For a growing number of Colorado businesses, chocolate is more than a tasty treat. It’s their bread and butter. And whether it’s single origin bean-to-bar, handpainted truffles or decadent fudge, it’s all on display this weekend at the .
Now in its ninth year, the festival expects to welcome 6,000-7,000 chocolate lovers over a two-day run that began Friday and continues Saturday. Participating chocolatiers will provide more than 80,000 samples to ticket buyers.
“When I first launched it, I was just shocked,” event organizer Dana Cain said. ” I didn’t realize how, like that Field of Dreams quote, if you build it they will come. If you say chocolate, they will come.”
“As far as the chocolate industry in the state, there are more chocolate companies now,” Cain said. “Every year I get companies saying, ‘We just started, this is our first festival.’ It’s definitely a growing thing.”
When Marisa Baxter started making truffles, it was just for friends and coworkers at the holidays.
Over the years, though, the list got longer and longer, to the point where she realized there had to be some money in it.
“The industry is really trying to go back to artisanship, following the food industry trends, going to farm-to-table and really knowing where everything is sourced from,” Baxter said. “That’s what we really try to focus on.”
Her Longmont-based uses as many local ingredients as possible, she said. That includes local produce, Longmont Dairy cream, even packaging boxes from a Denver company.
She started her business in 2009, and this summer marks Truffles in Paradise’s fifth year of representing the Colorado chocolate industry at the foodie mecca . She sells her hand-crafted truffles primarily online.
“Especially high-end chocolate, even during a recession you want to still be able to treat yourself,” Baxter said. “You don’t need an entire box of chocolates — you can have one piece a day — but it’s rich. It’s a little luxury that’s still affordable.”
Succeeding in the chocolate business today is all about identifying your niche market, said Julie Pech, owner of in downtown Littleton.
“Chocolate companies that innovate are the ones that will continue to succeed,” Pech said. “If you’re so set on what’s going on, ‘this is what I’m doing, I don’t care who likes it,’ they will have a little struggle.”
An author of , Pech knows her target customer isn’t looking for “fair trade, organic, chocolate” or the cheapest supermarket options, either — the sweet spot is somewhere in between.
She offers popular wine-and-chocolate pairing classes at her shop and is branching out to sell her sweets at wineries around the country.
All of her chocolates are free of dyes, preservatives and artificial ingredients. Pech has owned the Littleton shop since 2008.
“If you’re going to advocate the healthy benefits of chocolate, it’s not dark chocolate M&Ms,” Pech said. “You have to step up the game.”
A newcomer to the Colorado chocolate scene, hopes to do exactly that, in the industry’s growing bean-to-bar movement.
The husband-and-wife duo of Tiffany and Richard Dull source cacao beans from three locations worldwide — two farming co-ops in Guatemala and one in the Dominican Republic — producing single-origin chocolate bars and roasted cacao nibs out of a rented commercial kitchen in Colorado Springs.
“We always enjoyed chocolate and it was one of those things — there’s something called the Tchefuncte River in Louisiana. I’m from Louisiana and that’s how we met. We fell in love on the banks of the Tchefuncte and dreamed of making chocolate together,” Tiffany Dull said.
Those dreams also include some day opening their own brick-and-mortar store that can double as an art studio. (The couple creates the original artwork for their wrappers.)
For now, though, Tchefuncte is focused on getting its products into more local shops, a list that currently includes Five Point’s and .
Chocolate’s appeal, Tiffany Dull said, is easy to explain.
“There’s one word — happiness,” she said. “It gives everyone a sense of happiness.”
Emilie Rusch: 303-954-2457, erusch@denverpost.com or @emilierusch
If you go
Colorado Chocolate Festival
When: 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday
Where: Denver Mart, 451 E. 58th Ave.
Cost: $5 for adults, kids under 5, free; taste tickets, 12 for $10 or 24 for $20
