Sweet Innovations, Bitter Markets, and a Rich Recovery: A Bite-Sized History of Seattle’s Chocolate Industry

I wrote this long-form article on Seattle’s chocolate history for the Winter 2024 issue of COLUMBIA – The Magazine of Northwest History. Here is the text of a near-final draft. The much prettier finished version is available here, pp. 18-27, and it looks pretty sweet (ha) with all the lovely layout and art they added.

Sweet Innovations, Bitter Markets, and a Rich Recovery: A bite-sized history of Seattle’s Chocolate Industry

In 1931 on its 25th anniversary, the Imperial Candy Company of Seattle released The Silver Lining, a book commemorating its self-storied history. Author Richard Ramsey rhapsodized over the historical details of the company and of its era, beginning in 1906 when both the city and the industry were on the cusp of change: “The keenness of the pioneer spirit had not yet been dulled . . . prosperity was in the air . . . Candy itself had not yet become sophisticated . . . dainty packages and foil and cellophane wraps had not yet appeared.” Three years after Imperial’s founding, Seattle would host a world’s fair, and the young company would win a gold medal with its Société Chocolats, made right in the city. Société’s French-sounding name, and the knockoff Gibson Girl branding featured in its packaging and advertisements, signaled both Imperial’s and Seattle’s trendy and ambitious aspirations.

Imperial was neither the first nor the last local chocolate maker to emerge in the early 1900s, and like many of its competitors, it no longer exists today. The same energy that encouraged local entrepreneurs also fed bigger and better-funded brands, and over the next decades the smaller businesses inevitably succumbed. The Silver Lining came out early in the Great Depression, and it optimistically promised that the Imperial Candy Co. was approaching the economic challenge “with sleeves rolled up…all eyes are looking ahead to the next twenty-five years…. Full steam ahead!” Yet with big changes on the country’s horizon, many of Seattle’s sweets makers would end up limping along, eventually being acquired by big corporations and losing their brand identities.

A century after Imperial’s founding, Seattle’s chocolate industry would bounce back as a real player in a whole new wave—the “bean-to-bar” movement that emphasizes the origin of the cacao—and by that time, the early confectionary companies would be long forgotten. While by no means an exhaustive history of chocolate makers, this story follows the industry trajectory by touching on key market influences and some of the notable players in the rise, fall, and resurgence of chocolate making in Seattle.

Sweet Innovations

Richard Ramsey was right about Seattle: At the beginning of the 1900s it was indeed growing, moving, and shaking. Between 1860 and 1910, its population had exploded from 150 people to over 237,000. Tacoma, about 30 miles south, had looked like the standout city when it became the western terminus for the Northern Pacific Railroad’s transcontinental line in 1873. But when Seattle was chosen in 1893 as the terminus for James J. Hill’s Great Northern Railway, the port city pulled out ahead and never looked back.

Physically, Seattle grew in size twice over between 1905 and 1910. Undaunted by such trivialities as topography, city planners flattened the hills around its downtown, created what was then the world’s largest artificial island, dug canals, and dredged and straightened a major natural river. All that was in addition to paving streets and installing pipes to allow for both new residents and the automobiles that were fast overtaking local thoroughfares. In the “Queen City of the Pacific Northwest,” if one could think it, one could do it.

By 1900, rustic Seattle had become a place where immigrating families could settle comfortably. The women of these families managed domestic life, and expectations were high. In the 1896 book Clever Cooking, published by the Women’s Guild of St. Mark’s Church in Seattle, John Ruskin’s opening quote reminded homemakers that being a good cook required “English thoroughness, French art and Arabian hospitality; it means in fine that you are to be perfectly and always ladies, and you are to see that everybody has something nice to eat.” An exotic idea of the world called to the city, as did the new products and technologies coming from outside Seattle. Many of those came in the form of sweets.

