When a Habit Begins to Cost Money, It’s Called a Hobby
And at present, the status of chocolate making is and must remain a hobby. A couple friends had previously extended proxy offers from their mothers to sell my chocolate at work, but I didn’t exactly view that as commerce on, say, the Wal-Mart scale. However, there was a stuggle last week in which business, attacking on three fronts, attempted to overtake avocation.
The first offensive was mounted by a fresh new local stretching studio, Amara Yoga & Arts, who asked me to supply their Mala Yoga Day event—the centerpiece of which was the performance on the part of the participants, of one hundred eight sun salutations—with some excessively refined Daniel Harry Schreiber Chocolate, for postsalulatory salivatory stimulation. I originally heard of the Mala day at a potluck about a month ago where one of the yoga organizers said she had heard about my chocolate operation and was really interesting in involving it in their event. I was still on my second or third batch, and so I was extremely flattered that my name was already being passed around. In addition, I had not yet begun to sell any bars, so when they said that they were a new studio and probably couldn’t pay for chocolate, in a passionate moment, I agreed to donate whatever they needed.
I have to admit that later, I was a little worried about my rashness. As I mentioned at the end of an earlier post, I’ve been in the red for almost all of my batches so far, and am still red overall. Though chocolate making is a hobby, not a business, I’d still like to sustain whatever it is, which implies that I cannot lose money indefinitely. In any case, I got scared and reneged on part of my offer, explaining I couldn’t donate to Amara more than a small amount. They graciously agreed to buy the rest for a reasonable price.
So on Sunday, September 20th I set out with several pounds of chocolate, a plate and silver tea tray for presentation, and plenty of newly printed, hand drawn and scanned business (or hobby?!) cards for distribution. At 9:30 I arrived and broke up one and one quarter pounds of chocolate into tasting squares, following which at 10am I and about 15 other loosely clothed semi-limber folks embarked on a century plus eight journey with no purpose but to welcome the sun. Our guides, Maggie Taylor and Lauren Quinn led us wonderfully and kept count of each salutation by moving a bean from a cup to a bowl. Every 27 iterations, we paused to catch our breath and reflect, and after about 2 hours, we saluted our last. Tous le monde was ready for chocolate at that point, and judging from the girl who filled her cupped hand with pieces of Panamanian product, I did not disappoint.
I was happy, everybody was happy, needless to say, I recommend that you put your yoga hat on here. At Amara, the boss, Theresa Brandabur told me that she was interested in future yoga and chocolate interactions and even selling some bars at the studio! Extremely flattering and excellent to know, this adds fervor to the coup being forged by business.
A Harvest of Bacon and Nibs
To the veggies reading this blog: skip this section!
Several months ago I received a kickstart from a man I’ve recently gained a high respect for—Champaign’s local meat tenderizer, our sausage stuffer and pork puller—Laurence Mate of This Little Piggy. In exchange for his generous donation, I offered him a quarter pound each of Panamanian and Peruvian nibs. Not content to nibble, he opened his mouth wide and surprised me by crafting these ingredients into cacao-covered bacon! Bacon is often described as meat candy, but Laurence’s maple-cured, orange zest and cinnamon spiced, sweet/salty/smoky slabs are most definitely more delicious and refined than any Snickers or Newman-O I’ve ever tried. I would prefer to call this symphony of complex cacao rashers downright meat ecstasy.
But, what do theobromated-porcine anomalies have to do with my industrial conflict? Nothing really, except that when Laurence sent me an email last week describing the cure of his bacon, he mentioned that Mohammed, who runs my favorite olive emporium, World Harvest, was interested in tasting my chocolate…with possible commercial applications. I still haven’t gone over to chat with them, but again, I was very flattered, though getting a little nervous that interest in this biz was reaching a peak, and I wasn’t ready to respond to it. I plan to go there on Monday, and I’ll be sure to post (eventually) about what happens.
Acknowledgment of Legitimacy, or the Other Side of the Equation?
The most exciting offer came from Lisa Bralts-Kelly who sent me an unexpected email after sampling some chocolate I cold-sold to another farmer’s market denizen—Urbana’s public arts coordinator, Anna Hochhalter (I’ve been teasing Anna that I am writing a blog post about her, I don’t know if she’ll be disappointed, but she is a really good sport about this and being approached with chocolate, so I highly recommend you check out her official public arts website). Lisa described my chocolate as ‘WHOA’, and asked whether I would be interested in selling at the market next season! I thought this was unbelievable and I relished it as an acknowledgment of the legitimate interest in what I am doing. 
