The Chocospherian
Incredible Chocolate News	October 5th 2017

Written By: Joanne Kryszek, Chocosphere Co-Founder and Chocolate Goddess

What’s New?	Customer Service
Incr‘Edible’ Chocolate Deals…	Meet the Staff!
Chocolate Club	Bargain Basement and On Sale
Recipe Corner	Search Tips
Topics	Newsletter

What's New?

Creo

I found Kevin from Creo one day at a Farmer's Market. The taste of the chocolate, especially the 100%, astonished me, and from that moment on Jerry and I worked to get Creo. We love it!

When Kevin and family found out that chocolate was grown in the tropics largely by rural, small multi-generational family farmers, their hearts were drawn to the common pride of growing something by their family history of farming. They felt compelled to work with the farmer. So in 2014, they sold their small family farm with a desire to share this real craft chocolate with their family, friends, and community.

The principals of Creo Chocolate opened their workshop out of a lifetime enjoyment of learning how things are made. For several years they experimented with roasting beans, using their chocolate in every recipe they could imagine, eating their way through chocolate shops in North America and visiting cacao farms in Ecuador.

If you have the opportunity to visit their chocolate shop where they make and sell the chocolate, you will enjoy it. It's a family who work together to bring the love to their craft. And their chocolate making machine is crazy.

Taste

Nestled in the shadows of Mount Timpanogos in Downtown Provo Utah, Morgan Coleman and his wife Char opened Taste in 2012, where they specialize in making their own chocolate. They started with a love of chocolate and a dream to make it in a way that highlights the genetic flavor of the cacao. Morgan says “In artisan chocolate making, you have this incredible variety without adding flavors or ingredients to the chocolate. Vanilla, fruit flavors, these things are all standard or naturally occurring in the beans themselves.” From this dream came what you taste. They also host regular chocolate-tasting classes to try the variety of flavors found naturally in cacao beans and taste the differences depending on how the beans are roasted, ground and mixed.

Other new products

We have a lot of new products in addition to the new brands. There are two Dolfin bars, two Cacao Barry origin couvertures and a 1kg bucket of Cacao Barry cocoa nibs, a Colombian cacao-origin plantation bar from Michel Cluizel, Bronze-white chocolate Orelys from Valrhona with a delicious licorice flavor note, three new Taza bars, an Alma bar, and Guittard black cocoa powder in a 5 lb bucket and 50 lb bag. Sibo has added two new bars, updated their bar molds and packaging on most of their bars in our stock, and improved their previously good recipe to make their chocolate even better!

Fall is the season for hot chocolate and sweet Halloween treats and this year we have the best. Check out Alma's skulls and skeletons.

Incr‘Edible’ Chocolate Deals

"Chocosphere Gift Basket" Special!

Get your holiday gift giving done early. This year if you put in orders for your holiday gifts between October 5th and November 15th 2017 you have an opportunity to be in on a special deal: Order a "Chocosphere Gift Basket" product as shown when you use the "Gifts & Collections -> Classic Gift Baskets" selection from the drop-down menu at the top of each page of our web site, and you'll get the entire dollar value in chocolate! The gift basket preparation, normally a $9.95 value, is "on the house" during this offer! To qualify for this deal, order by November 15, and at the "Comments" section of check-out enter the text "Newsletter Deal on the Chocosphere Gift Basket".

You can ask us to delay delivery to a desired (approximate) date. Just let us know the date and we'll take care of the rest. We will pack up your order and have it all ready to ship.

Happy Shopping!

Recipe Corner

Easy Drinking Chocolate

12 oz of chopped chocolate (your favorite)

1 1/4 cup milk

Bring to a simmer over medium heat stirring constantly. Make sure that the chocolate is fully incorporated. Remove from the stove and allow to cool completely. Reheat and serve. (Sometimes I cheat and just let it cool for a few minutes and then reheat.) You can make this a holiday drinking chocolate by adding a drop of peppermint or you can add cinnamon and cayenne for a spicy concoction. Let your imagination take you to that happy chocolate place. Serves two.

Meet the Staff

Jerry and Joanne have been here a seeming "lifetime". If you know of anyone who wants to be Willy Wonkyish or the Chocolate Goddess, they can retire to just eating the chocolate instead of selling it.

Joel has been here almost as long and is our WebMaster.

Sue has also been here forever and does our quarterly physical inventory and repackaging at the holidays.

JP has been here the longest of our processing folks with 11 years. She is the sweetest on the phone, can pack up a storm and think of all kinds of fun things to do, like collect weird lizards, fish, snails and tortoises (at home, not at the Chocosphere warehouse!).

Trent has been here 8 years, likes to drive the forklift, primarily works wholesale orders and is a motorcycle enthusiast.

