Interview with The Chocolate Conspiracy

Sometime near the end of Summer, beginning of Fall I had the delightful opportunity to meet with AJ Wentworth who is the owner, founder, chief chocolatier, and jefe of The Chocolate Conspiracy located in Salt Lake City, UT (900 S 265 E Salt Lake City, UT 84111, to be exact). I had a great time interviewing AJ and learned a lot about his business and what it takes to specialize in the raw chocolate business. Unfortunately because of website issues, I was unable to post the interview until now.

But the story begins before the interview. I met AJ at the 2013 Honey Bee Festival in Salt Lake City where two things brought my attention to his booth: 1) free chocolate samples (obvious attention grabber there), and 2) the really cool throwback art on the chocolate bars, and 3) it was RAW chocolate. My curiosity was peaked. Apparently I’m a sucker for raw gourmet chocolate wrapped in retro Asian-inspired art.

After a few months passed, I decided to take my family on a homeschool field-trip to AJ’s chocolate shop so they could see see how chocolate is made and perhaps peak their interest in entrepreneurship. AJ was very pleasant and had a lot of fascinating things to say during that visit, things that I thought were worth sharing with all of you. Naturally the next thing to do was set an appointment and pick his brain. So here we are. Enjoy!

A special thanks to AJ for his time, and also to CastingWords for their transcription services.

Listen to the Interview

Total Listening Time: 55 minutes

Read the Interview

Note, this is a word-for-word transcription of the interview. I’ve gone through and edited it slightly, but expect a few fillers now and then. If you’d rather not read the full interview, I’ve gone through and bolded parts that I thought you’d find the most interesting for a quick read. I’ve also scattered a few pictures of his shop and products throughout the interview (so make sure you scroll to the end).

Full Read Time: 15-20 minutes
Bolded Read Time: 5 minutes

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your business? Just a brief overview.

Yes, of course. Everyone always asks me how I got into chocolate. It’s kind of an interesting career to fall into. My background is in culinary so I’ve done a lot with food, I’ve done a lot with healthy foods. But when I really started getting interested in food is when I started to change my own diet. I started to eat differently. I started to eat healthier.

I went to this place in Arizona, called the Tree of Life. It’s a rejuvenation center, and the focus was diabetic healing, cancer healing, MS healing, general detox, relieving stagnation of the liver, cleansing the kidneys, the colon, things like that.

I did an apprenticeship down there for quite a few months learning how to prepare food a certain way that didn’t have any animal products. All the products were vegan friendly, and another aspect to it was that nothing was heated or cooked. The whole philosophy that if you cook or heat any of your products or your food, you’ll lose enzymes, nutritional value, vitamins, minerals, things like that. When I was down there—this was quite a few years ago, 2007—I was introduced to a raw cocoa bean. Someone handed me a little chocolate bean, and I had never seen chocolate in that form.

It just sparked my mind a little bit as far as what chocolate’s role is in the health community and as a food. What is this food? Where does this come from? I had some other experiences where I worked. After I left the Tree of Life, I worked on an organic farm, and I worked at the rejuvenation center, again, up north of Seattle.

I was just able to have a good experience with food and with people, and learning about where it came from as far as producing it and making it as fresh as possible. I was always fascinated with nutrition. I ended up studying nutrition. I went to a school out in New York City, and as I was finishing my certification, I started playing with chocolate a lot.

The concept I wanted to do was design a healthy desert shop. The main idea was to evolve the business into a healthy place where people can come and get a cheesecake for breakfast or, and I actually…

…Cheesecake for breakfast.

Yeah, [laughs] you know?

That’s my kind of breakfast. (Editor’s note: Not really… but maybe.)

Yeah, right.

[laughter]

Actually when you…Knowing that it was supporting their health and their well-being. That was where the chocolate concept took off, because once I started playing with desserts, chocolate just became the forefront. All the other desserts weren’t as good or important, and chocolate just kept coming up. From there I just started playing with it. That was where it evolved. My diet evolved, what was working for me changed, and I moved back to Salt Lake City. Now, I’ve been here four years.

I grew up in Utah. It just was a smart move to come back this direction and everyone’s like, “Why are you here”? Like, “Why’d you come back to Salt Lake? Your business would do so much better in California or New York.” I’m like, “Yeah, but there’s already business like this in California and New York. There’s nothing like this in Salt Lake for what I do.”

There’s lots of chocolate. Salt Lake has a rich, amazing chocolate scene, but they don’t have a raw chocolate scene. That was really my concept for coming back to Salt Lake and starting a business.

I mean to prove your point, I’ve been buying chocolate for years, and it wasn’t until earlier this year when we met at the Bee Festival, of all places… [laughs]

Yeah. Right.

…that I even realized that there was even a market for raw chocolate products. Which is quite honestly, the reason why you stood out to me in the first place.

