535 Folsom St., SOMA, San Francisco
Downtown San Francisco DIY Tour
South Asian Fun
Socola Chocolatier 
was started in 2001 by sisters Wendy and Susan Lieu, when they were both still teenagers. This location opened just in time for Valentine’s Day, 2014, and originally featured a café. COVID caused the café’s closure in 2020, but the factory store remains open.
Socola means chocolate in Vietnamese, and Socola chocolates exhibit a unique south Asian twist (Sriracha sauce, durian, tamarind, passion fruit, Vietnamese coffee) plus Wendy and Susan’s sense of humor that you can see in their mascot (Harriet the flying alpaca), the silly names of some of their chocolates (Give it to me Guava, Burnt Baby Burnt), and their marketing.
Socola chocolates are available at their factory store, online, and at special events.
Read more on CBTB:
- Egg-citing times
- Good news galore @ the Holiday Chocolate Salon
- Chocolate in the time of COVID
- Lights, camera, chocolate!
- Experiments in chocolate
- Pioneers & veterans of SFBA artisan chocolate
- Everybody go nuts!
- Chocolate community
- Local chocolate
- Good for you
- A spoonful of chocolate helps the medicine go down
- A place for everything and everything…
- The just-right salon
- A shop for Socola
- Socola sisters: the new Lucy & Ethel?
- 2013 Chocolate Salon: More than I could handle
- Lots of love at SF’s Chocolate Salon
- Chocolate cliffhanger
- Shock & Awe at the 2011 SF Chocolate Salon
- Not sold in stores!
