Chocolate companies based in California

Question

This piglix contains articles or sub-piglix about Chocolate companies based in California

Answer 1

Ghirardelli Chocolate Company

The Ghirardelli Chocolate Company

The Ghirardelli Chocolate Company is a United States division of Swiss confectioner Lindt & Sprüngli. The company was founded by and is named after Italian chocolatier Domenico Ghirardelli, who, after working in South America, moved to California. The Ghirardelli Chocolate Company was incorporated in 1852, and is the third-oldest chocolate company in the United States, after Baker's Chocolate and Whitman's.

In 1817, Domenico Ghirardelli was born in Rapallo, Italy, to an "exotic foods importer" and his wife. Domenico received his first education in the chocolate trade when he was apprenticed to a local candymaker as a child. By the time he was 20, Ghirardelli sailed to Uruguay with his wife to work in a chocolate and coffee business. A year later, Ghirardelli moved to Lima, Peru, and opened a confectionery store. In 1847, nine years later, James Lick (Ghirardelli's nephew) moved to Mexico with 600 pounds of Ghirardelli's chocolate. Ghirardelli remained and continued to operate his store in Peru.

In 1849, Ghirardelli received news of the gold strike at Sutter’s Mill and sailed to California. After doing some prospecting, Ghirardelli opened a general store in , offering supplies and confections to fellow miners. Ghirardelli's tent-based store was one of the first shops set up in the area.

Several months later, Ghirardelli opened a second store on the corner of Broadway and Battery in San Francisco, which became, in 1850, his first establishment in that city.

A fire on May 3, 1851 destroyed Ghirardelli's San Francisco business, and a few days later, his Stockton store also burned down. However, in September of the same year, Ghirardelli used his remaining assets to open the Cairo Coffee House in San Francisco. This business venture proved unsuccessful, and Ghirardelli opened a new store, named "Ghiardelli & Girard", on the corner of Washington and Kearny Streets in San Francisco. Soon afterward, Ghirardelli was making enough money to send for his family, who were still living in Peru. He changed the company's name to "D. Ghirardelli & Co." and, in 1852, imported 200 pounds of cocoa beans. The company was incorporated in 1852 and has been in continuous operation since.

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Answer 2

Guittard Chocolate Company

Coordinates: 37°35′51″N 122°22′46″W / 37.597452°N 122.379557°W / 37.597452; -122.379557

The Guittard Chocolate Company is an American-based chocolate maker which produces couverture chocolate using original formulas and traditional French methods. The company is headquartered in Burlingame, California. It is the oldest continuously family-owned chocolate company in the United States, family-owned for more than four generations.

The company was started by Étienne Guittard (1838-1899), who emigrated from Lyon, France in the 1850s during the California Gold Rush. He brought French chocolates with him, which he traded for supplies. After trying without success for three years to strike gold in the Sierra, he returned to San Francisco, where shopkeepers with whom he had earlier traded his chocolate convinced him to become a chocolate maker; he returned to Paris, saved money to buy the equipment he needed, then returned to San Francisco and opened for business at 405 Sansome Street on the San Francisco waterfront. Initially, he didn't limit himself to chocolate, also selling "tea, coffee, spices, yeast powder and flavorings."

Horace C. Guittard, Étienne's son, was in charge when the 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed the city. In the aftermath of the quake, a new plant was built on Commercial Street. The company expanded in 1921 and 1936 onto property on Main Street south of Market. In 1954, Guittard sold its property to the city so that Embarcadero Freeway could be built. The company relocated to a 75,000-square-foot (7,000 m²) facility at the corner of Guittard and Rollins road in Burlingame, California, where it remains to this day.

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Answer 3

Scharffen Berger Chocolate Maker

Scharffen Berger Chocolate is a line of chocolate produced by Artisan Confections Company, a subsidiary of The Hershey Company. Acquired by Hershey in 2005, it was formerly Scharffen Berger Chocolate Maker, an independent Berkeley, California-based chocolate maker, founded in 1996 by sparkling wine maker John Scharffenberger and physician Robert Steinberg.

