Elaine Read and Matt Weyandt With Xocolatl

Intro: [00:00:04] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Atlanta Business Radio. Brought to you by On pay. Atlanta’s new standard in payroll. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:25] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Atlanta Business Radio, and this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor, Onpay. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on Atlanta Business Radio, we have Elaine Read and Matt Weyandt with Xocolatl. Welcome.

Elaine Read: [00:00:44] Hi Lee.

Matt Weyandt: [00:00:45] Thanks for having us.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:46] I am so excited to learn what you’re up to. I have had the chance to visit your store in Krog Street, so I’m a little bit familiar, but please share with the folks you know what you do and how you do it.

Elaine Read: [00:00:58] Yeah, well, first of all, I’m glad to to hear that you’ve been by our store. We opened our truffle factory and chocolate shop in the Krog Street Market is one of the first tenants in the market back in late 2014, and the company was born from a trip that Matt and I took along with our, at the time, newborn and toddler, down to Costa Rica. We had Matt and I had quit our jobs and decided that we wanted to unplug and go for a little adventure. So we moved to a tiny town in Costa Rica that we had backpacked through years before, when we were much younger than we were then. And when we were there, we discovered what’s called bean to bar chocolate. So a type of chocolate that’s made from the cacao that is actually growing in the the region that the chocolate producers were making their chocolate from, in a process similar to coffee roasting, where cacao beans are grown and harvested and put through a fermentation and drying process before they become ready to be made into chocolate. So that’s a really quick description of the bean to bar chocolate process. But Matt and I discovered that when we were living in Costa Rica, really enjoyed eating the the freshly made, wonderful dark chocolate there, and decided that we wanted to learn the process of making this style of chocolate and and bring it to Atlanta, which is what we did in 2014.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:26] And then when you came to when you came back here, or did you come back here or this was the first time you were here?

Matt Weyandt: [00:02:32] Yeah, we came back to Atlanta. Prior to that, neither Elaine nor I had experience in food. I mean, I worked in a burrito shop when I was in high school, but other than that, you know, we did not come from the food world or the chocolate world. So we kind of left our previous careers to start chocolatl chocolate.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:50] And then go ahead. I’m sorry. Go ahead.

Elaine Read: [00:02:53] I was just going to say Matt’s actually an Atlanta native and I moved down here for him, but we’d been living in Atlanta and in the in the Inman Park and Old Fourth Ward neighborhood, uh, before Krog Street Market was developed. And we knew when we were coming back to Atlanta that that would be a perfect place for us to launch this new business.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:13] And then when you launched, the business was there. Was it using the factory kind of as a drawing card to the business, or was it, uh, we’re a seller of chocolate.

Matt Weyandt: [00:03:25] Yeah. I mean, so you’ve seen the space. Our original space was very small. It’s, uh, 400ft² in, uh, in Krog Street Market, which is a food hall and, uh, downtown. And originally we made all the chocolate right behind the counter. So we. That was our chocolate factory. We called it a micro factory. Right.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:44] That’s when I was there pretty early on. It was several years ago. So that’s what I saw it as, as that you were a maker of chocolate, like in front of me kind of thing, right.

Matt Weyandt: [00:03:54] And yeah, the idea well, one, we didn’t have money to have another space, but the other piece of it was really, you know, we wanted to kind of, I mean, before we took this trip down to Costa Rica, I didn’t know where chocolate came from. I didn’t know it came from a tree. I didn’t know anything about the process. And I think that was pretty common. You know, in in America, we sort of, you know, think of a Hershey’s bar and just kind of comes out of a factory. And that’s sort of what most people know about chocolate. So we wanted to bring that chocolate making process, uh, to people and tell people about chocolate and that it’s a, um, you know, it’s an agricultural product, which means that there are different varieties of cacao in the same way that there’s different varieties of coffee or wine grapes. Um, and we really wanted to kind of have that educational component and, you know, bring that to the forefront and also smells really nice when you’re roasting cocoa beans kind of fills the whole market up with the smell of brownies.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:49] So yeah, I’ve been throughout the country, I’ve been to several chocolate, kind of like yours, like kind of a microbrewery for chocolate, where they have some education, where they explain, like, here’s the cacao, and here they break it apart and they show you all the different steps. And then at the end, you see the kind of production line, and then they sell you chocolate at the end. And are you finding that the consumer is hungry for that kind of an experience?

