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If you ask around, you’ll find there are a number of fun food factories in St. Louis that offer tours and behind-the-scenes glimpses. There’s Schlafly and A-B Inbev and various area wineries, of course. There are the windows at Fitz’s and the Donut Drive-In where you can watch root beer being bottled and a donuts being flipped in hot oil, respectively. And if you call up Midwest Pasta Co.. owner David Burmeister and whisper sweet nothings into his ear, he might just let you take a spin through his pasta factory.
(There are no tours offered at downtown’s Tums factory, incidentally, and that’s an indigestible crime.)
Soon, you’ll be able to tour an automated chocolate factory in St. Louis, too, and you don’t have to be a kid to get really, really excited about it.
Dan Abel Jr. of Chocolate Chocolate Chocolate has announced the candy manufacturer will consolidate operations into a 30,000-square-foot chocolate factory now being built at 5025 Pattison Avenue, just north of the intersection of Kingshighway Blvd. and I-44, in the Hill neighborhood. The factory is scheduled to open in mid-July, Abel said, with a grand opening event in the first or second week of August.
“This has probably been my lifelong dream,” said Abel. “I feel like this is why I’ve been doing this, is to one day have this, to build a factory.”
The factory will allow the chocolate manufacturer to unite disparate candy kitchens for Chocolate Chocolate Chocolate, which has eight retail shops in the area, along with the recently rejuvenated Mavrakos Chocolates line, and the storied Lake Forest Confections shop in Richmond Heights.
“We’ll have a brand new 100-foot line as our main chocolate enrober,” said Abel. “Our current one is 35 feet long, and this new one will be wider, too, so we will be able to make six-and-a-half pounds of candy per minute.”
The best part for us is that visitors can go on a free tour of the factory.
Here, Abel describes what that will be like:
“First, you’ll put on a paper hat that you’ll get to keep, that says ‘Chocolate Chocolate Chocolate’ on it, for purposes of sanitation. You’ll enter a special touring area on the factory floor, that we’ve actually designed the factory around. You’ll walk down the hundred-foot line, and see all four stages of production. You’ll look through windows into the candy kitchen. You’ll see the soft-center candy molding room, where we cook centers for things like English toffee, butter caramels (below left), and truffles (below right). You’ll see chocolates on big marble slabs. You’ll smell the chocolate and hear the machines. You’ll be able to see two tons of liquid chocolate bubbling in stainless steel tanks.”
“We make about 500 different products,” he added, “so the factory experience will always be changing.”
For those who’ve been waiting for the answer to a certain question, here it is: Tour-goers will receive free samples in the form of one to two pieces of whatever chocolates are being cooked that day, said Abel. (We're hoping it's chocolate-covered-Twizzler day.)
The tour will end like so many do in the postmodern era – in the gift shop. “We’re going to have a factory outlet store that will showcase all our brands -- Chocolate Chocolate Chocolate, Lake Forest Confections, and Mavrakos,” he said. “You can shop three local candy companies in one little store.”
Defying the doldrums of the recession, “the last four years have been our biggest four years,” said Abel. His chocolates are available at all 23 Dierbergs stores, and he manufactures chocolates for other companies, as well as for mail order, corporate gifts, and wholesale; so on top of the eight retail locations, that makes for plenty of demand. “A lot of old-time candymakers are retiring, so it’s nice to be able to step in and fill that void with our chocolates, too,” he added.
That’s why he’s excited to have “ten to fifteen times [at the new factory] the capacity we have now,” he said. “Now we have multiple candy kitchens and multiple warehouses; I can’t wait to consolidate and continue our growth.”
Noteworthy seasonal treats will be made at the factory, too, so guests can come back to see items like peppermint bark (Christmas), heavenly hash eggs (Easter), chocolate-covered raspberries (Mother’s Day), chocolate ghosts (Halloween), and pumpkin-pie truffles (Thanksgiving) being made during the appropriate months.
Newcomers to the Chocolate Chocolate Chocolate experience might consider such top sellers as the International Truffle line, featuring such flavors as Italian espresso, German chocolate cake, French vanilla, California pistachio, Swiss chocolate, European extra-dark chocolate, carrot cake, Southern grasshopper, and raspberry.
Veteran customers can feel reassured that all the retail locations will remain in business. That includes the original, 31-year-old Chippewa Street shop, a literal stone’s throw from Ted Drewes, in a very sugary part of town.
Abel says that the new factory will celebrate its christening with an Italian “Hill truffle,” with a center yet to be determined, available at the Grand Opening.
“But the first piece of candy to roll off the lines is going to be our signature item,” he said, “a chocolate-covered strawberry.”
Chocolate Chocolate Chocolate
5025 Pattison
Call 888-222-7710 in July to arrange tours