Thank you. There’s little raw chocolate out there and there’s a lot of raw chocolate that doesn’t taste good. I want to evolve it into a fine chocolate. I want to eventually be able to compete with some of the top chocolatiers in the world and have this honey-sweetened chocolate be such as different experiences for people. That’s how it was done traditionally, thousands of years ago. The Mayans and Aztecs, if they ever used a sweetener which they rarely did, they used honey. It was the only sweetener they had available. It’s nature’s most natural sweetener. It’s the only sweetener that hasn’t been augmented or changed if you actually buy it as a raw, unfiltered honey. It’s nature’s only sweetener, technically. You have fruit and other things like that, but if you want to make sugar you’ve got to process it.

If you want to make syrup you’ve got to process it. If you want coconut sugar you’ve got to process it. Even agave, you’ve got to process it. That was my main concept for doing honey, is that it’s the only natural inherent sweetener that can be found in nature.

OK, yeah. I think that speaks to a lot of people who especially as the organic movement and the raw foods movement is growing quite rapidly. I think that really speaks to a lot of people. Apart from using the raw honey, what sets the chocolate that you make apart from other chocolatiers in the Salt Lake area, or even the general region?

The main thing is the fact that the honey is raw, the cocoa is raw as well. Cocoa, cacao, is an inter-related term. A lot of times the word cacao is used for an un-processed chocolate product so when you’re talking about the beans, or the nibs, or the tree, it’s always cacao. Once you get into a slightly processed product, once you start making chocolate, then cocoa comes into play.

Also, we’re not processing the cacao. I feel like it’s in its more natural state anyway. So the difference with the chocolate itself is the beans haven’t been roasted or heat-processed. Just like coffee, chocolate will go through a roasting process and that will help develop flavor, it will help to change the acidity, the bitterness, the astringentness.

A lot of chocolate makers, the roast is so key for them because the roast will define the flavor of the chocolate bar. So you could do a light roast compared to a dark roast and have a completely different taste in your chocolate bar. There’s one chocolatier up in the Northwest and that’s what he does with his chocolate. That’s kind of his thing is that he’ll do a light roast, or a dark roast, or a medium roast with the same types of chocolate beans and then he’ll put out three different chocolate bars according to how he processed each one.

For me, I’m directly sourcing all the beans from farmers. We’re getting them in from small-scale farms. It’s all certified organic, it’s all certified fair trade. There’s no type of slave labor. Most of the beans are coming from South America, not all, but most of them. We get them unprocessed. We get them unheated and unchanged. The beans will still go through a fermentation process and that’s a part of processing that needs to happen on the farm.

So that’s something that happens before you get them, fermentation?

Yeah, there’s a lot that happens before the beans actually come into the States. Normally when the beans would come into a chocolate factory they would need to get sorted and clean. They need to go through a roasting process and what’s called a winnowing process that’s to break them down, take off the shell. Then it goes through the grinding process. For me, a lot of my beans are actually hand-peeled.

That’s another reason why I have a higher price on my chocolate is that a lot of the beans are more delicate, or at least a couple varieties are hand-peeled. I’m getting some from Ecuador that are all hand-peeled. So that does definitely change the deal in the chocolate.

It almost seems like it used to be that the higher priced things were ones that were made in a plant or something. These are machine made, these are awesome! Now it’s going back again to handcrafted. A little bit more TLC makes it all the more worthwhile.

Yep, exactly. That’s what we’re looking for, and that’s what I’m trying to do with my product, as well. Once we get to the point of flavoring the chocolate, pouring the molds, we do that all by hand. We pour all the molds by hand. We wrap all the bars by hand. We label them all by hand, package them all by hand. There’s a lot of nice, fancy machines that’ll wrap a chocolate bar, but we just go through the grueling process of it.

It sounds fun to be able to just get down and intimate with the food that you’re making. That’s one of the things I love about the culinary world is it’s kind of an intimate process. That actually sounds really fun. Going back to something you said earlier that I want to clarify a little bit, you’re talking about this other chocolatier who does the different roasts to get the different flavors in their chocolate. Because you don’t do those different roasts, how do you change the flavors for your chocolates?

When I’m searching out for a bean, when I’m looking to source a new chocolate, I look for that inherent raw flavor. What is this going to taste like just on its own, as a raw chocolate product? That’s initially how I look for my flavor. From there, the different types of honey that I can use will change the flavor.

I also do what are called “inclusions.” Anytime you see a flavor addition to a chocolate bar, it’s called an “inclusion.” What I’m doing is adding essential oils. I’m adding herbs, spices, aged balsamic vinegars, salts, whole fruits, whole fruit juices, things like that. I’m using a whole food, an herb or something like that to change the flavor.

Something else that people might find interesting, I was in here the other day with my wife and kids. AJ was just giving us a brief run-down of his operations. Something I found interesting is when you’re eating a lot of gourmet chocolates if you look on the back it says, “Chocolate with hints of blackberry.” Or hints of…I don’t know…cinnamon, rosemary, spice. [laughs]

Leather, fruit and wood-bark.