As historian Elizabeth Abbott tells, during the nineteenth century sugar had become an accessible and then beloved product, initially taking hold as a desirable way for working Europeans and Americans to quaff the bitter tea and coffee that kept them doubly energized with caffeine and calories. In the mid-19th century, after the Civil War and other major changes in sugar cultivation and sourcing, sugar quickly became a household staple. An industry-backed consumer culture developed alongside what Abbott defines as a “cult of domesticity” that encouraged women to provide “their families the best of everything, including rich daily desserts that always included sugar.” Housewives also wanted sugar for canning in the new Mason jar; for making ice cream, now ubiquitous due to in-home freezers; and for baking at home, made more efficient with improved kitchen tools and cookware. Periodicals and cookbooks published recipes filled with sugar—not just desserts but also sauces and side dishes—and a higher standard of living allowed the masses to prepare all of these for their deserving families.

Hot chocolate had become a popular, sweetened, pick-me-up beverage, more expensive than tea and coffee but common among wealthier families as a breakfast drink. As both chocolate and sugar became more affordable, manufacturing improvements allowed more products to be created and offered by a growing number of companies. Diversification and availability worked hand-in-hand to spread the taste for chocolate.

Regional newspapers went on about the product. With an ever-aspiring eye toward the cosmopolitan, in 1891 The Seattle Post-Intelligencer published a three-column article on French and Italian sweets, noting that “French children seem to be the healthiest in the world, a tribute to chocolate of the highest [quality],” and, on breakfasts, “The Spanish people live and flourish on chocolate.” In 1898 they published a half-broadsheet travelogue about Ecuador, detailing a visit to a cacao plantation and describing the exotic plants. The article included a quote from a New York Times interview, “Chocolate continues to be the most popular confectionary for ladies,” encouraging gentlemen to buy the candies as gifts. Chocolate brought the world to the people of growing Seattle.

In hopes of picking up potential customers in their immediate surroundings, small confectionaries advertised in community cookbooks rather than blanketing the city through ads in larger newspapers. In One Thousand Favorite Recipes, published in 1908 by the Ladies Auxiliary of Temple de Hirsch Sinai, both Haynes confectionary and Stokes on Second Avenue promoted their candies along with light lunch options. Ballard businesses Pop Smith the Candy Man and Etchey’s Candy Factory put their money into ads in The Ballard Cook Book, published in 1907 by Gilman Park’s Methodist Episcopal Church.

While these stores provided treats, much of the commercial chocolate produced was for cooking and baking, and community cookbooks were chock full of recipes for chocolate desserts. Many of these recipes would still be recognizable to Americans today, though some mixed chocolate with ingredients like dates or baking spices, and chocolate even showed up in the occasional sweet sandwich. Cooks and bakers used cocoa or solid chocolate, sweetened or unsweetened, and mostly in squares, sticks, bars, or cakes, which were scored to mark ounces. They grated or scraped the solid forms, unless they had purchased commercially ground chocolate.

Community cookbook recipes often specified branded chocolate products such as Baker’s or Ghirardelli, and agents like Lewis M. Johnson & Co. and Spencer-Clarke Co. advertised and sold these brands, among other items. Cacao could not be grown in the United States, and it was rarely processed from its raw form in Seattle during the 19th century. Chocolate was thus one of the imported products that made Seattle part of a hierarchical network of West Coast cities, ranked by location and size. San Francisco, that Gold-Rush queen of the West Coast, was the clear front-runner, while Seattle competed for second place with other cities including Tacoma and Portland. The introduction of railroads with new, refrigerated cars benefited Seattle greatly in the rivalry, but it also allowed far-away companies to sell their mass-produced goods at a lower price than local proprietors. That convenience would have major repercussions for Seattle’s chocolate industry.

Historically, New England was the chocolate hub of the U.S, as Walter Baker had founded his company in Massachusetts in 1774. Masters of diversity, Baker’s made not only the common unsweetened chocolate baking squares, but also a wide variety of formats with different levels of fat, sugar, and flavorings for purposes like candy making, drinking, and eating. Domingo Ghirardelli and Étienne Guittard were both relative newcomers by comparison. They had produced chocolate under their names in San Francisco since only 1852 and 1868 respectively, but Ghirardelli had created some proprietary methods, and Guittard had established a reliable wholesale business. All three companies had big head-starts over Seattle’s chocolate industry, yet the fledgling city leveraged its youthful zeal.

