How Nicole Patel Engineered Her Way to Success at Delysia Chocolatier
What does engineering have to do with chocolate? For Nicole Patel, her engineering background has proven pivotal in the success of Delysia Chocolatier, in Austin, Texas.
An Unlikely Start
Nicole Patel of Delysia Chocolatier
Before she became a ten-time Grand Master Chocolatier in the Americas, Patel got a masters in engineering and worked as a director of quality for a small engineering firm. But everything changed when her husband, Rahul, came home from the office one day and asked what he should do about holiday gifts for his team. Patel, who was eight months pregnant with their oldest at the time, had been watching tons of baking and cooking shows and decided to give it a try.
Patel had seen a recipe for hand rolled truffles and thought “I could do that.” She decided to make three different flavors–hazelnut, peanut butter, and mint chocolate chip— but they didn’t work. “So I started just tinkering with the ingredients and coming up with a version of ganache that I really preferred. It played to my engineering mindset; it became a challenge. I sent very ugly, hand rolled truffles into the office with him in the ugliest packaging possible,” she explained, “Our son was born four days later, we didn’t think much of it.”
Ugly or not, the truffles were a hit. People requested they bring them to every party. Patel said, “Chocolate just became a stress outlet for my engineering career and a way to just be creative in the kitchen.”
Her engineering background has proven extremely useful for her chocolate work. “I probably use more of my engineering career now than I did when I was actually in corporate America. My focus was on process efficiency and how to produce things, whether it’s a widget or a chocolate, as efficiently as possible with as high of quality as possible,” she said.
It’s helped her fine tune her chocolates since everything is handmade at Delysia. Engineering also helped her problem-solve, whether finding a new vendor or figuring out why a recipe didn’t work out.
Delicious in Latin
Nicole Patel making chocolate
Eventually Patel was making so much chocolate at home, there was no way for the household to eat all of her creations. “We have this line item in our budget now that is chocolate and people love it. Maybe you should consider expanding past that,” she recalled her husband saying. Initially they thought they’d make party favors for weddings and other events. That was almost 15 years ago.
Patel opened Delysia with her husband in 2008, amidst the financial crisis when banks were not loaning money. Because of their engineering careers, they were able to entirely finance the business themselves. Patel explained, “We started small, but we were able to invest in ourselves and then see the fruition from that.” Everyone in the family helps out, she says, including her children. Her parents help staff the shop and her brother designed the branding.
The shop’s name, Delysia Chocolatier, is a “spin on the [word] delicious in Latin and a unique woman’s Southern name.” When her brother asked about branding, she told him that she wanted a European feel to the shop. He recommended adding a little Southern feel to it, especially since they were in Texas. Thus, Delysia Chocolatier was born.
Local winemakers asked Patel to make truffles to pair with their wines. She came back with chocolate truffles that not only paired with wine, but were made with their wines, which were a hit. “That’s really what launched us,” Patel said, “From there, it was just grassroots, right word of mouth, which is the best compliment I could ever ask for.” She said they were the first in Texas to infuse wine into chocolates. Delysia partners with Becker Vineyard for their wine collection chocolate truffles.
Sugar and Spice, Everything Nice
Taste of the South chocolates
Prior to founding Delysia, Patel researched the market to find the holes in the chocolate market. Three trends came up: dietary restrictions, high quality products, and innovation. Eighty-five percent of their products are gluten free and kosher. She offers entire lines of vegan chocolates. Most importantly, she strives to make treats that everyone can enjoy without sacrificing quality or integrity. Three years or so after opening the business, Patel switched to sustainably and ethically sourced cacao without raising prices.
As for innovation, Patel says, “We just love pushing the culinary boundaries of what you traditionally see in chocolate.” She makes many savory truffles like chicken fried steak truffles, pepperoni mushroom pizza truffles, and collard greens and bacon chocolate truffles, just to name a few. “I love to take a meal and emulate that in chocolate,” she explained, “It’s an appetizer, entree, drinks, and dessert.”
For instance in Delysia’s Taste of the South collection chocolate truffles, there’s a Frito pie chocolate truffle that has onions, chives, a touch of ghost pepper, and a Frito chip in the middle. She explains that it tastes like Frito pie that ends with the taste of chocolate.
Delysia Chocolatier Cricket Dark Chocolate Bark
The most unusual ingredient she’s used is likely crickets. Patel said that several years ago, she was invited to the Atlanta Food and Wine Festival with an innovative tasting experience. The Food and Drug Association had just approved the first farm of crickets for human consumption that happened to be in Austin. So Patel worked with the farm to combine chocolate and crickets into a chocolate bar, grinding up the crickets and adding pumpkin seeds, cranberries, and more. “You don’t know what crunchy thing you’re biting into,” she said.
At the Aspen Food and Wine Festival, Andrew Zimmern told Patel that their cricket chocolate bark was a great entry point for people interested in trying crickets.
Of course, Delysia also carries more traditional flavors like dark chocolate, peanut butter, and lavender chocolate. The company was the first to handcraft truffles using ruby chocolate. There are many collections of different flavors including their tea chocolate truffle collection to berry collection chocolate truffles as well as a variety of alcohol infused chocolates.
Delysia enjoys partnering with different producers. For instance, after Patel made a Bloody Mary truffle for the Austin Food and Wine Festival, she got the attention of the marketing director at Tito’s Handmade Vodka. They reached out to Patel about featuring Delysia in their Makers Program that highlighted smaller hand craft businesses. Delysia ended up making three of Tito’s most popular cocktail recipes into truffles: the Texas Sipper, Red Punch, and of course the Bloody Mary.
Texas Hill Country chocolates from Delysia Chocolatier
Patel also sources many ingredients locally like lavender from Texas Hill Country, wines from nearby vineyards, or locally grown pecans. And crickets.
Delysia’s most popular chocolate collection is the signature collection chocolate truffles with traditional flavors including coffee, hazelnut, caramel, peanut butter, and cinnamon. Next is salted collection chocolate truffles featuring smoky barbecue salt from Salt Lick BBQ, sea salt in Portugal, and pink Himalayan salt. The collection includes salted caramel chocolate truffles, sea salt chocolate truffles, smoked salted caramel chocolate truffles.
The third is the Texas Hill Country Collection with sweet, salty and smoky flavors from all over Texas. The truffles include Garrison Brothers Distillery bourbon, local pecans, smoked salted caramel and chocolate; honey and chipotle truffles, and Mexican mole truffles.
A Tasting Room for Customer Research
Delysia offers a variety of tastings, both in person and virtual, which appeal to Patel’s engineering background. “I love data, I love getting customer feedback. I love listening to people think in a very uninhibited environment sitting there with friends enjoying chocolate. They may say, ‘Well, I love how the cinnamon appears in this flavor, or I wish it had a little bit more salt,’” she said. Delysia’s products have evolved thanks to these tasting sessions.
Patel also finds these sessions great to help people learn how to taste chocolate. “Most people know how to taste wine, [even] if they don’t remember the steps, they know that there is a process to doing that. They don’t think about that when they think about chocolates,” she said.
In addition to education and feedback, these tasting sessions, virtual or in-person, build camaraderie with clients. They do both private and public tasting events and see the same customers coming back over and over again.
Whether it’s a traditional flavor or one of Patel’s innovations, Patel concludes: “Delysia Chocolatier is all about the experience,” Patel said. And a touch of engineering genius.