Exactly. It was interesting, a lot like wines, depending on the region that you’re harvesting the bean from, and the surrounding shrubbery, depends a lot on the flavor of the bean that comes out.

Yeah, there’s a bean that comes out of Ecuador, called “java.” It tastes like unripe bananas because there are lots of bananas that grow in that area. There’s a lot of rubber trees that are grown around cacao. A lot of beans out of Papua, New Guinea have a smoky flavor. Sometimes you’ll get like a fume smell, a taste in the chocolate because of where they’re place may be, the factory.

You get beans that have nutty, coffee flavors that are grown in Mexico, near a lot of coffee plantations. You get stuff that’s really fruity and tangy like mangoes and tart types of flavors. Those might come out of Hawaii, or come out of more of a tropical jungle.

Dude, you’re making me salivate.

Yeah, right.

[laughter]

We should probably eat some chocolate here in a minute. (Editors note: SCORE!) As you start to study climate change, and you start to study regions of where, how it’s grown, you really can pick out those nuances. The more and more you eat chocolate, if you do a blind test, you can pretty much tell where it comes from.

I’m getting better at it. I’m not perfect yet, but I can eat a bean and I know it’s from Madagascar. For some odd reason Madagascar beans have a particular dry fruit, [inaudible 14:23] flavor.

I like the vanilla beans that come from Madagascar.

Yep, see they have that same type of flavor. You’ll notice key points for chocolate where a lot of Venezuelan chocolate is really nutty, rich, and has coffee flavors. You can really pick those apart after you start eating a lot of chocolate.

That’s cool. Let’s rewind just a little bit. You have a little bit of culinary background. You start experimenting. You want to open up a healthy dessert shop, which sounds oxymoron-ish. You wind up in chocolate. At this point, what is it in your mind, or is there some kind of inciting incident that happens where you say, “OK, I’m ready to open a chocolate shop and go big time?” What was that moment like? Tell us a little bit about what you were feeling in that moment.

I guess I always knew that I wanted a retail space. With this type of product, there’s so much education that has to come into play there. They [the public] have to try it. I think if you go into a store, and you look at a really nice chocolate bar and then you see this raw chocolate bar, you’re more inclined to buy the really nice chocolate. Because you don’t have any idea…

It’s familiar.

Yeah, exactly, it’s familiar. I think my whole concept was, for the first few years I sold wholesale. I just had a production facility, I would do events. All the education was done in public, just like running into you at the Bee Festival. I’d do the farmers’ markets. I’d do special events. We’d do holiday events. I was always running around.

I would do four to five farmers’ markets every Summer. Even that was kind of a deal with chocolate. But as I was engaging with customers and learning about the type of product that I was selling, getting out there to the people, I realized that there was so much education that had to be involved. To open the retail space, it was something I figured was always kind of a necessary goal, to really grow the business, and to engage customers.

Initially, we opened the space because I needed a new kitchen. It was a cool space. Rent is not high for this area. As far as what’s going on in your mind, it’s one of those things where you just kind of have to pull the trigger. It’s a stressful deal, but business won’t grow unless you take those kind of risks. I knew it was just another stepping stone for growth of the business.

It’s interesting that you bring that up, because you notice a lot of times businesses get to a point where they become static. They have to change to be able to continue, or they’re going to go under. But the fear of change makes them hold onto those nostalgic ideas and those beliefs.

That’s exactly what drives them under. Unless you’re willing to change and take those risks, you’re right, you don’t actually grow.

Right now I’m ready to grow…I shouldn’t say I’m ready, I’m saying I’m looking to grow and how I’m going to grow. Right now I’m reformulating some ideas in my head about my business, and about growth. What does need to change? What are my customers looking for?

Having this first retail space was really good to give me an idea of what are people actually looking for. What do they want to have in a retail space? What do they want to have in a chocolate shop? What kind of products are they looking for? I’m scared as hell.

[laughter]

Sometimes it’s paralyzing, but it’s just one of those things where it’s like, “OK, we’ll take it a step at a time.” You go through this loan thing, or you go through the bank. Then you talk about mortgages, then you talk about leasing. It’s just one of those things where you just take a breath, take your time, go get some tea, relax.

Tea, the answer to all of life’s problems. [laughs]

Yeah, right.

I am an avid tea drinker.

You’re sitting and clear your head. That’s just, I think with any life decision. You want to buy a house with your wife, or you decide to have a baby, or get a new career. It’s like one of those things. You’re like, “Yeah, I’ve got to think about this. We really have to sort it through and figure out details.”

Same with a business. This is my baby. This is my little child, that’s now running and growing. I have to figure out how to feed it and how to pay its bills.

[laughter]

Change its diapers.

Yeah, exactly, so this is kind of where I’m at as far as growth. It’s not a child anymore. It’s still young, but it’s not a baby anymore. It’s getting to a point where it’s functioning on its own and I can take a lesser role, where I’m not involved. It’s not consuming my life as much, which is what happens for any entrepreneur. They’re getting into growing a business, they’re involved.