Elaine Read: [00:05:18] Yeah, I would, I would definitely say so. Um, when we, uh, only had the one location at Krog Street Market, we would do, um, tours and tastings in the market a couple a week. Um, and the space is so small that the tours really meant that we were just, you know, our guests were basically just looking at one wall and then turning and pivoting and looking at, uh, what was happening in a machine on a different wall. Um, but it was very, uh, I think it was a very popular, um, event that we had. And, uh, when we expanded our factory into Southwest Atlanta. So we now have a larger, uh, chocolate making factory in southwest Atlanta. Um, and we last year launched, um, a few tours and tastings where similar to what you just described. We start off by giving people a pretty good, you know, deep dive into cacao touching on the botany, um, on the, um, anthropological side of cacao and chocolate making, um, and the recent history and then, um, what’s happening in the craft chocolate industry now, um, with an emphasis on ethical and sustainable, transparent sourcing and using high quality ingredients. And then we’ll take our participants into the actual factory side, uh, where, um, participants will see and actually be able to sample chocolate, um, in different stages of being made. And then we finish the, um, the event with a guided tasting of, of different dark chocolates, really focusing on the origin specific flavor differences. As Matt mentioned before, cacao from different of different varieties and grown in different regions will have remarkably different flavors. Um, so letting people experience what chocolate from uh, uh, chocolate made from cacao from Tanzania tastes like and how that’s wildly different from Nicaraguan cacao. Um, we ran several of those tours and tastings last year, and we’re kind of in the finishing stages of, um, updating our program and being able to offer, uh, tastings in our factory on a year round basis.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:31] Now, um, is the customer becoming more educated in terms of a, you know, back in the day, there was, like you said, Hershey’s chocolate. That was the choice, you know, and then and then for the adventurous, there was special dark chocolate, right? Like there were there weren’t a lot of choices back in the day. Are you finding that that the consumer is more educated in searching out for these kind of higher percentage, darker chocolates?

Matt Weyandt: [00:07:59] Yeah, I think that’s definitely the case. I mean, I think a lot of people now are aware of, you know, we have a lot of people who come to us and say, oh, I know dark chocolate is good for you versus, you know, the sweeter chocolate and kind of chocolate is at 70% or more. Uh, so, you know, cacao, the cocoa and cacao, same thing. People sometimes get a little confused about it, but it’s, you know, uh, the same, uh, two words for basically the same thing. Um, cocoa actually has, uh, all of these, you know, good properties, uh, antioxidants, flavanols, things that are good for your, your heart and your circulation. Um, it’s really the sugar and milk fats and a lot of the other stuff that get added to chocolate that, um, you know, can, can not be great for you. So we have people who sort of, you know, are interested in that side of it. And then we have kind of the step, the next step where once people kind of get into the dark chocolate and then they start having the different origins and kind of start to realize that there are these different flavors. And it is like having like, you know, a good coffee from Ethiopia versus a good coffee from, uh, you know, Nicaragua. Same kind of things apply or wines. And so we do find people who, who kind of get into really into that side of the chocolate world.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:15] So you can nerd out, you can nerd out on the chocolate just like you could, like you said, wine or coffee. Yeah.

Matt Weyandt: [00:09:21] You can go down there’s there’s a pretty big rabbit hole. You can go down. I mean, there’s a lot of, you know, we go into this a little bit in our tours and tasting, you know, there’s really genetic work that has just been done in the last 20 years on cacao and the different and, you know, traditionally there were sort of three different varieties, three different families of, of of cocoa is really, um, expanded. The knowledge is really expanded over the last couple of, of years. And now there’s been 16, 17 different kind of genetic varieties identified. And you can really go down a deep rabbit hole on all of that.

Elaine Read: [00:09:54] I think also going back to your your previous question, um, you know, Atlanta, I think, established itself as a food centric city quite a while ago. Um, and I think that that that nature of Atlanta also helps to, um, make the make the connections between, uh, chocolate, fine chocolate, um, and the, the different nuances and flavor, um, of different cacao’s. Um, so people who are in Atlanta who, you know, may be very well educated on, uh, different types of coffee varietals, or as Matt said, uh, wine grape varietals may not have known that the same concepts exist in cocoa, but then once learning that from either doing a tasting at our shop or tours at our factory, those pieces click, you know, and people get it pretty quickly.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:48] Now, how difficult is it to source a kind of the right being, from the right region, from the right people?

