In a just published poll, the Portland Press Herald reports that about 80% of the Mainers surveyed agree that prices have gone up in the last year, and 70% think they will continue to climb. As chocolatiers, we are dealing with a much more extreme price increase: the root cause being three very bad harvests in the countries that grow a huge portion of the world chocolate, the Ivory Coast and Ghana. As a result, we are facing a 45% increase in the cost of our next big delivery, just for the chocolate. In addition, we will need to tack...
We are so pleased to introduce our very first Chocolate Bars! Long in planning, we view them as an equally delicious but more casual addition to our product line. Our goal is to make them in many types of chocolate, with crunchy elements, and to change them up regularly. And to make it as fair as possible, their price is directly related to their technical difficulty and cost of ingredients. So, introducing the First Fabulous Five! ...
Sharing our love and knowledge of chocolate has always been at the core of who we are. So we are announcing today a big step toward furthering that goal, by offering chocolate making classes! Available weekly this summer for groups of up to 6 people and lasting about one hour and a half. Customers have asked us for years to make them available, but our space on Brackett Street was simply too minuscule. Our new facility on Spring Street is the perfect size to teach small groups, but our first year there was devoted to getting into our production and...
The season's biggest snowstorm, two days after V. Day, couldn't have come at a better time! Our team is a bit exhausted after successive weeks of creating Valentine formats, and selling them just as fast. This forced snow break will allow us to snooze and recharge, and get us back to a gentler production schedule to prepare for a very late Easter (April 20!). Huge props go to my co-owner Sarah for creating the perfect numbers of Love You to the Moon medium and large boxes. We sold out of the medium late on Valentine's Day, and had just...
When I started the business 10 years ago, the line up consisted of seven chocolates: Salted Caramel, Passion Fruit Vanilla, Hazelnut Citrus, Pistachio Raspberry, Dulce de Cafe, Ginger Caramel and Cherry Almond. That line up continued for quite some time as I got my footing and built a following little by little. And it was still pretty intact when we started at Brackett Street in 2018. It was Darcy's arrival on the scene, and then Sarah's, that caused our exponential growth in creativity. All of a sudden we had three functioning palates, three different tastes philosophies and visions. These early...
The entire team cherishes that four-month period between Mother's day and Labor day, because this is when we play! Each team member is tasked with creating new chocolates, and the ideas can be wild! Among the out-there notions this year are grapefruit/goat cheese (Kait), fennel (Catherine), lychee jasmin (Ruby), and carrot cake (Sarah). More classic tastes are also in the cards, with lemon poppy-seed, strawberry matcha, hazelnut calamansi and cassis vanilla. We are also thinking of expanding the range of vegan options in our regular collection, so Briana will put forth a coconut guava offering. And Victoria (a.k.a. our Caramel...