The company was a manufacturer of chocolate — as opposed to the far more common chocolatiers, who make their products using chocolate acquired from wholesalers and manufacturers — the first American company founded in the past 50 years to make chocolate "from bean to bar". Scharffen Berger primarily produced chocolate bars, using small-batch processing and focusing on dark chocolate varieties with high cocoa solid content.

The company's origins lie with founders John Scharffenberger and Robert Steinberg. In 1989, Steinberg, a physician, was diagnosed with cancer and given a 50% chance of dying within ten years of the diagnosis. Steinberg promptly sold his practice and began exploring other career options. He read through a 600-page chocolate cookbook at the urging of a friend, which sparked Steinberg's interest in chocolate making. He began travelling to study the process of chocolate making. Steinberg toured the Bernachon chocolate company in Lyon, France, in 1993. He soon composed a letter in French asking Bernachon for an internship and was granted a brief two weeks with the small company.

Steinberg returned from his internship in France and soon ran into John Scharffenberger, his former patient and neighbor. Scharffenberger, a winemaker and businessman, was selling his winery, Scharffenberger Cellars, and was exploring potential new business opportunities. Steinberg offered Scharffenberger a piece of French chocolate which he happened to have in his pocket. "Robert had this chunk of chocolate in his pocket that I think he'd been carrying for months. But it tasted better than anything I'd ever had," Scharffenberger later recalled in a 1998 interview with People Magazine.

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Answer 4

See%27s Candies

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Answer 5

TCHO

TCHO is a luxury chocolate maker based in Berkeley, California. TCHO works with cacao bean farmers and cooperatives to improve growing, fermentation, and drying methods. Its factory and headquarters were formerly located on Pier 17 along the Embarcadero, in the city’s historic downtown waterfront district, but are now located in the West Berkeley section of Berkeley, California.

TCHO was co-founded in December 2005 by Timothy Childs, a technology and chocolate entrepreneur who once developed vision systems for NASA's Space Shuttle program, and Karl Bittong, a 40-plus year veteran of the chocolate industry. Karl Bittong specializes in the engineering aspect of chocolate production and has worked on factories around the world. Timothy Childs left TCHO in 2010 to create pioneering Food/Tech, business Treasure8. For a while, its CEO and President were Louis Rossetto and Jane Metcalfe, respectively, co-founders of Wired magazine as well as the first magazine website, Wired.com.

In 2006, the company moved to Pier 17, a historic pier built in 1912 and the third-oldest pier on the San Francisco waterfront. Steel truss and timber frame buildings were built on this and surrounding piers to accommodate the loading and unloading of ships. Historically, the pier has been used for transport, military logistics, and trade, including the trade of cacao beans to San Francisco. The TCHO chocolate factory was assembled by a team of engineers using vintage European machines from Wernigerode, Germany, and modern refiners, grinders, and Siemens computerized temperature gauges. In April 2014 TCHO left Pier 17 and moved their offices and factory to Berkeley, CA.

TCHO teamed with Erik Spiekermann of Edenspiekermann for design and branding. Its packaging design has won numerous awards and honors, including the Academy of Chocolate Gold Award in February 2009, the European Design Gold Award in May 2009, the iF communication design award in August 2009, as well as nominations for the 2009 Cannes Design Lions and 2011 German Federal Design Award.

TCHO focuses on the inherent flavors of cacao and chocolate, separating flavors by profile. It positions its chocolate in terms of the flavor profile rather than by cacao percentage or the origin of the beans. Cacao’s flavors derive not only from its genetics and terroir, similar to wine and coffee, but also from the way the cacao beans are fermented and dried. Such flavors can be further developed or “fine-tuned” during roasting, grinding, and conching to make the final chocolate. The cacao beans for TCHO’s four PureNotes dark chocolates were sourced and formulated to correspond to the dark chocolate flavor wheel.

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