They see the process every single day. They pay attention to the bills every day. They pay attention to ordering, and product coming and going. That’s really just the evolution of any business. So, I’m to a point where I’m able to take some more time, take some days off and really let it grow and flow on its own accord. Which feels better.

Now, as I’m looking for growth, what do I need to do for myself, as the owner and the chocolate maker? What type of growth is going to happen for future employees and things like that? I’m excited. Underlying all that fear, there’s always this bubbling of excitement that’s…

It’s kind of what motivates the entrepreneurs, let’s see what’s next.

Yes, exactly, like I can’t stop, so I’m going to keep going.

Something that I have a problem with myself is whenever I start something new—and I’ve started quite a few new things—I kind of get bored and I move on.

Maybe take us through a quick process of how you find your suppliers. You mentioned a little bit earlier that your Cacao beans come from a place. The organic farms there, free of slave labor, things like that. In general, how do you find your suppliers, and how do you pick between them?

[laughs] I’ve been blessed, and I’ve been really lucky on that factor, actually. Initially, a few years ago when my business was a year old, I found a source for Ecuadorian cacao. Great product, great beans, but I didn’t really know where they came from. I didn’t really know the farms, I didn’t have a lot of detail.

When you found the source though, where did you find that? Were you networking with somebody at a market?

Yep, initially this guy came and tried my chocolate. This older gentleman sampled it all and he’s like, “This is from Ecuador, right?” I said, “Yeah.” It was a particular variety of bean, which it’s called Arriba Nacional. It was a wild variety of bean. He just looks at me and he’s like, “I can get you better.” [laughs]

You’re like, “What”?

I was like, “OK, right on.” He actually invited me to his chocolate shop. My mother was actually helping me with the festival. She and I went and got to tour this chocolate factory. It was down in Sedona, Arizona. This guy, his name’s Kelly, he helped this farm kind of reinvent their process. He helped them change their process to produce the product that he was looking for.

When I met him he was sourcing from this one farm in Ecuador. He goes down there probably four or five times a year. He’s helping them change the process to become a better, healthier product. He’s teaching them how to ferment their beans differently, and how to process the beans differently.

For his exact specifications, he was also a raw chocolatier. What was really cool for me is that I’m like, “OK, everything’s done for me.” He took care of all the details about…

If everybody could find such a mentor, right?

Yeah, right. I was just super blessed, super lucky, that I was able to cross his path. He’s kind of like the gears, and then he has a chocolate maker that works for him. We had known each other. The chef that I actually apprenticed under initially at The Tree of Life, he and this new chocolate maker were friends.

It was kind of nice that one of my best friends, that I studied under and learned from, was best friends with this other chocolate maker. As the world kind of turns, you realize how small it is, you know? [laughs]

Yeah, seriously.

I have friends in a lot of places, and I was really fortunate. As time went on, I did chocolate festivals, and I sourced this chocolate for two and a half years. My first year was kind of hit and miss with what I was sourcing. For two and a half years it was a consistent source for this bean out of Ecuador.

As it evolved and as we would grow, I’ve met other people along the way. There’s actually a guy now, here in Utah. His product is called Crio Brü. I don’t know if you’ve seen Crio. Eric, he’s an amazing person that sources beans. I’ve worked with him to get beans. I’ve worked with other chocolate makers.

I work with a guy that runs his company in Denver, but he actually lives in Ecuador and has a farm in Ecuador. He and I have worked together, and he’s gotten me in touch with other chocolate makers and other farmers. It’s just been a matter of, now that I’m in the industry, it’s not hard. But for the first few years I was just pretty lucky, as far as it just fell in my lap.

That’s really cool.

I didn’t have to figure out a lot of details. I think what’s going to end up happening is, things will change once I start doing bigger manufacturing. I’ll have to be ordering pallets of beans, and things will change then. But I don’t expect that to happen for at least another two, three years. When I have the space to actually be buying beans by the pallet load. [laughs]

Right now we’re able to do still small orders and small batches, because I know other chocolate makers that are buying beans. We can split the cost and share shipping cost and things like that.

Here’s an interesting question for you then. I don’t know if you’ve ever read “The E-Myth”?

Yeah, I’m reading it right now, actually.

Really? I don’t remember who the author is. Do you remember? Oh yeah, Michael Gerber. There’s an example in there where he goes to a hotel and every single time he goes to the hotel, he has a consistent experience. That’s what he loves about it. He says that consistency is what brings success in a business, at least in a hotel business.

I’ve seen that same principal in other businesses, so I kind of want to ask that question to you. It seems to me you’ve been able to find different chocolates, and as it’s growing, your source for chocolates has changed, therefore the taste is going to change a little bit as well.

As a chocolatier, do you find it more important to keep the chocolate taste the same, or maybe keep it the same for a while and then change it? Or continuing to change to find something better?

