Frank Geukens: A Chocolate Production Expert

CHOCOLATES A LA CARTE is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year and it is appropriate that Frank Geukens be featured in this column because of his involvement with the company from almost beginning. It was Frank'scompany, Van der Meer, that Rena Pocrass subcontracted with to manufacture Chocolates a la Carte's first bear paw chocolate containers.

At the time, Frank had recently taken over the Van der Meer Chocolate with his wife, Peggy. The company was working out of a Dutch bakery in Artesia where Frank's father had worked for many years. Van der Meer was then mostly manufacturing molded chocolate alphabet letters that our traditionally given to Dutch children during the Christmas holidays.

Frank had for many years worked as an operations director for McDonald's restaurants in Southern California. When they took over Van der Meer, he continued to work for McDonald's while Peggy ran the business. Within a couple of years, however, the company's business grew to the point where he came aboard full-time.

The Geukens' at first had to learn about manufacturing molded chocolate products. The old owner stayed on to teach them, but they soon realized that he really didn't understand tempering and molding chocolate. They spent over a year exploring chocolate -reading everything they could on the subject and experimenting. As Frank says, "Unfortunately, it took a lot of time and grief to learn from our mistakes, but eventually we learned what to do. After all, chocolate is very temperamental stuff.

"The business expanded quickly with contracts from several other companies like Chocolate a la Carte. In less than five years, the Geukens had to move the company twice due to space constraints. Today, the company is housed in a 11,000 square foot plant in the city of Orange and manufactures over 5 million pieces of molded chocolate annually. Frank believes that they will need to move again soon.

The relationship with Chocolates a la Carte grew as both companies expanded. Besides the contract work that Van der Meer did for about 20 other companies,it was responsible for producing Chocolates a la Carte's standard line of products while Chocolates `a la Carte focused on developing new products and filing custom orders for customers. Frank's production knowledge came in handy when Chocolates a la Carte moved to its current manufacturing facility in Sylmar in 1992. He helped them with the planning, design and building of the tempering machines that are so critical in making hand-molded chocolate designs. I have found that for the type of products we produce, it is easier to fabricate our own equipment than to adapt equipment available on the market," says Frank.

There were talks of a merger between the two companies for years that finally came about on March 31, 1995. Both companies continue to operate in separate facilities, which proved beneficial after the 1994 Northridge Earthquake. While Chocolates a la Carte was repairing its earthquake damage,Van der Meer continued to fill customer orders.

Frank is excited about the future. "The growth potential of ourcombined company is endless as we discover new markets for our products,"he says. "Our relationship id perfect - Rena and her crew keep coming up with new ideas and products and its our job to figure out how to produce them while maintaining our high quality standards. "