Chocolate Therapy co-founders Pam and David Griffin join Cheddar news to discuss the story behind their small business, how they've been resilient throughout the pandemic by offering virtual chocolate tastings, and give advice to other small-business owners out there.

Between Bells

How 'Chocolate Therapy' Owners Remain Resilient Throughout the Pandemic

Welcome back to Between Bells. This segment is brought to you by chase for business shining a spotlight on small business resiliency throughout May. It's no secret that small businesses had to remain resilient throughout the pandemic in order to survive. Our next guest have what it takes to thrive as business owners. Chocolate Therapy creates handmade, locally produced chocolates for its customers nationwide. Joining us. Now to discuss is pam and David Griffin, co founders of Chocolate Therapy. Guys welcome to the show, I love chocolate. We all do. We're so excited to have you on David. Let me start with you. What's the story behind your business? What does chocolate therapy actually offer? What does it mean? Well, what doctor therapy does is we have a wonderful, wonderful product, uh unique flavor profiles and all natural ingredients. Mm And I decided to get into the chocolate business thinking that we could in fact uh put our own spin on it. Okay. And come up with creative profiles and come up with creative flavors. We have a lot of creative license to do whatever we want to do. And that's one of the benefits of owning your own business. Oh, that chocolate looks amazing on our screen pam. What have been some of the biggest challenges your business has faced throughout the pandemic? Have you been able to remain so resilient throughout the last few years? Really? You know, it's funny, we were one of the few businesses that were able to flourish in the pandemic and I know it's you know, because of the product, People craved chocolate. People wanted chocolate. Whether they were getting it for themselves or friends or family members or companies buying it for all of a sudden their staff that's working from the office, everyone was remote. So we had that product that people it was in demand. And so we then had to pivot to see how we could gain more of that clientele. And so we created a virtual chocolate tasting class. So you've got to stay on top of the industry, you've got to be you know, know what's going on because our whole world changed turned upside down. Here we are here you guys are pam. I'm so glad you mentioned pivoting because that's a key factor in any success for small businesses. What are some of the other ways your company pivoted and how will this change? How will these changes look like in the future? And hopefully our post pandemic world. Well what like pam said, what we did was we created a virtual chocolate tasting class that actually worked out very, very, very well because the market demanded it, corporations wanted to do something to reward their employees. And so we came up with a solution to their problems. And it paid off really, really well. I think it really just it was the pivot that saved us and kept us in business. Well Pam your business launched in 2011 over 10 years. What kind of growth has chocolate therapy seen, guys? What do you attribute the success to here? So we've had an amazing opportunity in terms of just the unexpected growth is from marketing pr huge loyal customer base. Like we can't say enough about them, our support from our family, our friends, our staff. I mean just everyone was in it with us and so the um and we have a great product. I mean, you know, it looks, it not only looks good, it really does taste good. So As we continue to grow, you know, we realized we had to get a bigger financial partner with us and so chase this is obviously one of the opportunities that we have and hopefully we'll have more as we continue. But you need a big bank to kind of help you figure out, you know, next steps and how to grow. And we have a new branch right down the street. Actually we can walk about 900 ft. Actually there are services that provided many of these as far as the checks were getting more checks in and now that we can handle that higher volume of checks coming in a lot. Yeah, so it was a big benefit to step up to Chase Bank. Just got to stay on point and keep changing the business changing as we're showing the pictures. Not only does your chocolate, I'm sure it had no doubt tastes so good. It looks beautiful. It really does look like Art David, what advice do you have for other small business owners that are out there and maybe watching and even struggling a bit. Well, the thing is with only your business. First of all, it's not for the faint of heart. Uh, there are some glamorous aspects to it, but there's a lot of more blood sweat and tears that goes into it than most people realize you have to have faith in your business, You have to have faith in your product and you just have to stick to it. You just have to really keep pushing, pushing, pushing because the sky is not going to open up and money is not going to fall into your left. You've got to get out and earn every single dollar almost every single day. I think that is great advice pam what's in store for the future of chocolate therapy. Well, first it's just continuing to be able to work with my husband. Just keep that in mind. Um, but yeah, so continuing our growth, we want to broaden our brand in the US internationally. We will eventually return to in person classes because people love that activity. They love chapter, They love being interactive with us. And I think that um, just adding other like classes to our repertoire of what we already have. So we have a virtual chocolate tasting. We want to do some things with mixology and just some more fun things that everything is centered around chocolate and you know, hopefully this kind of opportunity that we have with chase and just continuing to grow and looking for the opportunities to do more and more getting our name out there. This is helpful. We're on cheddar tv. Well we appreciate it and my family spends a lot of time in massachusetts. I will make sure to get some chocolate from your shop and support you guys. Thank you so much pam and David Griffin, co founder of Chocolate Therapy. Thank you so much guys.