our quality is central to – and runs parallel with – our reflexive metrics for success as we continue to grow.
Areté makes all their chocolate in mini melangers, such as the ones we use for experiments.
David believes temperature control is crucial to consistent, predictable flavor.
We both believe that testing one variable at a time through experimentation is the best practice.
We’ve developed our own process for removing broken and moldy beans prior to roasting. At Areté, all moldy beans are removed after the beans are broken, one by one, through his mechanized, creatively-engineered process, speaking to the ingenuity and passion behind the operation.
After roasting in a convection oven, David’s beans are removed and then rapidly cooled to prevent any further, unwanted roasting. In a similar fashion, our beans are cooled in our drum roaster’s cooling tray post-roast.

The refining and conching room of Areté Chocolate

Takeaways to consider for experimentations or reinforcing in our current chocolate making practices:

We should continue to consider results of experiments done by others, while holding off on drawing any conclusions until a hypothesis can be tested through our own experiments.
We should also continue to revisit the effects of aging chocolate, with future experiments to support our previous investigations.
We should investigate further experiments testing the effects of melanger chocolate temperature, which may lead to more stringent temperature control guidelines and an improved understanding of how process temperature directs flavor.
Consider moving toward 2:1 mineral oil to chocolate ratio when testing microns via micrometer.

My personal favorite part of the tour: Talking with all those present about chocolate, life, and the chocolate life; seeing the incredible passion, enthusiasm, and dedication that the Senks have for making great chocolate.

Favorite origin/product: Ben Tre, Vietnam

Fun fact: We will be working with Ben Tre cocoa beans and releasing our take on the origin in 2019!

Biggest challenges: Possibly scaling up while maintaining quality, and chocolate making as a sustainable business.

My unexpected path to
Dandelion Chocolate Los Angeles

December 3, 2018 by Norah Hernandez

Norah is one of our original employees, and she has worn many hats and tied a lot of bows on our behalf. Right now she’s writing to us from LA, where she’s heading up our newest pop-up shop.

Six years ago this month, the WSJ published two tiny lines that declared: “Dandelion Chocolate makes some of the best chocolate in the world”. Dandelion Chocolate was so small back then, they could not handle the influx of online orders that came through following this little write up. With only 11 or so people in the company at the time, they needed some extra hands to help fulfill these orders for some of the best chocolate in the world – and this is where my journey with Dandelion began.

Norah and her team inside Dandelion Chocolate LA

At the time, I had no experience in chocolate, and thought, what the heck, how fun would it be to help at a chocolate factory! The one day gig included stickering bars (which we did by hand back then), sorting beans, foiling bars and tying the three packs with ribbon. Without realizing it, my first summer job at Tiffany & Co. many, many years prior, helped shaped the iconic Dandelion Chocolate bow. Maya showed me how they had been tying the bow, and without thinking, my muscle memory kicked in and I started tying the bows as I had been trained so many years ago. I owe this talent to be possibly the single reason that I was asked to come back day after day (at that time they could not afford to officially hire me until February of the following year), so I came in every day not knowing if it would be my last and this magical workplace would come to an end. My patience paid off and in February of 2013, I became an official employee and started working on the production team.

Back then, everyone wore many many hats and helped fill voids where ever it was needed, this led to me helping with gift box development and production after work and on the weekends, which turned into the start of our product department. In 2014 I became our first product manager and brand manager (I secretly feel I still hold this title because of the love I feel for our brand), and was responsible for developing new products, the production of current products, merchandising our retail shelves and making sure everything visual was always on-brand.

I eventually transitioned into the retail department when the Ferry Building manager gave notice two years ago. I took this opportunity to use my previous retail expertise and help the company where they needed me most. We were a small hot chocolate stand outside and this location had some challenges. After improving systems and sales during the first few months, the Ferry Building invited us to move inside to the old Scharffen Berger shop. We jumped at the chance to have one of the highly coveted shops inside this iconic San Francisco destination. Overseeing the construction last fall, we were able to open (by the skin of our teeth) the weekend before Christmas. Moving just a few hundred yards inside, we saw an immediate doubling of sales. The Ferry Building had become a real sustainable location for the company.

In the spring of last year, my family made a decision to move to Los Angeles. This decision came with the reality that I would have to leave a company that had made a permanent mark on me, and hopefully I too had made a small mark on it. When I first told Todd I was moving and joked that we should open in LA, he laughed, and then must have thought about it as a serious idea and came back to me and asked if I was really serious. I mean, how could I not be! Moving to a city that I love and bringing the chocolate and the company that I adore to share with this city has been an amazing opportunity for me. If there is anything I know about LA from living here years ago, it is that this city appreciates good food, beautiful design and amazing stories. I am so excited to share all those things through our pop-up at ROW DTLA for the next six months.

the outside of the Dandelion Chocolate LA shop

We have been open in LA for one week now and I have already met the some of the most amazing people (and kids). I cannot wait to share our story about chocolate and who we are as a company of now ~95 people. This a long way from the days when we all fit around the 12 person table on the mezzanine for All Hands, or the days when Maya started a rumor that if we hit a sales goal, Todd would take us all to Hawaii. At that next All Hands, his last slide just had the word “Rumors” on it, he told us, and I quote, “it would be crazy to shut down and pay for the whole company to go to Hawaii, so it’s lucky for you that we are crazy, we are all going to Hawaii!” Todd’s not crazy, he’s a brilliant visionary and I am so lucky to have stumbled upon his small dream for a chocolate factory he thought maybe 4 people would visit every day.

