How Christopher Elbow Chocolates is Pivoting to Meet Customer Demand
Christopher Elbow Chocolates first delighted the Kansas City, Missouri culinary scene with stunningly beautiful and deliciously decadent handcrafted chocolates in 2003. But Elbow’s talents were destined for wider audiences and over the years he has expanded his operations significantly and regionally. Today his product line includes bars, confections, drinking chocolate, and dessert sauces. As the company heads towards a 20th anniversary, it’s a perfect time to take a closer look at how far they have come and where they are headed next.
Background
Elbow’s culinary path took him from New Orleans to Kansas City, and from country club cook to pastry chef, to chocolatier. Five years after starting his business, he opened another eponymous shop in San Francisco.
Elbow’s chocolates almost look too good to eat. Architectural and design magazines, and individual artists, have inspired individual designs, such as white cocoa butter sprays that mimic Jackson Pollack’s paintings. Elbow and his staff also like to create new spins on classic confections such as a dusting of chile powder on individual ‘turtles.’
The company works with a local roaster, Messenger Coffee, to produce bars infused with their coffees which are sold alongside single-origin chocolate bars, truffles, chocolate-covered nuts, a variety of toffees, turtles, and pate de fruit. Christopher Elbow Chocolates also offers holiday and special chocolate collections plus drinking chocolates.
In 2018, the company moved most operations to a 15,000-square-foot building, with 5,000 square feet for crafting confections and other signature products. Now, there’s a much better workflow and temperature control. There’s a packaging room and a massive e-commerce area, too. Only bean-to-bar chocolates, drinking chocolates, and some bonbons are still made at the flagship Kansas City shop.
Chocolate Meets Cannabis
Elbow’s latest collaboration involves THC-infused chocolates, created with Kansas City, Missouri-based Clovr Cannabis. Available at many Missouri dispensaries, they are produced by a separate company in an entirely different facility due to laws that govern cannabis in the state. These confections deliver the same artistic flare as other Christopher Elbow Chocolates, and a mellow high. Missouri’s medical marijuana patients can access these THC confections in a wide variety of flavors, from Crème Brulé or pumpkin spice, to salted vanilla caramel.
We spoke with Christopher Elbow to learn how things have been going and where they are headed.
Describe the company’s growth since it opened, in 2003
We go through 25 tons of chocolate, each year. In 2021, we produced more than 2,700,000 bonbons in addition to all our other chocolate bars and confections. Approximately 40 percent of that volume sells in November and December for the Christmas holiday season. Purchases for Valentine's Day represent about 10 percent of annual sales.
You closed your ice cream shop during the pandemic. How has the pandemic affected your chocolate business?
Since the pandemic, online sales have increased, to nearly 50 percent. And products like ours are becoming more of an everyday or every-week indulgence. We still use the same recipe, and the same techniques, to craft our confections. We do have some new equipment that helps us increase our volume and a larger staff. We now employ about 38 people.
Tell us about your bean-to-bar chocolate offerings
My passion for wanting to create single-origin chocolates from bean to bar came from my first trip to a cacao farm in Madagascar, in 2012. Meeting the farmers, seeing how challenging it is to grow cacao, and how different the flavors could be from around the world, formed the basis of my inspiration for starting this project.
On a very basic level, we want to make a difference in the lives of the farmers, their workers, and their families by ensuring that we are paying above-market rates for the beans. We are even in the process of forming a non-profit foundation where we will be able to make more of an impact, directly, on the farmers who are supplying us with our cacao. We are beginning to use our bean to bar chocolate in our other confections and will continue to increase that over time.
Why did you want to make THC-infused chocolate?
I did some consulting with a company in Colorado and it’s really exciting to see this brand-new industry. I enjoy the development side of things too, while still making good-quality chocolates. I would also rather see cannabis used versus narcotics.
What trends are you seeing among American chocolate lovers?
More people are moving from milk chocolate to darker, more ‘adventurous’ chocolate. And products like ours are becoming more of an everyday-or every week-indulgence.
What do you love most about making chocolate?
Introducing people to fine craft chocolate and seeing the joy that it brings to so many people is the reward for doing what we do. I eat a lot of good, dark chocolate, too. I would rather not have chocolate than have bad chocolate. It’s the same with coffee and wine. It’s a way of life.