Chocolate is.

Is.

It's kind of my passion.

It's.

the ultimate comfort food It just it gives you that feeling of, like, satisfaction, to me.

You know, if I don't have chocolate, I, I crave it.

I just have to have a little piece of dark chocolate.

So to me, chocolate just tastes like they call it the food of God's or goddesses.

But I really think that it's just one of the best flavors.

Chocolate and coffee.

Well, before I started school, I was working in a hospital, and I was the receptionist when I would go home is when I would start to play around and, you know, make truffles, and, I didn't really quite understand all of the chemistry to it.

I didn't understand like, well, why, why is it not setting up now?

And it did yesterday didn't really understand it and I really wanted to figure out what I was doing wrong.

And I decided to go to school for it.

like, two You are getting three things.

I found a place called the French Pastry School, and it was in Chicago, which at the time we were living in Iowa City.

And so we decided to go visit the school.

And I just really fell in love with it I had not ever seen anything like it.

I could tell you about talking to a lot of the students, you know, that they were getting a lot out of what they were learning.

And I could tell from the chefs like they really meant business.

It was it was kind of a boot camp of sorts, like a pastry boot camp.

I don't think I would have ever been like one day.

Oh, the chocolate business is where I'm headed.

when they was the primary person who whose passion sort of took us into this world.

So essentially learned from Wendy.

I mean, I was, you know, kind of trained on how to get in there and make the dip chocolates.

And you know what the ganache is made of and all those kind of things.

Like what?

What exactly happens when, what makes the chocolate sort of get that dull look to it.

You know, I just assumed it's old.

But when in fact, you know, it's the whole temperature gets wacky and then suddenly, you know, you can have cocoa butter doing weird things, sugars can do weird thing.

you know, I've had to kind of learn all that on the job.

people don't think about they think about the when it comes to chocolate they think about the it must be that must be the funnest job ever.

Like you're just playing with chocolate all day long, you know, you think about the fun parts.

And so the the the Incubator was a was a place where you start to see all those little pieces like, who's entering these products into a system.

How much are you going to sell it for?

Are you cover in the cost of those materials?

all those little nuts and bolts parts of it.

so it was 2008, we, we got our space in the Incubator and we were like the second food business that had been in there so it was kind of a new thing.

But we knew once we, we moved in there that we would have to get out and do markets and things.

We provide a safe place for new startups to become established enough to move out in the community where they grow and add jobs.

A lot of the clients in the building that have like retail stuff, they do sell out at the market she would produce here on site and then she would load up whatever it was she needed for market each weekend.

And take it over there.

And so people became familiar with us from mostly from doing the market it helped us understand that, you know, I think we're going to need a storefront, so we've we found this space on Main Street on the south side of Chattanooga.

there weren't many businesses on that.

And as a main street at the time, and then we were in this big building and but word got out and people came, you know.

So it was really, really nice to to have, you know, a place with a storefront as far as moving into another space, you start out and you sort of start to try to figure out how is this going to flow, with an idea of like, Well, this room back here needs to be in the chocolate room.

No one, you know, really needs to come in here that aren't making anything.

And then you have sort of the flow into the presentation area, we were able to have a little bit of seating there, which was nice.

when you open a storefront and you have to hire your first employees, was.

It really is, because you think, Oh, am I going to be able to pay these people?

Are they going to show up?

Are they going to do what I need to do?

You know, you just don't know.

So we were lucky.

We found some great people to help us.

shortly after we were there, that building had sold So we immediately had to go into searching for a second space because we knew we weren't going to be able to stay.

looked and looked and looked and luckily I had somebody come find me.

And he believed in what we were doing.

And, you know, I went and looked and at the time the space was it didn't even have a ceiling.

It had been vacant for 30 years or so before we moved in.

So just going.

I mean, it wasn't even a mile away.

It was just a couple of blocks away from our other location, but just moving around the corner.

Oh my goodness.

The visibility was so much better.

I mean, our business tripled.

You know, it was it was wonderful having having that location.

I think there's two things you got to have passion and you got to have drive.

If you're passionate about something, it's going to enforce that drive.

we don't have many failures.

I think there's maybe been two in the entire time I've been here.

And that usually is somebody that's working as a hobby, something they're working in their basement and they're not fully committed to.

You know, they might have a second job But if you have the drive and the passion and you're prepared, there's no reason you could couldn't succeed.

And that's for anybody.

We were busted at the seams like we just needed more space to work in.

So I kind of was thinking, you know, from the beginning how great it would be to own our own building instead of having to find a landlord.

so we we purchased this building in 2020 right before the pandemic.

And so, you know, it was supposed to be our our second location.

Uh, but it really has just been so hard to get it open.

We went through the rent, a total renovation of the building, and, feel like it's ready to go.

It's just the pandemic really changed everything.

as COVID 19, the way the way it affected And I mean, it continues to affect the business because of, you know, you've got the supply chain that you're always hearing about, I would say right now it's the the inflation that we're sort of seeing come out of all that that's still affecting the business.

most definitely we're still recovering from it.

Um, you know, our business took a big hit from it, from having to close and shut down and it really changed how we had to do a lot of things on Market Street, location.

We ended up closing for a few months post-COVID, it's been it's been a challenge but what keeps me going is, um, you know, making something and, and, and those customers seeing how excited they are about things.

And when I actually get a chance to get in the kitchen and, and make something, I remember at that point like, oh gosh, this is just so nice you know, it's it's the fact that people come to us and and and love what they get and are excited to come to our shop.

I just it just blows my mind.

I love it so much.

It makes it it's why I do what I do.

You know.

It's just so pretty with all them Most startup companies fail within their first five years of startup.

Companies that come through the Incubator have a 92% success rate of being in business.

Five years after they move out of the Incubator.

It's exciting to watch these guys grow.

You have a company that starts with one or two employees and you see them grow enough to move out into the community and add jobs.

There's nothing better than that.

It's fun.

It truly is watching someone grow and it's fun to watch them be successful once they're out in the community.

place I'd like to see the business go would be sustaining itself number one continuing to be able to offer new products I hate to think of one day being the place that like they had to, you know, they just couldn't make it work in the long haul or whatever and, you know, you always want to be there I hope to be there for those people that that make you part of their experience I don't want to ever see this business end because I just, you know, I love being able to offer something different to Chattanooga and really everywhere.

I mean, people from all over come here and it's just a fun experience So the future of the shop is, you know, I just want it to keep going.

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