Chocolates à la Carte

Fresh off its 20th anniversary, Chocolates à la Carte looks ahead to 2007 with a new line of pastries, a booming retail business and, of course, more extraordinary chocolate designs.

When marketing manager Diane Rudman reflects on the countless chocolate designs that Chocolates à la Carte has created since joining the company back in 2003, one specifically comes to mind.

It all started when Procter and Gamble approached Chocolates à la Carte with a bar of Irish Spring soap. They wanted a complete replica of the soap in chocolate, right down to the ounce. Though only 12 bars needed to be made, a custom mould was manufactured. With white chocolate dyed green, Chocolates à la Carte created Irish Spring’s token green and white swirls, and a custom jig imprinted Irish Spring’s trademark impression for the finishing touch.

“Procter and Gamble said the 12 executives didn’t know if the bar was chocolate or the real thing,” Rudman recalls. “It looked exactly like a soap bar!”

For Valencia, Calif.-based Chocolates à la Carte, imagination poses the only limits for what they can bring to life in chocolate.

And what began as a small, cottage industry founded by Rena Pocrass has evolved into an established name in the hospitality sector, as well as a steadily growing force in retail.

A tray of dark chocolate construction hats with a dough label reading “Hope” awaits packaging. Chocolates à la Carte’s customization through dough labeling and silk screening has made it a popular choice for amenities.

Today, Chocolates à la Carte boasts an ultramodern manufacturing facility, complete with an in-house moulding operation, graphics department and a retail shop. With a client base of 5,000 and nearly 200 employees (excluding as many as 150 seasonal workers), it’s hard to imagine how a company with clients that range from five-star hotels to professional football teams evolved from modest retail roots.

Rena’s fascination with chocolate began in Encino, Calif., where she first began working with compound coatings and moulded chocolates in her retail store, Sweet Fantasies.

“I was intrigued with the fluidity of the chocolate and the fact that I could make a variety of design moulds,” Rena recalls. “I loved that the chocolate could take on whatever shape I poured it into.”

But even when her lease expired and the business closed, Rena kept creating chocolate designs as special favors for friends and former clients from her home. It was then that she re-focused her target audience from individual parties to larger affairs for major hospitality institutions that need unique chocolate desserts for special events.

“I decided that chocolate was a great foundation to present other desserts,” Rena says. So in 1986 Rena established Chocolates à la Carte, and it didn’t take long for it to get noticed. As business grew, husband Rick left his position at an executive search firm to join Rena and help run the business.

The husband-wife team enlisted Van Der Meer, a company ran by Frank and Peggy Geukens, as a contract manufacturer. Only one year later Chocolates à la Carte became Van Der Meer’s largest customer.

The two companies worked together to create decorative, one-of-a-kind textured chocolate boxes, iridescent scoops, multi-colored striped cups and other confections that chefs at major hotels, cruise lines, country clubs and catering companies could fill with ice cream, fruit, mousse or whatever they’d like to make the dessert their own.

“The chefs really want products that look like they were made by them, so we’re almost an extension of their kitchen,” Rena says. “And the people here are empowered to make the designs. The neat thing about this business is that it’s a think tank in chocolate.”

Chocolates à la Carte and Van Der Meer went about business as if they were one, but it was a natural disaster that really brought the two together. The 1994 earthquake made each realize their dependence on one another, in 1995 they merged under the Chocolates à la Carte name, with Frank coming on as the company’s executive vice president and head of operations.

But the true culmination of that merger happened in 2000 when Chocolates à la Carte moved both companies under one roof with the purchase of the 110,000-sq.-ft. manufacturing plant that it still occupies today.

Another disaster, however, almost dealt the surging enterprise a crippling blow. After September 11, 2001, the hospitality industry experienced a significant downturn, and Chocolates à la Carte felt the impact.

“We ended up in a whirlwind of financial hurt,” Rick says. “And our challenge was how to overcome that.”

After only having recently purchased the facility, along with new equipment, the company’s bank would not renew Chocolates à la Carte’s line of credit. But Rena and Rick’s sons, Michael and Douglas, helped come up with creative solutions to the dilemma.

“Michael came up with a solution that everybody took a little bit of a hit rather than impacting families, and I think people really respected him for it,” Rena says.

For instance, employees worked seven and a half hour days instead of eight so that larger groups of workers would not have to be laid of for weeks at a time.

Rick says that the company’s exploration into retail helped rejuvenate sales. Chocolates à la Carte established a successful confectionery line featuring truffles, dragees, square confections and brandy discs. Today, the company makes 26 different truffle flavors and boasts a 14-piece French Valrhona bon-bon line.

In fact, Rick notes that by the end of June 2007, retail and hospitality will each account for half the company’s sales.

With a successful 20 years behind them, the company sees 2007 as the beginning of a new chapter, particularly with the growth of its retail sector and the introduction of a pastry line.

Chocolates à la Carte’s retail customer base includes supermarket chains, club stores, discount stores and private label. And though retail and hospitality product lines do often overlap, marketing manager Diane Rudman notes that dark chocolate, the preferred choice on the hospitality end, has yet to explode onto the retail side.

“For retail, milk chocolate is still recognized more as the favorite flavor,” Rudman says.

