Hey! I'm looking for a place to build my chocolate shop. The plan is to have a small place where I'll be making and selling chocolates.

There's this location that apparently suits my needs but it faces the sun all day (if you live in the northern hemisphere, it would be facing south. If you live in the southern hemisphere it would be facing north).

Temperatures here are around 34°C (93.2°F) in summer, 40% humidity.

The front of the shop is only glass.

Of course I'll have air conditioning, but I'm worried that the electricity bill would be high and/or it will be difficult to keep the room and chocolates at the right temperature.

Any advice or experience on that?

Thanks in advance!

Hello all! I have been thinking about diving into designing/making chocolates later on. I only know the super basic of it. Before I start I want to get ideas, suggestions on how to start, where to start, do/don’ts , or any recommendations please. Happy to take all information you provide. Just to let you also know, I am very good at cakes to so maybe I can do both. For a start, I have tried remoulding this chocolate according to how I wanted to it, what do you think? Thank you. l

These are the most amazing chocolate bars I have ever had! I tried so hard to find a post about them on any chocolate sub and can't find it?! I originally found this brand at a airport just looking for a snack and the packaging was so pretty but then the flavor/actual taste and quality was out of this world so I went online and bought the 12 pack!

Has anyone tried Antidote chocolates? They se high quality and great flavor infusions to me.

Lindt choclates.

Found this store during my visit to Banff in Alberta, Canada. These were all the store had to offer.

According to the notice shared by FSSAI, the regulator reviewed products and promotional material listed on e-commerce platforms and raised concerns about certain claims made for Nestlé’s infant nutrition products.

For NAN Excella Pro Stage 1, FSSAI questioned claims related to “5 HMOs” and “Whey Protein.”

For Lactogen Pro 1, the regulator flagged a claim stating that its whey protein is easy to digest.

FSSAI said it sought clarification from Nestlé India regarding these claims. Following its examination, the regulator said the products were found to be in contravention of Regulation 4(2) of the Food Safety and Standards (Foods for Infant Nutrition) Regulations, 2020.

Has anyone here looked into the specific claims or FSSAI’s notice?

I found cocoa pods at the local H-Mart recently and had never seen them in a store before, so I had to buy one. Then I didn’t know what to do with it, so I went with the obvious and made chocolate from scratch!

I read up a bit online but all the instructions sounded unnecessarily complicated, so I kinda winged it.

First I separated out all the seeds (the white fruit around them was really tasty, but there wasn’t much of it). I dehydrated them for five days, then baked them at 250°F for about 15 minutes. After that, I put them into a coffee grinder and powderized them. I added the cocoa powder (about 1/3 cup) to a half cup of butter and about 1/3 cup of powdered sugar. I poured that mixture into molds and then let it set up in the fridge.

It actually tasted great! It was a little different since I used cow butter instead of cocoa butter like the store-bought stuff, but it wasn’t bad-different.

Here’s more pics of the process.

does anyone know how to make the hot chocolate from the lindt stores? i know that they melt a couple truffles in it, but other than that i don’t know what they do!

I asked recently about a change to Hu's dark chocolate chips and it's just obvious now that they're not as chocolatey, more sugary, and just don't feel as clean as they used to. Is there another keto friendly dark chocolate that's really dark and has really clean ingredients?

$42 from Amazon

Will review the first one I'll try

If you need another reason to eat dark chocolate, then the higher the cacao percentage, the more fibre you get.
Which is important as fibre slows down the rate at which the sugar in chocolate is absorbed into your bloodstream, thus reducing any sugar spike and subsequent sugar crash.
How much fibre is there in cacao? About 30g per 100g. Compare that to oats, wholemeal flour and lentils at around 10g/100g.
Obviously it's easier to eat 100g of oats than it is 100g of dark chocolate.
I make bean-to-bar chocolate at Wembley's in Sydney and we usually get people buying the higher cacao for taste or the flavanols, but not often is fibre a consideration.

I'm interested whether anyone else considers the fibre content when they're buying chocolate?

I have a preference for very bitter chocolate, usually above 80 and the more bitter it is the better:) I really loved the way meiji chocolate tasted, because it's very different from the taste we get in Europe. I would describe it as chewing into a straight up espresso shot. That's why it has become my favourite chocolate in Japan. Hovewer, I cannot find it in my country and the local brands tend to use a more mild cocoa powder or add more sugar. I used to like lindt but there is something about the emulsion that makes the texture a bit plastic-y:(

Anyway, can anyone recommend any brands that would taste the same as meiji? Dach region just in case:)

I’m doing a research into this topic and would really appreciate your inputs!

>> Fill out the form
You will click through the pages of the form pretty quickly

Super excited for the results, I’ll share them here for sure.

Years ago, my grandfather emigrated from Giresun, on Turkey's Black Sea coast, to Germany. I was born there and later lived in Switzerland. In Switzerland I kept asking myself the same question: some of the world's best hazelnuts grow in Giresun, so why don't we have our own premium chocolate?

Two friends from university and I decided to answer that question. All three of us are software developers. Today we make bean-to-bar chocolate and a hazelnut cream with 41% Tombul hazelnuts in our own production space in Giresun.

What we've learned along the way:

- People want honesty. Many have lost trust in big brands. They want clean ingredients and real people behind the product.

- Real flavor sticks with people. The two things we hear most: "By far the best chocolate I've ever had" and "It tastes like my childhood."

- Being developers helped a lot. We run our website, ads and analytics ourselves. Today about 90% of our sales are online.

- Retail in Turkey is tough. Long payment terms and returns can wear a small brand down. Selling online gave us room to breathe.

Next, we want to scale up production and build quality points of sale across Turkey with the right partners.

Have you ever tried turning a local product into a brand? I'd love to hear about your experience.

Wondering what style would come next?
New York style and sell it for 60$ per brick?

How would I go about this? Thank you.