Way back in August, we wrote what turned out to be the last post below in what we now refer to as our prototype blog. Not that we expected to stop there, it’s just that making a chocolate company intervened.
Instead of blogging, we wrote business plans, bought equipment at a Hershey auction, began to hire the TCHOsen, raised money, refurbed and installed equipment, bought and shipped and received our first cacao from Ghana, made batches and batches and batches of Beta chocolates, designed packaging, fixed equipment, made a website, filed trademarks, traveled to Peru to buy cacao (which you’ll be able to get your hands on soon, but more on that in subsequent posts), launched our first Beta chocolate (Beta C Ghana .17 A and B) at The Entertainment Gathering at the Getty Center in LA in December—and then things really took off: Katie Hafner of the New York Times did a story about us, my friend Mark Frauenfelder at BoingBoing blogged us—and then all hell broke loose, customers literally started knocking on our door, we made chocolate and packaged it, gave interviews, wrote marketing materials, built technology infrastructure, listened to feedback, made more batches, worked with designers and architects and lawyers and the Port of San Francisco on our factory/tasting room/store, hired more TCHOsen (now at 17), raised more money, sold more Beta chocolate off our website (now at Beta C Ghana .7)—phew, I’m getting tired just recounting a fraction of what’s gone on.
Anyway, that explains the gap in posts from August to today.
Now it’s time to begin blogging again. Not that we’re done making a chocolate company. On the contrary, we’re building even more frantically than we were during the gap. No, it’s time to begin blogging again because it’s part of the DNA of this company that we can no longer hold back - transparency. Part of our mission is to make visible what has previously been hidden: the chain of causality that brings chocolate from the earth to your tongue. For example, I’ve always been surprised that a lot of people don’t even know that chocolate is an agricultural product, that it comes from a bean that grows in a pod.
So now, we’re going to talk about what it takes to make a chocolate company, as we do it. And we’re going to talk about what’s on our minds—our questions, motivations, obsessions. A little bit like the posts that precede this one. Hopefully without the gap.
Mind the gap
Way back in August, we wrote what turned out to be the last post below in what we now refer to as our prototype blog. Not that we expected to stop there, it’s just that making a chocolate company intervened.
Instead of blogging, we wrote business plans, bought equipment at a Hershey auction, began to hire the TCHOsen, raised money, refurbed and installed equipment, bought and shipped and received our first cacao from Ghana, made batches and batches and batches of Beta chocolates, designed packaging, fixed equipment, made a website, filed trademarks, traveled to Peru to buy cacao (which you’ll be able to get your hands on soon, but more on that in subsequent posts), launched our first Beta chocolate (Beta C Ghana .17 A and B) at The Entertainment Gathering at the Getty Center in LA in December—and then things really took off: Katie Hafner of the New York Times did a story about us, my friend Mark Frauenfelder at BoingBoing blogged us—and then all hell broke loose, customers literally started knocking on our door, we made chocolate and packaged it, gave interviews, wrote marketing materials, built technology infrastructure, listened to feedback, made more batches, worked with designers and architects and lawyers and the Port of San Francisco on our factory/tasting room/store, hired more TCHOsen (now at 17), raised more money, sold more Beta chocolate off our website (now at Beta C Ghana .7)—phew, I’m getting tired just recounting a fraction of what’s gone on.
Anyway, that explains the gap in posts from August to today.
Now it’s time to begin blogging again. Not that we’re done making a chocolate company. On the contrary, we’re building even more frantically than we were during the gap. No, it’s time to begin blogging again because it’s part of the DNA of this company that we can no longer hold back - transparency. Part of our mission is to make visible what has previously been hidden: the chain of causality that brings chocolate from the earth to your tongue. For example, I’ve always been surprised that a lot of people don’t even know that chocolate is an agricultural product, that it comes from a bean that grows in a pod.
So now, we’re going to talk about what it takes to make a chocolate company, as we do it. And we’re going to talk about what’s on our minds—our questions, motivations, obsessions. A little bit like the posts that precede this one. Hopefully without the gap.
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