In 1909, enterprising Seattle put itself on the map by hosting a world’s fair, the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, as it attempted to demonstrate its economic significance on an international stage. World’s fairs were a prime opportunity for businesses to establish brand identities, and chocolate had been a continuous presence. At the 1876 world’s fair in Philadelphia, Maillard’s Chocolate created a 15-foot-high sculpture of chocolate and sugar depicting events from U.S. history; they continued to create towering chocolate statues for later world’s fairs. In St. Louis in 1904, Walter Baker & Company presented a miniature chocolate factory to show the public how cocoa beans were turned into cocoa powder. For the 1914 Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco, Ghirardelli planned its own separate pavilion, designed by the architects of San Francisco’s City Hall. And in 1909, at the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, Société Chocolats won a gold medal for Seattle’s Imperial Candy Company.

This was the environment in which many Seattle chocolate makers began. The city was energetic and expanding, and a growing consumer base clamored for commercial candies and homemade desserts; yet larger companies were perpetually snapping at the heels of smaller local businesses. Imperial reported immense success with the Société line and introduced other products, and it was not the only small company riding the wave. As the 20th century unfurled, confectionaries blossomed all over the city: Department store Frederick & Nelson, founded in 1891 as a furniture dealer, opened a flagship location at Fifth Avenue and Pine Street in 1918 with a full six floors; in 1921 they added a candy kitchen, and several years later began making what became their signature—Frango chocolate mint truffles. Bartell Drugs opened a candy factory to supply its stores around 1913. And the upscale grocer Augustine & Kyer employed young women to hand-dip its chocolates.

Retail stores’ candy kitchens weren’t always big enough to satisfy consumer demand. Just as brands do today, retailers made deals with subcontractors. Parisian Candy Company contracted to produce many different candies for drugstores including Bartell and G. O. Guy. According to Robert Spector’s 1993 The Legend of Frango Chocolate (the source of much Frango history), Parisian’s owner Joe Vinikow was a friend of Frederick & Nelson’s official Frango promoter Gil Ridean, and a deal between the two vastly scaled up Frango production. Vinikow’s son especially remembered the trays and trays of unlabeled truffles being trucked back to “Frederick’s” to acquire their trademarked names and boxes.

Beyond the candy makers, Seattle’s Washington Chocolate Co. produced baking chocolates that competed with the national brands and advertised its Rama line in local cookbooks. The company expanded significantly in 1923, with The Seattle Star noting it had “grown with such astonishing rapidity…that it is scarcely believable,” optimistically increasing its production capacity from 500 pounds to 11,000 pounds per day (though that immense output may not have been achieved).

Bitter Markets

Initially, the rising tide lifted all boats. In 1939, the candy and confectionary industry in Seattle was valued at over $2.5 million. High demand could only carry small companies so far, though. Advances in advertising and manufacturing disproportionately benefited bigger operations with larger budgets and capacities, and during the first half of the 20th century, advertising was key to public awareness of and opinions about foods.

Reacting to food safety scandals of the previous era, companies bid for brand loyalty through building trust, especially in messages about purity. Government-driven food safety reforms, including the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, addressed poor conditions that had stemmed from the industrialization and consolidation of the food supply, such as the rotten and contaminated meat (and deadly working environment) of Chicago’s meatpacking industry. A 1923 Seattle-area ad for Milwaukee’s Eline’s Chocolate stated, “Every step in the manufacturing process is under laboratory supervision,” in a country plant with “pure air” and fresh milk pasteurized in “white-tiled” rooms. Brands also promised consistency, like Ghirardelli’s Ground Chocolate, which “you’ll never tire of…always the same, year in and year out.” These kinds of promises were easier for companies with bigger budgets to keep, and to disseminate. Besides, they could win simply on numbers with questions like, “A million women in the West have come to know the saving graces of Ghirardelli’s—have you?”

