Roya Javaherchi's Dateolate Combines Dates and Chocolate

While Roya Javaherchi always had a fondness for chocolate, her drive to create a chocolate confection was also bound by a desire to make it a healthier option. The result is Dateolate, a unique combination of chocolate and dates.

Why Dates, Why Healthy Chocolate?

“I grew up in an environment where we always had dates at our home as a sweetener and snack,” Javaherchi says. “Because per doctor recommendation, when my mom’s sugar level decreases, she—like every other diabetic person—needs something really sweet. Dates have low glycemic index, so they help you get back your energy and satisfy your sweet craving, but they don’t spike the sugar level in your blood.”

Dark chocolate, which Javaherchi has always loved, was available at her home too, and her passion for it seeped into her studies. “When I finished high school, I decided to go and learn about food,” she says. “I studied food science at university, but because I was a chocolate lover, I remember I took all the lessons regarding the chocolate industry.”

A Dream on Hold

When Javaherchi originally decided she wanted to create Dateolate, she was living in Iran with her family, but unfortunately, fate stepped in, she lost her father, and plans were postponed. “Then in 2013, I immigrated to the United States; but when you move to a new culture, you can’t just start a business right away,” she continues. Javaherchi began working and studying and then got her Master's degree in accounting and business. After six years, step-by-step, she quit her job and devoted herself to Dateolate full time, at which point knowing about numbers came in very handy as an entrepreneur.

What is Dateolate?

Dateolate confections photo courtesy of Dateolate

So what is Dateolate? It’s handcrafted date-sweetened chocolates made up of 90% date paste and a 10% dark chocolate coating. At only 40 calories a piece, these products are full of antioxidants, minerals, and vitamins. They’re ideal for anyone seeking to satisfy a sweet tooth sans the sugar rush, and creating the product with ingredients that support that mission to took time and research. “When I started marketing and positioning Dateolate, I told the people who were helping me to do thorough research because I didn’t want to claim something that’s not true,” Javaherchi explains—and so they did. In fact, their market research confirmed that Dateolate is the first company in the U.S. that infuses date paste into chocolate, she adds. “There may be pieces of dates dipped in chocolate in the marketplace, like a strawberry-dipped chocolate, but we were the first for this.”

Finding the Right Chocolate

Javaherchi wanted to make products enticing for American palate, which tends to be partial to the sweetness of refined sugar. “When we researched the American palate, they really love caramel and cherry in the chocolate industry, so at first I was concerned about how consumers would react to dates and chocolates because it’s totally new,” Javaherchi admits. “The natural sugar of dates, which is fructose, is not damaging to the brain and it doesn’t give you a sugar rush. However, we are using a dark chocolate of 72%, which has a little bit of added sugar on the shell, but not inside the filling.” So while the filing of Dateolate has zero added or refined sugar, the dark chocolate offers a slight amount but one that’s way less than milk chocolate. “At the beginning when we started we tested milk chocolate, but the challenge is that milk chocolate by itself has a high amount of added sugar,” Javaherchi says. “We don't want to use that because we want to stay focused on the dark chocolate and the health part of Dateolate—that’s why we eliminated milk chocolate from the production line.” As for the dates, the company uses California Medjool ground dates, no additives, and no preservatives. They also use natural and even raw nuts, including pistachio, cashew, and walnut..

Made With Care

Javaherchi inspecting molds — Javaherchi inspecting the molds photo courtesy of Dateolate

When it comes to production, the process is very detailed and demanding. “Because Dateolate is the kind of product that wants to keep the quality, the process is a little bit time-consuming, but we are working to make it completely automated,” Javaherchi explains. “The process of making chocolate is completely automated, but the process of filling it in is a little bit of a bottleneck in the business because we don’t want to sacrifice the quality over the quantity. If everything got automated we might need to use a preservative for the filling, but we don’t want to do that, so my biggest challenge is to keep the quality and try to make things automated.”
What about the name? It actually came from the well-known marketing guru Al Ries (who sadly passed away in October 2022). “He was the father of positioning and branding in the U.S., and that was my honor to work with him,” Javaherchi says. “Honestly, I was lucky. I met him, he tested my product, and he gave that name to me. He said, ‘that’s a combination of dates and chocolate, so the best name is the Dateolate.’”

Javaherchi with Dateolate gift box — Javaherchi with gift box photo courtesy of Dateolate

The Future for Dateolate

In terms of what’s next on the horizon for the company and Javaherchi, she’s working hard to expand the product line and increase production, to fulfill more orders. Javaherchi will also continue to support the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, an organization she got involved with because she believes hope is the most important asset in people’s lives. “Although I lost my father because of heart attack, I was just 20 years old, and at the time, I lost my hope completely,” she reveals. “For two years I was living in the dark, honestly, and I couldn't get back to normal. It was step-by-step, so I decided to join this organization by sometimes sending them a little amount of our sales.” Thankfully these days Javaherchi has much to be hopeful about, including the future prospects of Dateolate.