Rick Levine started Seth Ellis Chocolatier in Boulder, CO along with his brother, Neil and colleague, David Lurie. The name, Seth Ellis, is derived from Rick and his brother’s middle names. As you read through our conversation, you can’t help but visualize the chocolate and salivate at the combination of tastes he describes.
You may also recognize Rick’s name as one of the authors of a little book that spoke to business and marketing on the web and the changes in conversations we would have. Written in 2000, it was way before ’social media’ and the Facebooks and Twitters of the world. That book was The Cluetrain Manifesto. Enjoy my conversation with Rick.
The 8Q interview: 8 questions answered by successful chocolatiers
1. Were you formally trained to work in the art of chocolate making?
No, I spent time working in “industrial” pastry as a line cook over 30 years ago when I was in school working the early shift in large commissary operations. All my experience has been strictly on-the-job training. I took a 25-year detour into high tech because it was hard to make a living as a cook back then.
I started dabbling in chocolate and candy 8-10 years ago, mainly because my kids were asking how to make various sweets. Almost everything I’ve learned has been from reading and research, from lots of experimentation, and from many conversations with people smarter than I am who graciously answer my sometimes naive queries.
2. What was the moment that you knew you wanted to be a chocolatier or work mainly with chocolate?
I think we fell into it gradually, rather than having a moment of revelation. Like many people, David, Neil and I like to eat chocolate. David is a Swiss-trained chef, who’s worked in kitchens and managed hotels and restaurants for most of his career. He actually survived on chocolate during his time in Switzerland, consuming a 450-gram bar of chocolate every other day instead of real food! Neil is an amazing visual artist, and has done design and creative work for several chocolatiers over the years.
The possibility of actually creating a successful business to allow us to work full-time in chocolate grew in reality as we explored the market, and had more and more people treat our ideas seriously and encourage us. The epiphany, if there was one, probably centered around the realization that good chocolate could have much higher sales margins than commodity chocolate, and that there was little to no high-end organic competition in the filled chocolate market.
3. How would you describe the product line your company offers?
We create amazing-tasting chocolates. They’re also organic, use fairly traded ingredients, and are completely nut- and gluten-free. While it’s possible to create chocolates with a fusion of diverse flavors and tastes, we’re focusing on making our chocolates more identifiable and accessible. Our enrobed raspberry truffles are obviously and vibrantly raspberry. Our mint, even though there’s a fairly complex infusion blend in the ganache, is perceived as having the taste of fresh-picked mint. It’s fairly easy to invent interesting taste combinations, but it’s more difficult to make tastes people recognize, remember and can ask for.
We realized early on that any certifications, labels or buzzwords for our chocolates will only get us an initial sale. All other things being equal, someone buying chocolate might choose one of our boxes because it’s labeled organic or fairtrade. However, if the chocolate doesn’t taste amazing, they won’t buy it a second time, they won’t tell their friends and they won’t give it as a gift.
We’re also striving to create a rich experience for people enjoying our chocolates. Watch someone open a flow-wrapped package of chocolate candy. They’ll typically tear open the package, often won’t look very much at the chocolate, and will pop them straight into their mouth. It’s a chocolate experience compressed into one short act. When you ask a person to describe what they did, they’ll respond “I ate the chocolate.”
Over the years, we’ve spent a lot of time looking at and tasting any chocolate we can find. We discovered chocolates with gorgeous packaging, chocolates that look beautiful and elegant and chocolates with amazing tastes. We also noticed many chocolatiers succeed in only one of these three domains, good packaging, good appearance or good taste, but not two. The good ones will nail two out of three, and only the best will excel at all three. We’ve tried to create chocolate that scores at all three.
Our packaging is engaging and tactile. It’s multi-layered, to prolong the experience of discovering what’s inside. Once you open one of our boxes, undo the logo sticker, open the inner wrapper and remove the elegant liner covering the chocolate, the chocolates themselves are beautiful.
In each of our assortments, you’ll find a variety of shapes, heights, colors and production techniques, the sum of which is an elegant presentation, one that makes you pause and exclaim before you touch the candies. When you taste each piece, you become engaged with the sensations, and all thought of packaging and appearance are subsumed to the exploration of flavors. It’s not just a candy you pop in your mouth. (Or maybe it is, but you had a little more fun than you expected getting there!)
4. What is your best selling product and what is your personal favourite?
I don’t really have a favorite! Early on, we agreed we would only sell things we like to eat. If I can’t eat our flavors day in and day out, I have no business selling them. I just like chocolate. Lots. Of. Chocolate.
We really don’t have one stand-out best seller as our customers have their own favorites depending on their tastes. People who prefer darker chocolate like our dark truffles, which have a great 78% ganache, made with Organic Valley heavy cream infused with a touch of cinnamon. Our candied lemon and lemon truffles are for lemon lovers. Our raspberry and mint are good starters for non-dark folks, and our nutmeg caramel snobinettes and milk truffles are fun for people with milder tastes. And then there’s ginger with two kinds of organic ginger, coffee with cream infused with Allegro organic Guatemalan beans, blueberry… Oh, I better stop. 
5. Up to now, what has been the greatest highlight of your chocolate career?
It’s actually something I get to do every day. That first time I offer someone one of our truffles, someone who hasn’t tasted them before, and they taste them and sigh, or exclaim, or laugh. I might tell them a little bit about the chocolate I’m handing them, but then I stop talking, and just watch and listen. It’s a lot of fun, and it isn’t an experience I think I’ll ever get tired of.
6. What has been most difficult challenge you have faced in your chocolate career?
Keeping the business running, despite unpredictability in sales and in the economy. Recipe development, production, and the actual work of making chocolates are actually the easy parts of the gig. It takes a certain dogged persistence to make the business fly. It needs a very practical, denial-free approach to running the shop.
At the end of the day, we’re a wholesale manufacturing business making very small, inexpensive widgets with a short shelf life, and we have to make and sell a lot of them to survive. We couple the practicality with an irrational optimism, convinced we’ll navigate through whatever we hit, and come out the other side stronger and smarter. The experience of running a chocolate business is a bit terrifying, but we keep doing it. It must be fun.
7. If you weren’t working with chocolate, what would you be doing?
I love combining the work of my head, my heart and my hands. My father was a potter, my brother is an artist and designer, and I’ve always enjoy creating things. I have no idea what I might do beyond this business, but it will be fun to discover it.
8. What is next for you and for your company?
Making more chocolate! We’ve just started selling through the Whole Foods Market stores in NYC, and this week we launched a new series of certified organic, fairtrade chocolate bars for the University of Colorado here in Boulder. We’re working with several new private label clients, and we just sent in this year’s SOFI entries (Specialty Outstanding Food Innovation) for the Fancy Food Show in New York. And it’s Easter this weekend. Yikes!
Rick Levine
Seth Ellis Chocolatier
www.sethellischocolatier.com
twitter: ricklevine
Read more 8Q Interviews from other successful chocolatiers.
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