With product diversity as a market advantage, companies developed numerous options for home cooks. These were not just slabs like Baker’s earlier varieties, but different forms like Hershey’s syrup, made available for public purchase in 1928, and Nestlé Chocolate Morsels, which the company began making after it bought Ruth Wakefield’s famous Toll House recipe in 1939. Product development advances required space and equipment, easier for bigger companies than for smaller ones.

Imperial pressed on, though it was flagging. In The Silver Lining, author Ramsey tried to toot the company’s horn, claiming “some confusion existed in the public mind as to who made [Imperial’s] ‘It’ [bar] and who made [a competitor’s] ‘Oh Henry!’” but even he had to admit the It bar’s “day of great glory is gone.” As with other progress, radio advertising started out as a boon to all comers, but after two years of spots on local stations, Imperial could not afford to compete with the radio programs distributed by national companies.

Something else was happening, too, affecting even the big brands: corporate consolidation. In the 1920s, J. P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs merged several existing companies to form Standard Brands and General Foods—the latter of which included Baker’s. Williamson Candy of Chicago, who manufactured Oh Henry!, merged with another company in 1926, and later was handed off to a long series of conglomerates including Nestlé, Ferrero, and Hershey. In another emerging trend, nascent grocery chains like Safeway and Kroger stocked limited consumer choices, largely presenting packaged, branded items. The path to nationalization was set.

U.S. involvement in World War II expanded the nationalization trend by giving large companies advantages on the battlefront at a monumental scale. And Big Chocolate was ready for it. Facing rationing of both sugar and cacao, Hershey’s president William Murrie, along with The National Confectioners Association, lobbied the government to maintain the industry—and arranged for Hershey to make candy for a nation’s worth of soldiers. Resistant to melting, Mars candy-coated M&M’s (Murrie was one of the M’s) fed American bomber pilots throughout North America and the Pacific. Baker’s chocolate made it into the hands of Allied war prisoners through the Red Cross. Supply shortages were another threat, but Hershey’s, having stockpiled cocoa beans before the war for unrelated reasons, was able to draw on their reserves and continue manufacturing.

Wartime rationing turned out to further encourage corporate consolidation. Instead of just contracting with Parisian Chocolate, Frederick & Nelson bought the company in its entirety, taking advantage of Parisian’s large sugar quota to bolster Frango production. Since 1929, Frederick & Nelson itself had been absorbed into Chicago’s Marshall Field’s department store chain, and even as Frederick & Nelson expanded its Seattle building and candy kitchen in the 1950s, continued changes in Marshall Field’s parent companies and complex licensing agreements would confuse Frango brand ownership and production for decades. In fact, for a long time, slightly different recipes under the same brand name were produced east and west of the Mississippi by Marshall Field’s and by Frederick & Nelson and its succeeding stores and subcontractors.

Government contracts and other wartime adaptations also spurred product development in big companies that were equipped to react during the timeframe of the war and continued to propel them postwar. In The Routledge History of American Foodways, historian Kellen Backer contextualizes this moment: “Those businesses that supplied the military were able to expand, which helped to create a postwar food system that had originally been geared for mass producing foods that could travel the globe. …These companies took advantage and helped to create … ‘the Golden Era of Food Processing’ in the 1950s.”