When retelling this story at a Computer Science party, one entrepreneurially minded CSer suggested that maybe her interest lay not so much in selling my product, but in selling me hers…however, this cynicism I refuse to accept!
Déjà vu, I was extremely flattered by Lisa’s offer, yet for multitudes of reasons, I am not currently a professional chocolate maker. But I do like theory. So I’ve recently been exploring in my mind what it would take and what it would mean to scale production and process to a point where it is not just extremely fun, but even when counting my labor, it is economically viable to make and sell chocolate.
This blog post is long overdue, so I won’t post right now about the exciting labels I’ve been collaborating with several designers on or other interesting chocolate aficionados I’ve been interacting with, but I’ll leave you with two challenges to professional chocolate. One way of scaling production is to gather multiple tens of thousands in investments and buy a set of equipment suitable not for the hobby-chocolate-maker, but the small-scale-artisanal-chocolate-maker. Conversely, my preferred method of escalation is to think, ‘I’m craftier and smarter than that,’ take my low thousands of dollars, head to the store to buy pvc pipes, shop vacs, heat lamps and thermostats, and see if we can build a winnower and incubator. These machines do not seem to be that complex, I think with experimentation and some mechanical engineering expertise, construction is possible.
Besides the trial of capital or craft in procuring more serious equipment, the second hurdle is to find a space to do this stuff in. My room, basement and kitchen can moonlight as a chocolate factory for only so long. There is the hard constraint that to legally sell to the public (and obtain, say, a farmer’s market booth), one must produce one’s food products in a health certified kitchen. I just promised to wait for another post, but I’ll say that I’ve been exploring and talking to people about restaurant kitchens, coop kitchens or other upstart food factories that could lend a hand (or a permit!).
September 27th, 2009 at 9:43 am
I am definitely on the hunt for artisanal producers who make high-quality and interesting foods for two reasons:
1. Yes, it’s good for the Market to have a balanced product mix, including some extremely niche stuff as experiments (example: 2009 saw the return of the hula hoop, and it was v popular)
BUT
2. My personal philosophy is to always support the small-batch food producer in any way I can (encouraging them to sell at the Market, telling people about their products, buying a lot of said products, etc) and tell the world about their product out there so more people can enjoy what I’m enjoying! Yes! There is some selfishness involved (it’s about me and what I like!) but also unselfishness (you guys have to check this out, because SERIOUSLY!)! Another example: Stewart Pequignot, who makes his own bagels, started selling at the Market last year. Yesterday he was out of everything by 11 AM thanks to a midweek News-Gazette article about him. The cat’s out of the bag – Stewart makes a quality product in small batches, and people are willing to travel, even in the offseason, to get it. I think that’s cool.
You can tell Jay that while he’s correct on a certain level, I have lost producers to greener pastrures (mostly wholesale markets) after their initial huge success at the Market, and I’m totally down with that. I’m sad to lose them, but I’m glad that people had the moxie to try out their idea at the Market and were able to pursue their entreprenurial dreams! It’s kind of like when an indie band you work with signs to a major. You feel proud of them and a little sad and wonder what’s next for them, but you also move on and are on the lookout for what’s next.
This is why a community kitchen is critical – how many good ideas are out there that won’t get any further than just being ideas because of lack of finances for facilities?
October 1st, 2009 at 9:11 am
Hey Lisa, thank you for the comment! I completely agree that it is important and valuable to our community to spend effort finding individuals doing interesting things and making them come to the market. Recently I’ve been getting tons of produce from the student farm, so I haven’t bought my usual blue moon tomatoes in the past couple months, but of course I still come every Saturday because the culture, conversation and craft at the market is unparalleled in our community
I really think the service you are providing to Urbana is highly valuable and I also salute you for your market blog and your http://rations.tumblr.com/ which I just discovered.
With Jay, I had made the claim that I should be able to raise money from ‘chocolate VCs’ since there was so much interest locally in the chocolate and I perceived an unmet demand. He is a more experienced starter-upper than I, so he was giving me feedback and critique while I practiced spieling him. Maybe not the craftiest folks, Computer Scientists do know pretty well how to raise billions of dollars, so I think this part of my background, and future interactions with entrepreneurial engineers are going to be good things