I think the last point. I think what it is about is it is always continuously changing. I think that’s what I love about my business. I don’t want to sell a product that someone is expecting to be the same. I do understand people’s disappointment when they try a chocolate bar and they’re like, “This tastes a little different than last time.” I’m like, “Yes, it does.”

I love that those little nuances are there. It’s not a mass manufactured product. It’s going to taste different every single time I make it, even if I do a precise process. Now, I have figured out how to create a system. We do have system for making the chocolate. We have a system for pouring the chocolate. We have a system for cooling the chocolate.

We have a system for wrapping, packaging and labeling. All of that’s done the same. Whereas, the ingredients might have subtle changes. Right now, I’ve been using the same Cacao from Peru. I’ve been using that bean for over a year and a half now. Now the chocolate has been pretty steady.

But the honey has changed. The honey changes the consistency of the chocolate. The melt point might change because of the honey, as far as the crystallization of sugars. There’s always subtle differences, but never drastic differences anymore. I think for the first couple of years there were drastic changes. that was as far as evolving the product and making it…fine tuning the product.

Now that I fine-tuned it, and I found a product that tastes good, now there’s just little, subtle changes. Other than that, there is a system involved in the making of the product.

You know, the thing that popped into my head when you were talking just a little bit earlier was that every time I bite into a Hershey’s Chocolate, I’m disappointed that it’s the same.

[laughter]

Yeah, right.

It’s like, “Come on”! Something that I’ve really enjoyed as I’ve sampled your chocolates a couple of different times now is, I kind of personally get excited. I’m like, “OK. what’s this one going to taste like”?

For me, that’s part of the whole experience with a gourmet chocolate: you’re not always expecting it to be the same. It’s the excitement of what type of a party’s going to be in my mouth at this point in time, you know? As long as there’s chocolate in there it’s always going to be a party. [laughs]

A couple of general questions, I suppose. We’re going to do the good and the bad here. I think it’s kind of obligatory, but I think people need to hear it as well. What’s your least favorite thing about this business or industry?

Least favorite thing, the fact that it’s even a business. [laughs] I wish I could just make my chocolate and give it away, and I would still somehow have money to pay my bills. I’m not big on industry. I’m not big on corporations. I’m not big on how we conduct business here. I hate that I take credit cards, but that’s something that has to be done.

You know, 70-80 percent of my sales are done with a credit card. If I didn’t take credit cards, my business would probably go under. It’s weird that I’m totally against that. I don’t want to take credit cards. I don’t want to pay for my business license. I don’t want to, but that’s just kind of me being anti-establishment and anti-corporation. That’s just, yeah.

I feel you. I’m the same way.

Yeah. Having books, paying taxes, that’s, I would say. The non-positive aspects of the business, but the things I love about it are…

Great, next question. What do you love?

The things I love are the fact that I can create a crafted product and that I’m doing something that people love. I’m making a product also that works with people that have allergies. I find some people who haven’t eaten chocolate in 10 years because they couldn’t eat soy or they couldn’t eat dairy.

Did you hear that, everybody? If you have allergies, this is the chocolate you should try next.

Yeah. A lot of people write it off. They write off chocolate because it has refined sugar, or they write off chocolate because most chocolate has soy. That’s pretty much commercial chocolate. But I’ve seen as fine chocolate is evolving and emerging, that a lot of fine chocolatiers are avoiding soy, avoiding dairy. They’re making just a dark chocolate.

That’s what I love. I love my customers. I love the people that are satisfied. I love that it’s a fuel for my creative innovations. It helps clear my head. It keeps me busy in a sense that this is what I love to do. But yeah, as far as running a business, we all have our ups and downs, accounting, doing books, all that stuff.

But those are little things that are just necessary to run a business. To actually do the part that I love. The part that makes me happy and that is fruitful. It outweighs all that other stuff hand in hand. As I’m growing, I’m just finding help to get those things done. If I don’t want to do my books, I hire somebody to do my books. As a business grows and evolves, I can’t do it all. I have been, and so now I’m to the point where I’m delegating and letting people take care of things that I can’t do.

And that’s a good feeling.

Yeah.

Especially when it comes to books.

Oh, it’s a great feeling. It’s so good. Give me two, three more years and all I’ll be doing is making chocolate. I don’t think I’ll be doing as many festivals. I won’t be doing as many books. I won’t be on the computer as much. I won’t be doing emails as much. I’ll be able to just really hone in my energy on the chocolate and just be doing eight hours a day of chocolate making. [laughs]

It sounds awesome. If I could just stay home and cook all day…

Yeah, right? I’m leveraging myself to get to that point. So, yeah. Give me a couple years, we’ll be there.

I guess one other question in that general area is what’s the hardest thing you’ve had to overcome to make this business successful? Or maybe you’re going through it right now? I don’t know.

Yeah, probably. I think being my own boss. I have kind of a split personality concept in my mind where I look at things in opposites a lot and I’m contradictory a lot. I’ve had to get out of my own way.