While the war and the rise of the big chocolate brands did not kill off all of Seattle’s chocolate confectioners, it did force them further into the margins. Some were already gone, like Bartell Drugs’ candy kitchen, which had closed in the 1930s. Other confectioners plugged along and eventually succumbed to market pressures, often through a series of relocations, new owners, and further acquisitions. As Seattle historian Rob Ketcherside describes, after Augustine & Kyer closed, its candy factory was picked up by former company salesman Horace W. Heath and then outlived him, producing candies for local stores until the late 1950s. As evidenced by legal records, Washington Chocolate Co. was purchased in 1978 and again in 1989, the second time by a subsidiary of a large company out of Minnesota, before closing a couple of years later. The defunct Frederick & Nelson’s candy kitchen still exists in some sense, first spun off as Frederick’s Fine Chocolates and later diversified as Seattle Gourmet Foods. However, in 2022 Seattle Gourmet Foods was acquired by a large holding company and became just one folder in a broad portfolio of investments all over the country. Following trends across the board, it’s hard for local companies to stay local.

Notably, Tacoma spawned one major lasting success that remains independent. Confectioner Brown & Haley, founded in 1912, survived the eventful 20th century and is still making its signature Almond Roca under the watchful ownership of the Haley family. Tacoma also belongs in the footnote of a different type of success: Frank Mars, namesake of today’s multinational conglomerate Mars, wasn’t a native of Tacoma, but he made an early crack at the candy business there, where he was unable to compete with Brown & Haley. It was only after moving back to his home state of Minnesota in 1920 that his company began to flourish.

And what of Imperial Candy Company, award-winning makers of Société Chocolats and publishers of The Silver Lining? In 1964 they changed their name to Societe, and a 1975 article in Candy & Snack Industry magazine notes that after 68 years in downtown Seattle, they optimistically moved to a space in Bellevue with a larger production capacity. By that point Societe had become largely a bulk candy producer with few products containing chocolate. They were also recovering from a management shakeup, a worldwide increase in the price of sugar, and a spike in consumer skepticism toward sugar.

Societe was living in a different world from that of its 1906 founders for those reasons and more. By 1979, Hershey had achieved over $1 billion in annual sales and had acquired products like Reese’s peanut butter cups and Twizzlers licorice. Mars ran production sites across the U.S. and in Europe and made everything from Doublemint gum to pet food. In 1978, U.K.-based Cadbury had made its biggest move into the U.S. market by acquiring the company Peter Paul, with its popular Mounds and Almond Joy candy bars and York Peppermint Patties. Small candy makers were competing against giants—and getting scooped up.

In 1979–1980, Societe sold to San Francisco’s DeDomenico family, owners of the Golden Grain Pasta company. The DeDomenicos already owned Ghirardelli in San Francisco and had purchased Vernell’s Fine Candies in Seattle, and they successfully argued to Societe that Seattle wasn’t big enough for two candy companies.

Perhaps the DeDomenicos were right. Seattle’s first chocolate wave had quite thoroughly concluded, not with a crash but with a long sigh.

Sticky Start-ups

Over the postwar decades, Seattle continued to welcome new confectioners. These were not necessarily major innovators, and some small shops opened and closed, but other proprietors brought something new to the city and have stuck around, remaining beloved and locally owned. Following are a few of those successes.

Boehms Candies. In 1942 as a recent immigrant to the U.S., Julius Boehm co-founded a candy kitchen in Ravenna and began making European-style chocolates. Prior to immigrating to the U.S., Boehm ran the 400-meter relay in the 1924 Paris Olympic Games, and in 1936 he carried the torch along the Austria route for the Berlin games. His athletic and mountaineering experience was put to use again in 1940 when he escaped Nazi-annexed Austria. In 1956, Boehm moved his candy company to an area that reminded him of his homeland—the foothills near Issaquah—and built a candy factory in the style of an Alpine chalet. In 1981, Bernard Garbusjuk, who had worked closely with Boehm for ten years, took the helm, and he still works at the factory today along with his adult children.

Fran’s Chocolates. Fran Bigelow started making and selling truffles in her Madison Valley shop in 1982. She became especially known for her delicate salted caramels, long before salted caramel was a trendy flavor. There are now four Fran’s stores in the Seattle area and two in Japan, as well as Fran’s products in upscale grocery and kitchen stores across the U.S.

