Meet Rebecca Hess of The Cleveland Chocolate

Today we’d like to introduce you to Rebecca Hess. 

Hi Rebecca, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstories.
I have worked in Cleveland area restaurants for over fifteen years and started my first culinary job at Chez Francois in Vermilion, Ohio down the street from where I grew up on a blueberry farm. The independent hard work lifestyle that was long and grueling proved to be beneficial for me in my introduction to the culinary world since these things were a part of my everyday life. I started off learning the basics and traditional French cooking techniques at Chez Francois. My next opportunity came at Table 45 a worldwide cuisine restaurant inside a hotel where I learned new flavors and cooking styles. While employed by Table 45, l was promoted and moved into the banquet department, where I was now experiencing a different style of large volume catering cooking, I was eventually promoted to managing the banquet/catering department within the Intercontinental Hotel. 

I was able to witness the farm-to-kitchen movement as the Sous Chef of Spice Kitchen and Bar / Farm. To see an operator who really cared for the ingredient in its purest form and the process it was born was truly inspirational. I developed a lot of relationships with local farmers and used a lot of those resources to help me pivot into my next role as Chef de Cuisine of Urban Farmer Cleveland. My prior hotel experience and newly developed relationships with farmers in the area lead me once again in a large volume kitchen operating a fine dining restaurant with many facets with the Weston Hotel operating simultaneously. In March of 2014- (current) My husband and I opened a private chef services/ catering company where we have worked with professional athletes, movie stars, production sets, private events, and catering to Cleveland’s elite & discreet. 

In early 2018 I started to receive fresh cacao in the mail through a weekly tropical fruit subscription where I first developed my taste for chocolate in its purest form. I wanted to learn and experience the whole process, so I started by fermenting the cacao and then dried it. Next, I roasted, hand-cracked, and winnowed the cacao (winnowed: a separation of the thin husk or shell from the seed). Then I refine them in my tabletop mélanger, a stone grinder that will transforms the broken pieces of cocoa nib into pure liquid chocolate. Once the chocolate was finished refining with the sugar and conching (conching: a reduction of acidic properties in the chocolate, done by aeration) I hand tempered and made my first bars. The chocolate making and experimenting continued to grow over the next year, and so did the batch sizes. I quickly realized that this was growing into much more than just a hobby and at that time I enrolled in a chocolate production course in Las Vegas, at the Melissa Coppel Chocolate School. Spending time in the kitchen with that level of expertise and attention to detail was instrumental in tying up a lot of loose ends and questions I had with the finishing and tempering techniques with chocolate. After some continued planning and working with my brother our designer (Matthew Traxler) our branding and designs were born, and we secured a beautiful space in the Fairmont Creamery building in the Tremont neighborhood in Cleveland, Ohio. The retail storefront offers a clear look right into the bean-to-bar chocolate production space. The Cleveland Chocolate Co. opened in February 2020, and I am operating the business in all regards from financials to chocolate making from a 450 sq ft spot. 

The transition to the chocolate world seemed unlikely at the time, but it truly touched many aspects of cooking with the fermenting, roasting, refining, and molding/production. It has all my favorite food hobbies tied into one. My unique skill set of working with flavors and pairing flavor profiles and looking at things from a “batch” cooking side of things allows me to work efficiently and to provide what I consider a very well-balanced chocolate bar. I source my cacao fair trade and organic from the best possible supply chains available. Chocolate has such few ingredients, so you really must find the best possible ingredients available. I really want to showcase the regions and unique flavor profiles of the bean itself. 

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Gravel roads have always been more fun than pavement. The struggles that come along with opening a new business in a new field of work were to be expected. I had to field the permitting and licensing process with the city, the process was defeating and difficult at times and it took almost six months just to get the health inspection completed so I could finally start to build inventory. Then, two weeks after reaching our grand opening date (February 25th, 2020) non-essential businesses in Ohio were shut down due to the Covid-19 pandemic. After a short closure and implementation of additional safety measures and the addition of a contactless pick-up option I was back up and running, every day has its own set of challenges to keep me on my toes. 

Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I am the owner and operator of a bean-to-bar chocolate company, and we specialize in single-origin, organic, and fairly traded chocolate bars and other bean-to-bar confections. The farmers I use for my cacao supply are paid a sustainable wage and no child slave labor is used, which plagues the industry. I believe that the process is just as important as the final product, how the cacao is grown and harvested should be considered when you pick up your next chocolate bar. The FDA has no legal definition for dark chocolate so setting yourself above the competition is necessary. Most accomplish this by price-cutting, using inferior products, and/or fancy packaging developed by a marketing team. If you consider most chocolate bars should be labeled sugar bars and not chocolate since cacao usually is the second or third ingredient on the list for most mass-produced confections. I enjoy that cacao has its own distinct flavor profile depending on the type and region it comes from. I specialize in single-origin dark chocolate that is stone ground. This sounds simple but is a process not commonly used in the industry since most will buy a cocoa liquor product and will melt and brand as their own. 

Is there a quality that you most attribute to your success?
Resilience. Every day is an uphill journey for a small business, and you must be self-motivated. When you are the one making the decisions, you need to be able to make the decisions and be able to admit your mistakes and when you need help. It will not always be easy but you have to be able bounce back and be your own self-motivator at times because being a small business owner also means you never stop working. 

Pricing:

• Our chocolate bars are $7.00 ea. the cost is approximately 2-3 times above the average commodity chocolate bar cost, the price reflects the higher wages that we pay the farmers for the organic cacao and the highest quality organic ingredients.

Contact Info:

• Email: info@clevelandchocolate.co
• Website: https://www.clevelandchocolate.co
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cleveland.chocolate/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClevelandChocolateCo
• Other: https://linktr.ee/Clechocolate

Image Credits
Sharon Hughes