That’s I think the biggest thing. I’ve had to let my pride get out of the way, or my ego, and get out of my own way as far as producing a product and knowing that it’s a good product. Not second guessing if it’s good or not. If I need a day off, take a day off. If I need to make chocolate, I make chocolate.

I think one of the biggest things is being my own boss. I’m the manager, owner, chocolate maker of this company. But I’m also my own boss now. I have to really be responsible on the days that I need to be responsible. As of doing that so much then I hit a point where I just want to be reckless [laughs] and irresponsible.

I’ll take a few months of being very responsible and very key on what I need to get done. Then I’ll take a few months during the summer just to be reckless and sleep in and have some good times with my friends in the nights. Then I’m realize, “OK, back to work.” Now the holidays are kicking in. I’ll be busy again.

I’m learning that flux, but that’s also just a way to keep me sane as well. If I was always responsible, I would lose it over a while. If I were always reckless, I would lose it over a while. It’s just finding that balance.

I think the biggest thing to overcome is balance, and that’s with any business owner. I think trying to balance family time or a relationship or just your own life. Finding time to eat and sleep. [laughs] Balance is kind of really what’s been a big challenge for me.

Just talking with you it seems like you’re a pretty introspective person.

[laughter]

Naturally, I just want to ask then, what has been the biggest lesson then that you’ve learned by going through this?

I don’t know why this came to my mind first, but organization. Being organized and having things functional and having those systems in place. If you have a system in place, nothing will fail. If I have an employee come in and he needs to make chocolate, if there’s a system. Or if he needs to take care of package bars, there’s a system. It all kind of falls in place.

But if it’s one of those days I don’t have things organized, it’ll all just fall to the ground. I think the biggest thing I’ve learned over the past few years is developing those systems for people that need it, so I don’t have to be involved as much.

I suppose that probably helps a little bit with quality control and other things, as well?

Yeah. I have this guy now who’s been helping me in the chocolate shop, and he’s very particular about bars.

Is that who I met the other day?

Yeah, Jessie. I’m glad to see that he has some good discernment with looking at the quality control, and he doesn’t want to see a bad product go out the door. That’s how I am, too. I’m very particular. My AC went out this summer, and I didn’t get chocolate to stores for three weeks. We had to write off a couple of stores. They were kind of upset about it.

But I’m like, “Hey, this is what I have to do for the summer. I don’t have proper AC. I’m not going to send you a bad product. I’m not going to send you a product that isn’t going to look good when one of your customers opens it.”

It’s hard to do that. It’s hard to say, “Sorry, we’ll get you chocolate in two weeks.” [laughs] But it’s what I want to do with my company. I don’t want to send out a bad product. I don’t want to just for the sales. With chocolate, the profit margins are so low with what I’m doing with the specialty product. I think I have to be very discerning when it comes to getting chocolate in the store.

I’m not doing this to make a dollar. I’m using high quality ingredients. The best I can find. We don’t cut corners. I don’t look for cheap, West African cacao that’s 20 cents a pound. [laughs]

I’m buying chocolate that’s $10 a pound or $5 a pound depending on where it comes from and making sure that it’s organic, making sure that the ingredients are raw. If I can’t find an ingredient, I don’t do a substitute. I don’t find something that’s just a cheap filler. We wait. We give it two months until we can actually find that ingredient.

That’s been an issue as far as customers, as far as keeping them satisfied with the same product over and over. But if it doesn’t meet the standards of my business, then we don’t do it.

I just have to say I love hearing that. Because having worked in the software industry for years, nothing drives me nuts more than saying, “Well, it’s good enough. Let’s just ship it.” Then you end up with a sub-par product.

Yes, exactly.

I hate that.

Yeah, dude. I do too. I do too. It makes me sick knowing that someone in New York is opening a chocolate bar and it doesn’t look that good, and that person’s never going to buy my product again.

It’s such a first impression type of thing. People don’t lie when they say first impressions are important. For a chocolate bar, a first impression has to be a good one. My product has grown and evolved, and I know people who used to eat it three, four years ago but they didn’t necessarily like it. Now they’re like, “Wow, your chocolate’s changed. It’s better.” That’s what I want…

It’s good to hear.

Yeah. That’s what I want to keep doing is evolving it to be better and better.

A little side track here. Have you read Steve Jobs’ autobiography, by chance?

No. I’ve read bits and pieces, but I do want to sit down and read it, for sure.

That was so fascinating. One of the interesting things I learned in there is that he was so anal about his product, and he wanted everybody that made it to be so proud of it, that he actually had them sign the inside of the computer shell saying, “This is…” Somewhere in my head I just thought, have you ever thought about having anybody who makes your bar, or whatever, hand sign the bar to say, “This has passed quality control?”

[laughter]

I have, actually. That’s changing now in the industry. Even chocolate companies that I know, there’s a little label that goes on there, and it says, “Packaged and inspected by…” this person. They put their own little label on their bars. I think as time grows and as I get more employees, it’ll evolve to be that.