MeLissa has been here 7 years, backs up everyone, makes beautiful gift packaging and is the Face of our Facebook page. She is also the crochet wizard.

Murm has been doing our books forever and came in house 3 years ago. He loves milk chocolate!

Bargain Basement and On Sale

The $100 grab bag is still the best deal in the house at 60% off for $39.95.

There is some Domori, Slitti, Guido Gobino and some other nice treats on the bargain basement right now, but not as much as in years past, so if you want something it would be good to look now.

Please remember that Bargain Basement products are usually past the best-by date, and may be bloomed or broken. The Bargain Basement is a place to treat yourself at a great price, but not for gift giving. We made the decision not to ship any Grab Bags as gifts. This past holiday season we had a few recipients who were worried about the past date goods. If you understand that chocolate does not go bad, we're fine with that, but not everyone feels the same. We won't be shipping any Grab Bags or Bargain Basement products as gifts because even though Halloween is coming we don't want to scare your friends and relatives. If you're entering a gift order and accidentally put something in your cart that has a date or other issue we will call you and it will delay the processing of your order.

Chocolate Club

Have you ever wondered about the Chocosphere chocolate club? This is how to “join”: You order online by going to “Chocolate-of-the-Month Clubs”, which can be found by using the “Gifts and Selections” drop-down menu at the top of the Chocosphere web page. There you'll find an offering to fit just about every budget, ranging from as little $120 to as much as $1020.

Then relax and forget about making chocolate decisions. We take care of the rest. Soon you or someone you cherish will start receiving chocolate shipments. Once each month, on the doorstep there will be a package from that other world; that's right, the planet with chocolate: Chocosphere! You or that special someone will have their day brightened with the amazing food of the Gods and be transported to a delicious place. Almost like a drug, but legal. Every month, for the period you select, there will be another infusion of happy.

Search Tips

With so many products, it can sometimes be challenging to find just what you're looking for. The search capability of our Chocosphere.com web site works a bit differently that what you may be accustomed to. Here are a few tips to make your search easier using our web site's search capabilities.

Using the basic search bar ("Search entire store here..."). Use fewer words. Yes, it seems counter intuitive, but the way our search works is that it looks for pages with any of the words you specify. If you search for chocolate bars, you will get a screenful of all of the products with the word chocolate on their pages and the display will also include products with the word bars on their pages. That's a lot of products! Better to just use the word bars.

That brings up another point: plurals. Be sure to search for both single and plural forms of what you're looking for. E.g.: spice spices.

A final tip is to try using quotation marks ( " ) to search when wanting to match an exact phrase using the basic search bar. Searching for chocolate bar will bring up all products with the word chocolate or the word bar on the page, but "chocolate bar" will only bring up products where that exact phrase appears.

Using Advanced Search. For further search precision you can try our “Advanced Search” feature. You access it by clicking on the small text below the basic search bar. Advanced search allows very fine control over what you're searching for by giving lots of selectors to choose from. You can use one or more of the Advanced Search selectors when searching this way. The more you specify in Advanced Search, the better the chance to zero-in on what you're looking for. It takes more effort to use, but when used properly it rewards you by showing the most relevant items.

Customer Service

Of course we are happy to help over the phone, but we do appreciate it when you place your order on line. It helps us to give the most prompt and accurate service. If you don’t feel comfortable giving your credit card number over the internet, just click the box for "Please Call for Credit Card Info" and we will call you. But when you need help, we are here for you. There is generally someone answering the phones between 8:30am. and 4:30pm. Pacific Time, Monday through Friday.

There are five of us answering phones at Chocosphere, where we speak fluent Chocospherian. We try hard to answer all calls personally during normal business hours, but occasionally one slips over to voice mail. If you call and end up in voice mail, please leave a message. We will do our very best to call back promptly. If by chance you don't hear back from us in a reasonable time, please call again during our normal business hours.

We each have varying levels of experience. It is our goal to happily serve you the very best chocolate!!

Finally, and very importantly, our web site lists our service commitments as to when we ship an order based on when the order is placed. However, we certainly understand there are circumstances where you may want us to process an order faster, when you need your chocolate “now”! If you need your order shipped faster than our listed service commitment, please place your order online letting us know of your need in the “Comments” section, and then call us (503-692-3323 x 0 for Customer Service) to let us know. We can't guarantee early shipping, but we always try hard to provide chocolate happiness to our valued customers.

If you want us to send a copy as an email every time there is a new issue or to tell you about special offers, please create an account at chocosphere.com and check the newsletter box.

Topics:

If you have a topic you would like us to cover in the newsletter, please drop us a line: customer‑service@chocosphere.com and we will be happy to include it in a future edition.

Fax 503-692-1494