We will be open at ROW DTLA through April 2019 and our hours are M-F 11-7, Sat & Sun 10-6. We will start hosting Chocolate 101 classes on December 14 and 15 and you can find more details about how to sign up on our website under “Visit Us – Tours & Classes”.

The shelves inside Dandelion Chocolate LA

A Halloween Debut of a New Web Series Featuring Witches and Chocolate

October 29, 2018 by Megan Giller

Megan Giller is a longtime friend of ours and one of the most prolific journalists and authors in the field of chocolate. She’s also a feminist, a food historian, and our guest blogger for this post. Note that the video mentioned below is not suitable for children.

When I was working on my book, Bean-to-Bar Chocolate: America’s Craft Chocolate Revolution, one of my favorite sections to write was “Chocolate Is for Everybody,” about craft chocolate being made by all sorts of minorities, including women. (After all, my business card says, “food writer, feminist, chocolate eater.”)

I’ve always wanted to write more about women and food, and when I asked Professor Kathryn Sampeck if she knew of some good stories, boy, did she deliver. She sent me two scholarly articles, “Chocolate, Sex, and Disorderly Women in Late-Seventeenth and Early-Eighteenth-Century Guatemala,” by Martha Few, and “Potions and Perils: Love-Magic in Seventeenth-Century Afro-Mexico and Afro-Yucatan,” by Joan Bristol and Matthew Restall.

These dense, academic papers contain a treasure trove of illicit activity. Long story short: In the 1600s and 1700s in Mexico, Belize, and Guatemala, thousands of women were accused of bewitching their lovers, enemies, and frenemies with magic hot chocolate. At that time, chocolate was a pretty gritty drink, and you could hide all sorts of ingredients in it. Fears of women spiking hot chocolate stemmed from anxiety about their changing roles in society, and women who challenged the status quo were persecuted — just as they were in every age, and all around the world.

One of the stories is so powerful that it inspired me to start a new project, a digital TV show called What Women Ate. The first episode is about one of the so-called witches, named Cecilia, who was accused of bewitching her husband with hot chocolate and making him impotent (sure, sounds likely). Before I write any more spoilers, here is the full episode for you to watch, just in time for Halloween. If you like what you see, subscribe to my YouTube channel and follow @whatwomenate on Instagram!

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!

Cookies for a Cause: DOUGH & CO and Dandelion

August 10, 2018 by Omar Mamoon

Since 2013, Omar has been running DOUGH & CO, a San Francisco-based purveyor of cookie dough meant to be eaten baked or unbaked (eggs are substituted for a slurry of white chia seeds). All proceeds from this collaborative cookie project will benefit La Cocina, a non-profit food business incubator for women and people of color where he’s been a long time volunteer. We are excited to have him write about the philanthropic side of his local business.

I started DOUGH & CO five-and-a-half years ago. Though I never went to culinary school or business school, I had a strong innate passion for food. This passion was further fueled by the non-profit La Cocina.

La Cocina helps primarily low-income immigrant women of color to start food businesses; I lived across the street, so I started volunteering. Seeing people go through the program was super inspiring. I quit my desk job and started renting commercial kitchen space from them on Sundays where I’d make small batches of cookie dough.

From day one of starting DOUGH & CO, I knew that I wanted to give back to the community somehow. Part of the company mission statement is to “doughnate” 1% of our profits, 1% of our time, and 1% of our delicious cookie dough to nonprofits and causes that are important to us. Since starting my business, I’ve helped raise and donate over $25,000 to various non-profits around the Bay Area through cookie dough collaborations with like-minded folks. It’s not a lot in the grand scheme of it all, but it’s something – and that something can make a difference.

I’m stoked and honored to collaborate with Dandelion, who generously provided their 70% Camino Verde Chef’s Chocolate (which I mixed in generously with a batch of my peanut butter cookie dough). It’s like eating a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, except in a sophisticated cookie form. All proceeds from the sales of this cookie will benefit La Cocina.

The Dandelion/DOUGH & CO chocolate peanut butter cookie will only be available at the Dandelion Ferry Building cafe. And, it’s only around for a limited time – August 10-17, 2018.

I really like it, and I hope you do, too.

-xx

Omar

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.

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.

2018 Chocolate Maker Summer Camp!!!

April 16, 2018 by Greg

While I don’t typically start a post with an apology, this post is aimed at chocolate makers and professionals in the Chocolate and Cacao community. I apologize if this post causes any sort of undue disappointment to others who don’t work in chocolate and enjoy reading our blog!

One of the things we enjoy the most about making chocolate is the amazing community of people who share our passion. From June 26th – 29th this year a number of chocolate makers will be once again hosting our annual Chocolate Maker Summer Camp (a.k.a. The Funconference)! We do this once a year as an opportunity for people who work in chocolate and cacao from all over the world to come together for a few days of relaxation on a lake in upstate New York. Camp is held for 4 days and 3 nights at the Berskshire Hills Eisenberg Camp. There will be activities (including swimming, archery, and campfires) as well as plenty of time to chat with others in the community. As a bit of incentive I’ve included some photos from last year and if you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact camp@chocolatemaker.org.

NOTE: We are sorry to say that summer camp is only open to industry members (chocolate makers, cacao producers, etc).

Greg

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!