The quality control will have to fall on the employees. They’ll have to know the discerning qualities that I’m looking for. Because I’ll taste a product and I’ll be like, “Mm, yeah, no.” But they’ll be like, “Oh, it tastes OK.” And I’m like, “Yeah, but it doesn’t taste amazing.” I think over time, that just will come with me training my employees to look at the discerning qualities of if a product can go out or if it can’t go out.

I’ve met a lot of people who want to be like that. Be like, “No. No matter what, I am not shipping this product.” Whether it be chocolate bar or some kind of marshmallow-interior fondant. I don’t know. You know what I mean?

Yet, the pressure of shipping something gets to them, and so they ship it anyway. I don’t know if you’ve had to change your mindset. Or have you always had that mindset? Or how do you think people could go about changing?

What helped me change my mindset was having a shitty experience doing that. This one lady hounded me about sending my ice cream to her in the blazing time of summer. I’m like, “We don’t ship during the summer. We don’t ship our ice cream during the summer.”

But she really wanted it for some family barbecue thing. She lives in Pittsburgh or Philadelphia or I don’t even remember. We end up shipping product. I did what I could as far as insulation and wrapping the product and using dry ice and doing overnight shipping.

She paid overnight shipping on this product, and it gets there and it still isn’t frozen. There were a couple that had thawed out. The packaging that we had shipped it in, the ice cream had absorbed some of the packaging flavor.

This customer was very upset, and I’m like, “Look, I told you that all of these things that could have happened and why I didn’t ship my products.” But she was very insistent, and I should have just told her no.

I dealt with the headache. I dealt with all the stress of “Is it going to ship?” I have to go back and forth to the post office to get packaging, and I have to deal with getting the dry ice and making sure the time goes out in a timely manner. I pulled up all this stress when really I should have just said, “Nope.” [laughs]

From having that one experience that was strong enough to make me remember, then now, when it comes up and people ask, I just say no. I think it’s a learning process. You have to have that one experience to make you remember to not say yes again. I’ve had a few things like that happen in my business. Once you make a mistake, you never make the same one.

At least, you hope you don’t.

Exactly. I was just about to say that. At least you hope you don’t. I think with most of the big mistakes I’ve made in my business, I’m talking big money mistakes that actually costs thousands of dollars, I think those mistakes, you don’t forget those. It just makes you a stronger business owner.

Well, just one last question, and then we can wrap things up. What advice would you have to give to somebody looking to start something similar? Or just in general? Similar might be a chocolatiering business, or it might be just a shop like you’ve got going on here, or something. What advice do you have for the entrepreneur who wants to get started doing something?

Take your time and definitely read. Read a lot about it, and ask a lot of questions. Look at all the details of your business.

Right now, just kind of as an idea, I’m working with another company to develop a new product. We have to look at where are we sourcing the ingredients? How much ingredients are we going to be using? What’s the packaging going to look like? What’s the cost of the packaging?

How can we distribute this product? How are we going to get it on the market? What entities have to certify the product? What companies have to inspect the product, like the Department of Food and Ag or the health department? How much times is this going to take to actually produce in a week?

Those are just some of the details. But as far as developing a business, you have to look at what business license am I going to get? How am I going to set up my business? How am I getting funding? How am I going to do startup costs? What’s my product that I’m going to sell, or what is my business selling? You want to look at a business as a product. What am I going to be representing?

Really take the time to lay a good foundation and have a plan. 90 percent of businesses don’t have a plan. Everyone says make a business plan and have a business plan, and it’s kind of like, “Yeah, I just have an idea.” Really do have a functional plan that is written down. When you take a goal and you actually write it on paper.

It becomes much more of an imprint that’s going to turn into a reality. I think that goes the same for business. I think the more you write things down, the more you have set ideas, goals. Really get those things in place, and know your strengths and know your weaknesses. Let go of the pride when it comes to your weaknesses, and be able to admit those weaknesses and say, “I’m not good at this. I need to find somebody that is.”

For me it’s accounting.

Yeah, me too. I suck at my books. I’m good with money, but I’m horrible with organization when it comes around money. I can save and be spendy and thrifty all day long…

Same.

…but when it comes to actually putting the receipts in an accounting program…

Awful.

Yeah. I’m horrible at it. So I have someone to help me with my books. So really find the things that you’re good at and know what you’re good at, and be good at doing those things and do those well. The things that you’re not good at, take the time to find somebody that’s brilliant at doing them.

That’s really what I’ve learned from running the business, is just to get out of my own way and to really make sure that the people who I’m working with they’re doing a good job as well, and they know what they’re doing also. Take the time to find that right person.

Right now, I’m looking for somebody to manage my business. I want somebody who’s health minded, somebody who eats well. Someone who understands the chocolate industry. This person has a lot of qualities, and it’ll come to me eventually.

But it’s hard to find that person who may be out of a job or may not be doing anything who has time to take on running a chocolate company. So it’s kind of like, “All right. I guess all things in good time.”

