Chocolate, Chocolate, Sick on Chocolate!

OH MY GOSH! That's all I can say. I keep waking up every day during training and asking "am I really here? Are we really doing this?". Yes, we are. We are 2 months away from opening up our chocolate store, and it is going to be awesome!

We spent all Monday afternoon SAMPLING every kind of chocolate and confectionary we wanted, out of the over 100 products! Ya'll, this was better than getting married. I mean, this was the most fun I've ever had...I was in HEAVEN!! This chocolate and all the fillings (nuts, creams, truffles, homemade marshmallow, etc.) are out of this world. And it was even more amazing after we toured the factory and saw how they were made.

And we did not just "tour" the factory, we WORKED in the factory all Tuesday morning. I have pictures but will have to wait until we get home to download them. We started in the kitchen, where the "master candymaker" was mixing cream for our "Aspen Cream" in a big vat (picture to come). We watched them move thick, gooey POUNDS of corn syrup into giant copper kettles, and watched caramel come to a boil in the kettles. Imagine cooking in your kitchen...times 20! Then we made our way over to the big stainless steel tables where they poured out chocolate or marshmallows and then cut them into little squares. This covered the entire table where they had to use bars on the edges to make a perfect layer of stuff. We actually got to pull apart cut marshmallows, rub them around in powdered sugar, and put them on a tray (picture to come). The kitchen cooks are very knowledgeable and skilled in candy making. There are so many temperatures, consistencies, measurements, and motions that have to be perfect to make perfect candy.

After the kitchen came the real fun! The next part of the factory had all of the candy assembly lines. For instance, we lined up toffee rectangles on a conveyor belt, that then went through a machine to get "enrobed" in chocolate. We dipped our entire hand in chocolate, and drizzled it onto a conveyor belt of chocolates to make the "signature" (picture to come). Crazy! Then we got too busy to take any more pictures. We moved on to the end of the assembly line where we boxed the little chocolate items coming off the line. We were supposed to grab 4 truffles in each hand and put them in a box...all while checking the item, top and bottom, for holes, tails, and defects....I don't think so. I could only get 2 in each hand. Those girls that do this all the time were laughing at us because they are just so fast at it.

The main thing is how surprising it is that so much is done by hand in this factory. It really makes for a very special product.

Anyway, we also worked with the truffle machine by lining up the shells for the machine to come down and insert the filling.

The amazing part was the "dipping" department where they were making clusters. When working with melted chocolate, you have to follow a procedure called "tempering". This has to do with working the choclate to the exact temperature while mixing it around on a cool table. The girls here do this by hand! They measure the temperature every little bit to see how close they are, and just literally play with the chocolate by mixing it with their fingers and using a spatula. They let us try this by making almond clusters. Cyrus and I both mixed the chocolate, added almonds, checked the temperature, added more warm chocolate if needed, or more almonds to cool, and then when it was ready, scooped a glob to put on the tray. We each had a thick layer of milk chocolate covering our entire left hand which we had to go wash off (and in my case, i took a huge lick first).

We went on to stand in the line and put individual assorted chocolates in a paper cup and then into their spot in an assorted package of chocolates (similar to Russell Stover's). I was only fast enough to do one, but the employees were required to do three!

It was just a crazy two days! The factory was surprisingly small. They are able to run multiple products down the same couple of assembly lines. For instance, after we were packaging the chocolate truffles, we walked towards the front of the line (maybe a 100 feet plus total) and there were already pink truffles coming down the line. I mean, there was hardly any changeover time.

The rest of the time in training has been spent discussing financials, marketing, promotions, customer service, inventory, ordering, etc. We have also practiced making fudge, and will learn how to make divinity, dip apples, and other stuff later this week. We are learning so much and we can't wait to get started!

I'll come back and add pictures when we get home. I'll write a separate post about Durango, CO itself, which is pretty cool.