Looks can be deceiving.
You wouldn’t think that there is a really sweet deal going on inside when you first arrive at Chocola Chocola’s location in an industrial mall of Guelph’s north end.
But inside things are happening.
The commercial chocolate maker is dipping, dripping and mixing thousands of pounds of chocolates that are headed to store shelves and gift baskets all over the country.
They don’t have a retail store and create made-to-order chocolates that are bulk shipped to a distributor, who does the specific packaging.
Chocola Chocola goes through 6,000 to 10,000 pounds of raw chocolate a month.
Owner Stella Zhamkochian relocated the 19-year-old business to Guelph from Concord last spring after a visit to the University of Guelph started a love affair with the city.
“We knew nothing about the town. Nothing,” she said. “But it’s a great town and the people are so incredible and so nice. It’s such a beautiful town.”
Chocolate-coated fruit and nuts are their specialty. Often with dessert flavours added to the chocolate, like tiramisu or Boston cream pie donut.
“We do all kinds of very unique flavours,” Zhamkochian said.
Some of the end customers remain a secret, others aren’t even known by Zhamkochian.
“I don’t even know where it goes sometimes, to be honest,” she said.
She does say one of their biggest customers is the Bulk Barn. Chocola Chocola makes the chocolate-coated cherries (their best seller) and yogurt-coated blueberries that they sell in bulk across the country.
Zhamkochian started making chocolates in her kitchen as an extension of her baking and it took off from there.
And what did she know about chocolate then?
“That I like to eat it,” she laughs.
“We’ve always sold it wholesale. First it was little specialty shops and gift basket companies, but it just kept evolving and evolving, now here we are.”
The first item made was a chocolate pizza. Now the sky is the limit, pretty much whatever the customer wants.
“Who doesn’t love chocolate?” she asks rhetorically.
One of their products is a boxed gourmet chocolate that is sold as part of The Shoebox Project, a charitable effort that sees items bought, donated and delivered to women’s shelters.
Chocola Chocola can be found online at http://chocolachocola.com/.