The company’s retail division, most famous for its “chocolate in chocolate” products like chocolate dinosaur eggs with baby dinos inside, recently launched moulded sugar hearts.

The hearts, which debuted at the Fancy Food Show in San Francisco last January, will be released under the Signature Chocolates by Rena brand.

To make the hearts, workers create a double heart mould in Chocolates à la Carte’s in-house moulding operation. To date, the company’s expansive mould collection tops 3,000. Workers then fill the heart moulds with a blend of fine European gourmet chocolates, after which they refrigerate to set.

After hardening, the chocolate is popped out of the moulds and hand-piped with white chocolate that is dyed red. A sprinkling of vibrant red sugar immediately follows to help hold the freshly piped chocolate in place.

After running through the cooling tunnel, the left side of the hearts receives a drizzling of white chocolate. One last run down the cooling tunnel dries the chocolate and sends the hearts into their final cellophane and ribbon packaging.

Though designed for the retail line, Rick says the gourmet sugar hearts can be used seasonally for the company’s hospitality business.

Additionally, Chocolates à la Carte’s hospitality side found a successful product line that, ironically enough, was inspired by its greatest competition: cake.

“We’ve really become strong in supplying finishing touches to go along with desserts,” Rick says. “It’s one of the things that, for us, is a natural reaction to our competition. You can put them on a cake, and it still keeps a business relationship going.”

Finishing touches, such as fans and curls, allow chefs to easily accent an otherwise ordinary dessert, but the added pizzazz comes with another benefit that just about anyone can appreciate.

“Chefs can up-charge a dessert one or two dollars just by putting a finishing touch on ice cream or cheesecake,” Rudman notes. “We’re all about helping our customers get more money for what they can offer.”

Despite its size, the company employs as much handlabor as possible, especially on the hospitality side.

“The chefs want to put it on the table like it’s their own,” Rena says. “If everything is totally automated, you’re tied to a certain limit on what you can produce. It makes us a great resource when companies want to try out something new.”

But with retail’s strong growth, the company has explored more automotive options.

“We constantly look for new manufacturing methods,” says Frank Geukens, executive vice president and head of operations. “Our customers demand new and innovative items. This may mean that conventional equipment may not be available to meet our needs. We either purchase existing equipment, alter the equipment to produce a desired affect or have it built.”

Within the past few years the company has invested in two Knobel one-shot depositors and cooling tunnels, a Woody stringer, and additional Nielsen auto tempering units. This year, Geukens intends to purchase two 10,000 lb. melters.

In addition to Chocolates à la Carte’s expanding retail endeavors, a new pastry line developed by Corporate Executive Chef Stanton Ho offers more excitement for the company.

Ho, who came to Chocolates à la Carte in 2005, is an internationally known pastry chef and chocolatier from Honolulu who has developed some of the company’s most flavorsome truffle combinations, including Ginger and Praline, Sicilian Pistachio and Mint and Spiced Pineapple.

“All the different flavors are specific and distinguished from one another,” Ho notes. “When all these combinations come into play, you have to use your experience to know how the flavors will taste like. That’s where the years of experience really pay off.”

Ho has a long history with Rena and Rick dating back to 1987 when he was the executive pastry chef at the Las Vegas Hilton and was one of Chocolates à la Carte’s largest customers. His many accomplishments include being named one of America’s top ten pastry chefs in 1994 and 1995 and Pastry Chef of the Millennium in 2000. With Chocolates à la Carte, Ho creates distinct new products and assists in managing their production.

His newest pastry line project, Pastries à la Carte, features eight finished desserts. The introductory varieties include French Apple Tart with Cinnamon Streusel and Passion and Pineapple Upside Down Cake. The pastries are produced on-site and frozen before being shipped.

Though having only been with the company a short time, Ho appreciates working with a team of people who can create ideas and work together to make them a reality through chocolate.

“Whatever I’ve done, from the smallest to the biggest, has been an accomplishment,” Ho says. “Everybody here has their purpose. Everybody contributes to the cause of making this company a success.”

Another key contributor to Chocolates à la Carte’s success is Kyle Swick, who heads the business development department. Swick, who has worked for the company for 14 years in positions ranging from production manager to inside sales specialist, says his job involves more than the basic customer service duties.

“Some of the executive chefs we work with don’t have pastry chefs,” Swick says. “So they come to us and ask for our suggestions on what we would do with a dessert and how we’d design a plate.”

With his production experience, plus an art background, Swick says he doesn’t hesitate giving advice and brainstorming with chefs for ideas, even if Chocolates à la Carte doesn’t always get recognition from those who actually taste the dessert.

“We love to make the hotels look like heroes,” Swick says. “We get the personal recognition from the call back saying that we made the event so special.”

And ironically enough, the backstage attitude that Chocolates à la Carte has adopted has brought them respect and plenty of industry recognition. Its flexibility to create custom products and fearless approach to stretching the limits of what chocolate can bring to life, whether be it a gold chocolate globe for an awards show or a soap bar, has made Chocolates à la Carte a godsend for some of the
world’s most esteemed chefs.

And considering the company’s roots as a modest, homebased business, that’s saying a lot.

“When I started, there were times when I would get overwhelmed and Rick would say, ‘How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time,’” Rena recalls. “This place makes an elephant look small! This business is like a child to me, and I’ve watched it grow. It’s all really amazing.”