This year has already been brutal for local chocolatiers — even before all the tariff drama. Cacao prices have tripled in the past 2 years due to climate change primarily, damaging crops and reducing harvests. Small chocolate makers are getting squeezed out as the bigger chocolate companies look for new suppliers and grab all the cacao they can. So trying to ethically source cacao and couvertures is harder — there just isn’t as much and what is available is pricier.
Add to that the overhead costs of running a business — especially those with a storefront and/or cafe — and we are seeing the results here in the Bay Area: Three established chocolate businesses have closed since the beginning of the year — and our big candy maker has closed one of their local branches.
Jade Chocolates
Jade Chocolates was the first to announce their closure in March. Five years ago they were setting up a new factory store and café in SF’s Chinatown — and got hit with COVID closures before they could really begin. Mindy Fong, Jade’s founder and head chocolatier, kept it going and managed to achieve her dream with the space — themed high teas, a coffee and tea bar with lots of Asian inspired drinks, double kitchen (hot and cold) downstairs for making chocolates and food, a conference area for meetings and classes, a shop for selling teas, chocolates, and baked goods — all in a space she (a former architect) designed and decorated with her artist daughter.
It was pretty special. But ultimately overhead was too much and after trying a bunch of different things, Mindy pulled the plug on not only the space but her entire chocolate business that she started in 2007. While it’s sad, Mindy is looking forward to doing something new. We look forward to it too.
Charlotte Truffles
Then a day before the annual SF spring chocolate salon, Charlotte Walter of Charlotte Truffles announced on Instagram that they were going on indefinite hiatus to deal with some family matters. She said they would keep selling their existing stock but were winding down the business.
So another local fine chocolatier has closed — but she’s leaving us with the hope that sometime in the future she will come back and restart the business. I am keeping my fingers crossed that she can rebalance her life and still find room to make her beautiful tasty bonbons and fun bars someday.
I look forward to the day I can enjoy her bright green Pandan Delight and bright purple Ubelicious bars again. And her crunchy Crème Brûlée bar that mimicked the experience of a real crème brûlée. And her classic Peppermint bar with peppermint bits mixed in a swirl of dark and white chocolates. And all of her inventive bonbons, many with Asian ingredients that she married well with chocolate. I should stop now…
Kokak Chocolates
But there’s more…
At the SF International Chocolate Salon on April 7th, we talked to Carol Gancia, Kokak Chocolates’ founder and head chocolatier. Cacaopod and I had plans to visit her Castro District storefront later in the year to try her champorado, Filipino cacao porridge. Carol said to text her first — I thought it was to coordinate with her when she would be in the shop. I found out a few days later that she was closing the store at the end of the month.
Carol had said at the Salon that she wanted to get a better work/life balance — she was working 14 hours days 7 days a week. She wanted time off for herself and to have a social life, maybe even time to date! It didn’t seem like too much of an ask out of life. I didn’t realize at the time that it was a bigger issue, but she did say that the shop overhead was double what her overhead was when she just had a commercial kitchen to work out of.
We reminisced about how we’d met when she was just starting out — a one-woman operation making bars and bonbons and cute little handpainted lilypads — and her troublesome frog molds. She hung in there, winning awards, getting lots of good press, and building sales to the point that she could open the factory store just 2 years later.
Kokak’s online store is still open where you can order bonbons and a few other items. She doesn’t have her popular and unusual Umami bar now, but her bonbons feature a lot of Southeast Asian flavors in good single origin Ecuadorian chocolate so there is still plenty to enjoy. Here’s hoping she keeps making chocolates — but on a more reasonable schedule. Stay tuned.
See’s Candies
Finally, even the big boys in chocolate are downsizing operations. See’s Candies, the LA based but SF ubiquitous operation, closed their Sunnyvale store on Mother’s Day. They haven’t given a reason but I’m sure if it were a profitable location they wouldn’t have closed it. They closed their Embarcadero SF location a couple of years ago due to insufficient sales.
I wouldn’t worry about them though — they still have 18 stores in the Bay Area where you can get your free samples along with your Scotchmallow bonbons and boxes of Nuts ’n Chews.
On a brighter note
New SFBA chocolatier Stay Sweet SF — who just started at the end of last year — got an oven from Jade and a tempering machine from Kokak as they sold off their furnishing and fixtures. Mark Lieuw, Stay Sweet’s founder and head chocolatier, is a pastry chef and worked in fine dining for over a decade. He makes beautiful delicious inventive chocolates and looks to be a fast rising star on the local chocolate scene.
So maybe there’s something to that whole circle of life idea and we will be able to still enjoy wonderful local chocolates — with echoes of our past SFBA chocolatiers in them. We wish Mindy, Charlotte, and Carol all the best and hope the next chapters in their lives are as rewarding for them as their chocolates have been for us.