Oh! Chocolate was founded on Mercer Island in 1984. Gertie (Han) Krautheim became interested in chocolates as a youngster, baking in her family’s kitchen on Oahu. Her husband Carl shared her passion for chocolate, and after moving to the mainland they opened a shop serving their perfected recipes. Today, their daughter Margo Masaoka oversees the original flagship store on Mercer Island, and Oh! Chocolate offers online sales. Granddaughter Marisa and her husband also work in the store, making it a three-generation family-owned business.

Seattle Chocolate Company, founded in 1991 by Steve Elliott and Steve Abel. This company offers a unique example of bridging the transition from the first to the second wave of chocolate makers in the city. Initially, it followed the path of Parisian Candy Company’s historic Frango partnership with Frederick & Nelson. When Frederick & Nelson declared bankruptcy in 1992, its candy kitchen continued operating temporarily so frantic Frango fans could stock up. Taking note of the obsession, other stores geared up to sell copycats. Nordstrom enlisted six-month-old Seattle Chocolate to produce their Best Mints with the help of Bruce Reed, who had worked with Frangos as a 15-year Frederick & Nelson employee before joining Seattle Chocolate. The small company’s contract with the Nordstrom chain made them a better bet for bank loans, providing stability. Seattle Chocolate also relied on investments from a dozen angel investors in those early days, including Jean and Rick Thompson. In a further throughline between eras, Nordstrom took over Frederick & Nelson’s prominent building at Fifth Avenue and Pine Street.

In 1995, Frederick’s Fine Chocolates sued Seattle Chocolate for allegedly stealing the Frango recipe; the result concluded that the recipes were different, however Seattle Chocolate would have to stop using packaging that mimicked Frangos. Ironically, Seattle Chocolate won the Frango manufacturing contract in 2003 and produced Frangos for 17 years.

Seattle Chocolate survived an earthquake which destroyed the rented manufacturing site and organizational restructuring. Today it is a woman-owned enterprise, managed by owner and CEO Jean Thompson. Its evolution reflects trends in specialty foods and marketing, with a focus on carbon-neutral status and ethically sourced ingredients. Seattle Chocolate Company began making its own chocolate in-house this year. These are some of the hallmarks of Seattle’s chocolate industry rebound.

Rich Recovery

A century after Seattle’s first major growth wave and the chocolate businesses that sprouted with it, the city’s revitalized energy and the bean-to-bar movement have combined to produce a second chocolate wave. Between 2000 and 2020, the population of King County increased from 1.7 to 2.3 million, with newcomers drawn from all over the world to forward-looking opportunities in the booming technology, health care, and higher education sectors. As a well-traveled and relatively affluent consumer base, the growing populace proved willing and able to invest in innovative food trends.

Among those broad trends has been the desire for local production with transparent processes, embracing and differentiating among high-quality ingredients, and in many cases aiming to achieve higher ethical standards. Consumers find such businesses across the metropolitan area. Microbreweries promote small batch beers and seasonal ingredients, homegrown ice cream brands use organic or plant-based milks, and locally roasted fair-trade coffee comes in bags boasting individual countries of origin and expounding on tasting notes.

The specialty chocolate world has followed the same path. While Seattle’s earlier chocolate artisans were chocolatiers, who mostly purchased chocolate from companies elsewhere and reworked it into candies, the new chocolate makers intentionally start with the cacao beans and may work directly with farmers in handpicked cacao-growing regions.

Followers of the bean-to-bar movement generally look back to the Bay Area’s Scharffen Berger Chocolate Maker, co-founded in 1996 by chocolate-making enthusiast Robert Steinberg and winemaker John Scharffenberger. They reexamined every aspect of chocolate from the soil to the roasting process, with an eye toward a more select chocolate tasting experience. From beginning in their home kitchen to their first batch in a factory using vintage equipment from Germany, their company grew. In 2005 when they were acquired by Hershey, Scharffen Berger’s annual revenue was approximately $10 million. In 2021, the company again became privately owned.