But again, take your time with everything. Don’t rush into it. Allow your business to grow slowly. I know a lot of businesses that grow too fast too quick. They get overwhelmed. They don’t know how to keep up with production. They don’t know how to keep up with small equipment. So really look towards growth, but also take that growth in stride. Take it in its own time. Allow it to grow organically and functionally without losing your mind.

Just to add on to that, I was really surprised when I came in the other day. Quite honestly, I was expecting a little bit larger operation. I think probably a lot of people are probably surprised about that.

Yup. Yeah. A lot of people are really shocked. They come in here and they’re like, “What is this place?” And I’m like, “It’s a chocolate shop.” They’re like, “It is?”

Yeah, you just got the room back there. You’ve got a couple of temper machines or whatever they’re called. Just minimal equipment and you’re making some kick-butt chocolate.

Yeah. [laughs] So that’s the thing. It’s a matter of just growing slowly. You don’t need to buy the best machine ever your first few years. You need to buy a mid-grade machine, and then, when you have the money, then buy the Cadillac. Then buy the Porsche.

Give yourself some time. Right now, just buy a Jeep Wrangler, something like that. Just buy a mid-grade vehicle right now to get you to the point where you need to. Then buy a really nice car. That’s really what it comes down to with equipment. But find stuff that’s functional and can match your manufacturing processes.

Cool. All right. Well, that’s all the questions I have. Do you have anything else that’s on your mind that you want to share, or…?

No. We covered a lot. That’s awesome. I think it’s golden.

Why don’t you give us some details about where to find you, and…

Yeah, of course. You can come directly to the retail shop. The small, little chocolate shop. It’s on 900 South in between 200 and 300 East. We’re 265 East. You can find my products at Caputo’s, Earth Goods, Orchid Dynasty, Millcreek Olive Oil, Roots Cafe. There’s quite a few places around town you can find us.

Hop on the website. The website is www.eatchocolateconspiracy.com. We do ship during the winter, so come October we’ll be back up and running online. You can find us at specialty shops outside of Utah as well. If you’re traveling or if you know people in the area. We sell into Seattle, LA, San Diego, New York, Brooklyn, Kansas City, Ohio.

There’s a few places like that that sell our chocolate. A few online retailers that sell it as well. We’re slowly growing and getting out there. Harmons is interested. So is Whole Foods. We’ve just been biding our time with them, but eventually you’ll see our product in Harmons before you will Whole Foods.

So that’s the next big jump as far as distribution. When Harmons picks it up, all their stores will pick it up. I think they have 16 stores in Utah, so they’ll all pick it up at once. So yeah, you’ll see us do a big jump of growth eventually.

Panic time!

Yeah, exactly. I think once we can match them on manufacturing…

OK. Well, that leads me to one last question I just thought of because you said that stuff.

Cool.

How do you find a distribution center for you? Or do they find you?

Usually they as far as distribution goes I think you can find them out you can search for distributions so you can get online and do some searching my distributor kind of just fell in my lap.

You lucky punk.

[laughter]

I know it just kind of worked out. So the distributor I work with is called A Priori and they distribute the fine meats cheeses and chocolates for Utah and for most of America. A lot of the stuff that you see in Whole Foods like the creminelli meats, oley meats, the Bee Hive Cheese Company, Snowy Mountain Cheese and all the really fine European chocolates that you find in Harmons or whole foods they are all distributed by A Priori.

I connected with them I have been working with them now for the past year. They’re great. they have been getting me into new stores again they work with your growth. They’re not pushing make as a chocolate maker to distribute more. They’re allowing me to grow in my own time and when I’m ready they will make the contacts to Whole Foods or the Harmons. But they’re a great company to work with. They alleviate a lot of stress and so…

So they are playing the middle man for you to get into these supermarkets and stuff?

Yup and specialty food shops and you know they have connections with all these places because they have been selling to them anyways. I traveled around San Francisco about in February, March and I went around and took chocolate around. One of the stores I went to he was like this is my normal distributor that I order from.

I was like oh great that is my distributor he was like cool I will just order it from them. He did not have to deal with ordering from me or anything like that i dropped the product off. I sold him on the product, and then the next thing I knew an order went through for A Priori. Now he carries my chocolate.

So a new store in San Francisco, and I don’t have to do much work as far as keeping up with him and keeping up the customer base. They take care of that. “Hey, where’s your stock on Chocolate Conspiracy? Are you pleased with the product?” Blah-blah-blah-blah-blah. So they do a good representation as far as sales for my product, and it alleviates a lot of stress for me.

That’s been really key. It’s been really nice having someone just do the legwork because it’s hard to keep up with stores. It’s hard to keep up with emails. It’s hard to check in all the time and see how the product’s doing. When I get involved in the kitchen, I don’t have time, and it’s nice to have someone who I know is doing that for me.

Awesome. Well, thanks again AJ, I appreciate it.

Of course. Thank you.