Matt Weyandt: [00:10:56] Yeah, I mean, that was something that was really important to us from the beginning. Um, one, because we wanted to have fine flavored cocoa. So, you know, there’s, there are different grades of cocoa in the same way. Again, the same way that there’s different grades of coffee beans or, or, uh, you know, other agricultural products. And, uh, so, you know, we wanted flavor was really important to us, but we also wanted to source directly from farmers and farmer cooperatives, because another piece that drew us to chocolate was we started as we learned more about chocolate and kind of the history of chocolate and chocolate production and everything. The a lot of the issues around equity, uh, farmer pay, uh, farmer equity, environmental issues, uh, so many of these things that we had kind of cared about in the previous work that we had done, uh, we connected back with chocolate. And so, um, 65% or so of the cocoa and all of the cocoa in the world comes out of West Africa, Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana. It’s really dominated by industrial chocolate. Uh, and farmers there are typically making dollars on the day for, uh, the cocoa that they produce. Um, it’s oftentimes not always the case, but it’s oftentimes not considered great quality, uh, cocoa either.

Matt Weyandt: [00:12:17] And we really wanted to buy directly from farmers or farmer co-ops where we were. We knew how much the farmers were getting paid. We’re paying above fair trade pricing for all of the beans, uh, that we, we get. And, um, you know, that was also an important piece of it. So we’ve spent, you know, a lot of time. We’re a very small, uh, chocolate company, and we work with other small craft chocolate companies to, uh, source beans together. We can’t buy a container load on our own. But if we get together with a couple other chocolate makers, we can, uh, buy a container load, bring a bean, bring the beans in, and then split them up once they’re here. And we’ve traveled down to Peru, uh, and Nicaragua and other countries and, uh, met with the farmers and the, um, farmer co-ops where they’re, uh, working together as a collective to ferment and dry their beans and arrange those, uh, you know, purchases sampled the beans while we’re down there. So that’s kind of been a big focus for us since day one.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:19] Now, is your a customer a typically kind of an end user like me going in to buying a bar, or do you sell to restaurants and you sell to like, people who make other things that want to use a kind of a better quality chocolate?

Elaine Read: [00:13:33] All of the above. When we started, uh, our, our end customer was our retail customer. Um, within I think about a year or so, we started making connections with other local Atlanta businesses, primarily in the food and beverage space, also some retail, um, who were interested in using our chocolate as a higher quality, you know, alternative to what they can get from their regular suppliers. Um, and then also retail stores that we’re looking for, locally made fine chocolate. Um, but that was a very small part of our business. Um, we had a website and we were very passively taking the, the couple of orders that would come in, um, from, uh, from our online customers. And then the pandemic hit. That really changed everything we saw. Um, our online, our e-commerce business, uh, boomed, actually. And a lot of that was our retail customers, uh, transitioning over to purchasing online. But it was also getting in front of, I think, other online customers from other parts of the country who would have never, you know, had the opportunity to to see us in Atlanta. And then our, um, wholesale business, uh, grew pretty significantly during the pandemic, too, which is actually a surprise to us. We didn’t anticipate that that was going to happen.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:51] Now, are your offerings is bars or is it, um, like drinking chocolate or, um, cooking chocolate, like, is it, uh, a, you know, a variety of all in every way you can use chocolate now.

Matt Weyandt: [00:15:05] Yeah. So, you know, we our chocolate bars, like you mentioned, drinking chocolate. We make a chocolate hazelnut spread, some trail mixes, even some cacao teas, along with some other products. Those are all, um, you know, we sell online as well as, uh, to, uh, you know, specialty grocery stores, coffee shops. We’re in, uh, Whole Foods in the southeast region, um, in their specialty food section. And, and then for restaurants and chefs, we sell, uh, bulk chocolate, uh, that’s used in, um, you know, bakeries, ice cream shops, uh, places like that that are, are buying, um, that’s typically where the, where the buying like the bulk chocolate that we make.

Elaine Read: [00:15:49] But our bread and butter is our, our chocolate bars. So that was how we started. Um, and our chocolate bars make up the, uh, definitely the majority of, um, the chocolate that we produce. We very recently launched a confections line. Um, so the micro factory in Krog, our original micro factory, where we used to produce all of our chocolate, uh, we have converted into our truffle and bonbon factory. So now we have a confections team that’s taking chocolate that we’re making over in our larger factory in southwest Atlanta, taking that chocolate, turning them into ganaches and, uh, chocolate coatings for bonbons and dragées and other fun confections that we’ve just started releasing over the last couple of months.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:34] And then, uh, recently you were awarded the Gusto impact, uh, or the Gusto Impact Award. Can you talk a little bit about how that came about?