Unlike the old chocolatiers, Scharffen Berger and the small companies inspired by them developed relationships with farmers, invested in holding tanks and processing machinery, and cultivated their own chocolate flavor profiles. All that global connection and care came with a price, so this new generation of chocolate makers also had to give consumers reasons to spend over $3 for an unfamiliar bar with a cacao percentage on the label instead of picking up the familiar, predictable 75¢ Hershey bar. Companies extolled the virtues of darker bars, and they added to their labels plantations of origin, tasting notes, and labor or sustainability bona fides.

In Seattle, the forefront of this second wave came with Theo Chocolate, founded in 2005 and operating out of a factory in Fremont. Building on what others had done, Theo was one of the first U.S. chocolate companies to make products from organic ingredients that adhered to the standards of Fair for Life, a type of fair trade certification. that endorses environmental and social responsibility all along the supply chain. Theo didn’t just sell bars and confections, it offered factory tours so consumers could see the workings of the entire operation, including a presentation in a room with a map on the wall that showed where its partner plantations grew the cacao.

Other Seattle companies succeeded Theo, putting their own spins on bean-to-bar chocolates. Intrigue Chocolate Co. in Pioneer Square tempts visitors with tea made from the hulls of the cacao beans and creatively flavored bars like Smoked Tea + Allspice, and Plum + Long Pepper. Indi Chocolate in Pike Place Market speaks to the issue of slavery in cacao, and their participation in efforts to end it. The company makes chocolates and other cocoa based products, and offers classes on chocolate making for crafty home cooks. Spinnaker Chocolate’s website states, “For every bar sold, we donate toward cleanup of the ocean,” and touts sustainability efforts along with a prominent endorsement by famous chef and local resident J. Kenji López-Alt.

In 2008, 99 years after the 1909 World’s Fair, Seattlites were invited to a new, world-class gathering of chocolate companies: the annual Northwest Chocolate Festival trade show, founded and produced by Brian Cisneros, an advocate for cacao farmers and craft chocolate makers. National Public Radio reporter Ruby de Luna reflected on the festival in 2016, noting that Seattle now “has a community of artisans that continues to grow and a consumer base that knows its chocolates—and a public venue for aficionados to share and geek out.” The 2024 event in Bellevue showcased more than 90 chocolate makers and confectioners, including many Washington candy companies and international sweets makers from as far away as Grenada, Dubai, Suriname, Thailand, Jamaica, and more . Workshops and presentations covered a range of relevant topics such as heirloom cacao, growing cacao at home, building community and biodiversity with agroforestry, and the Women for Chocolate Initiative partnership in Ghana. A two-day, professionals-only “UnConference” beforehand provides an opportunity for the makers to network, sowing seeds for the future of the industry.

Wrapping it up

Seattle began its life amid bustle and upheaval, with a rapid influx of immigrants and settlers coming to the region to work in growing industries and making it over in the image of enterprise. The last quarter century welcomed another influx of transplants who came for exciting, growing industries and sought to satisfy their cosmopolitan tastes. Precedent has shown that, given the region’s expanding consumer population, specialty chocolate companies can stick around, like Brown & Haley, continue to grow and change, like Seattle Chocolate Company, and follow new and modern ideas, like the bean-to-bar makers.

Many of Seattle’s current crop of chocolate companies remain locally owned and thriving, having survived the COVID-19 pandemic and the challenges it presented to supply chains, but nationalization and globalization are ever at the heels of small businesses. There is a palpable tension between staying true to ideals and trying to flourish in the modern marketplace. Theo, for instance, sells in markets all over the U.S. and Canada, but in 2023 citing rising costs, they announced a merger with an Indiana-based company with the intention of moving manufacturing out of Seattle. Updates on their website since have walked back the merger with a commitment to staying independent while outsourcing production to “trusted partners.”

In the next decades some of Seattle’s contributors to craft chocolate will likely succumb to acquisition or other market forces. In this, they will take the bittersweet path of pioneers like the award-winning Imperial Candy Co., to linger only through written history.