Eve's Blog (13)

It took me a whole week to find the time to get to this blog — and I'm still waiting for Tom to email me the pictures (he's in Indonesia again) — but our tour of Tcho last week was so special that I want to share it.



John Kehoe is Tcho's sourcing director. He and Tom met about 5 years at a Fair Trade conference, and in the year and a half that he's been with Tcho, we've… Continue

The sign painter was still working on the windows at 8 last night. I guess he didn't go to the fireworks either. Tom and I were making lists.

The soft opening date is now Wednesday. The city signed off Thursday afternoon, thank goodness. We started moving the packaging and shipping materials in Friday, the day the storage shelves were installed. More stock will be moved and organized today and tomorrow.



We were lucky with… Continue

We're still hoping for a soft opening on July 6 - that's very soon! And the invitations for the Grand Opening, July 11, are going out Friday. No turning back now.

Here's what's been going on lately.

Here's Frank Zika installing the door today:

And here's some of the furniture stacked up in the shop - and out of our house at last!

And I am here endlessly typing up little signs.



The press release seems to be working - and so does Twitter.



So far so… Continue

slochocolate

I'm finding lots of interesting twitter to follow, but what's the trick to getting followers?

This press release took me all day to write, but in the late afternoon it went out to over 60 local media outlets. I got two responses right off: an automated response from a reporter who's in Morocco for a month (sounds nice!) and a call from another who wondered if we might hire her nephew. I think we'll get some buzz out of it though.



Press release:

June 16, 2009

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE



Contacts: Tom… Continue

Lately I've been spending a good portion of my time accumulating an eclectic assortment of chocolate things for the shop. Most of the stock is here now, and I've stopped looking for more for the time being.

Yesterday I ordered some postcards of old chocolate ads, framed three gorgeous chocolate trading cards

and an ad from a 1943 Life Magazine… Continue

Frank brought the new door over today so we could see it in place and choose between several inserts. He does amazing work!

We chose this pattern but in a light azure blue. This is California, after all.

While he packed up, I took a picture of the interior paint. One wall is a rich (what else?) chocolate brown.…

Continue

Tom and I packed our chocolate in our old station wagon and drove up to Berkeley this weekend to be vendors, along with Malena and Clive of The Xocolate Bar (such wonderful chocolate art!!), the folks from Divine Chocolate, and Ethan Ash of The Tea Room, at the North Berkeley Chocolate and Chalk Festival. There were apparently some exciting chocolate events going on somewhere, and, I imagine, lots of chocolate in chalk, but we missed almost all that… Continue

This is a picture of Karin Sander's "Siegfried" from the German book, Kunst in Scholade (Chocolate Art). Today's mail brought a fine new copy for the store in addition to a few more treasures:

The hot chocolate cup is my favorite. It's Austrian, made by Higgins and Seiter, translucent china with delicate roses and gold trim, and a wonderfully eccentric spiraling handle.



I also like the… Continue

Here's the shop as it looks today. Its last incarnation was as part of a furniture store that took up much of the block. I've done drawings for what the front will look like - a new glass door and a radically different paint job - but it won't be done for another few weeks.

To get our plans okayed by the health department we're adding an ADA-compliant bathroom, a three bay sink and a mop sink, replacing the old carpet with linoleum… Continue

Look - yesterday's haul led me here!

The day the health department showed up at our little chocolate factory to ask if it was really true that we were storing chocolate off-site was right in the middle of the period our employees were making each other cry.



For the last four years, Sweet Earth Organic Chocolates has been situated on the second floor of my sister-in-law Joanne Currie's bustling restaurant and bakery, Splash Cafe,… Continue