Matt Weyandt: [00:16:44] Sure. Um, gusto. It was doing a impact award, which was basically, uh, recognizing small businesses who have an impact in their community and the world at large. Uh, um, in three different, uh, cities, Atlanta was one of the cities and, uh, they just announced, um, a week or so ago that we were the winner. And I think, um, you know. From the beginning. I kind of mentioned this, touched on this a little bit, but the, uh, sort of some of the economic justice issues around, uh, farmers, uh, the work that they do, some of the environmental issues, those those issues have always been important to us. And so we’ve had a big focus on that. We last year became a certified carbon neutral company, which means that we did a complete accounting of all of the, uh, CO2 emissions that come from making our chocolate that goes all the way back from the farmers all the way through, including things like, uh, the paper that we use for our wrappers and, um, and basically everything we use in our office and factory. And, uh, then we’ve worked on a plan to reduce that footprint, and we, uh, and then are also offsetting, uh, the part of the, um, uh, CO2 emissions that we’re not able to totally reduce.

Matt Weyandt: [00:18:04] And we do things like power our factory and our shop with renewable energy and things like that. So I think that was a component of it. And then, uh, we’ve also done a lot of work in Atlanta area. We wanted to be, you know, we wanted the business to kind of, uh, be a way for us to engage with the community here. And so we’ve done things like, um, you know, support the Atlanta Community Food Bank, a dollar of every Easter bunny sale that we do every year we donate to the community food bank. Uh, we’ve worked with a bunch of other organizations. We’ve done tours for Atlanta Public School kids to show them the chocolate factory and the whole process and, uh, coordinated with teachers on kind of academic curriculum around that. So, um, we’ve tried to be engaged, and I think that’s kind of, uh, you know, what gusto was looking for, um, when they were, um, announcing these impact awards.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:57] And.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:57] Then the award was some money also, right?

Elaine Read: [00:19:01] Yeah. So, um, there were three components of the award. Uh, one was a $10,000 cash. Um, the other is a year of of free service from gusto. Um, and the third part was $50,000, um, in towards the marketing campaign that gusto is producing, um, on our behalf, which is, which is really actually quite wonderful because as a small husband and wife team, this, this business feels very much like, um, like our family. We’re we’re small, you know, we don’t know how to do everything, but we try and so, um, to and neither Matt nor I came from, uh, marketing backgrounds. So to be able to have, um, a professional team that knows what they’re doing, um, to, to help us with marketing, um, was a great part of the award.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:56] So, um, any advice for other entrepreneurs when it comes to deciding to go for some of these awards, like because that usually involves some work on your part on the front end in order just to apply. Like any advice for an entrepreneur of pursuing an award like the Gusto Impact Award.

Matt Weyandt: [00:20:18] Well, I think, you know, looking for things that fit with you and your company is kind of the first, you know, piece of it. And being, you know, um, you know, genuine and like, who you are. And, you know, we’ve tried to really build the company to our values and to our ideals. And, you know, I think that’s true for a lot of small business owners. Um, I mean, you know, creating a business, being a small business owner is, is an act of creation, and it’s going to sort of represent you. And so I think looking for, um, the types of awards that fit with your personality and the personality you’ve built for your company is kind of really the first and probably most important step.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:57] So if somebody wants to learn more, have a more substantive conversation with you or somebody on the team, or get a hold of some of the chocolate, what are the coordinates, website or addresses of where you’re located?

Elaine Read: [00:21:10] Yeah. So probably the easiest place to find, um, different ways of contacting us would be to go to our website which is Chocolatl chocolate com and that is spelled x o c o l a t l. Then the word chocolate.com. And from there you can contact us by phone or email, depending on what you might be looking for and whether you are looking to establish, um, a wholesale partnership with us, or want to learn more about our tours and tastings, or have questions on ingredients, anything like that. Hopefully the website, um, should give good give folks a good map to, um, what phone number, what email address they can call.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:50] Well, thank.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:51] You both so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Elaine Read: [00:21:55] Thank you lady. Thank you for having us.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:57] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Atlanta Business Radio.