Happy Chocolate Day
Mark Leger is the editor of Huddle. This is a weekly column that features opinion, analysis and reflections on Huddle stories, podcasts and business news in the region.
Back in 2007 Janet and I lived and worked for several months in Ghana, West Africa. I taught reporting skills to young people publishing a paper in a Liberian refugee camp and did journalism workshops around the country. Janet helped Ghanaians living with AIDS/HIV set up small businesses. While we were there, we immersed ourselves in everyday life as best we could, eating Ghanaian food, travelling and meeting people and taking part in community celebrations and events.
One of those events, it turns out, involved eating lots of chocolate. That year, the Ghanaian Ministry of Tourism and the Ghana Cocoa Board launched a PR campaign to change Valentine’s Day to “Chocolate Day” to boost chocolate sales across the country. Cocoa has long been one of Ghana’s biggest export products, but not consumed much at home.
I was happy to do my part, feasting on chocolate as Janet was leaving for work that morning. “Save some for me,” she said.
Now, we don’t have cocoa farms in the Maritimes, but we have chocolate and candy makers of national and international significance, and they’ve been featured guests on the “Home Office” podcast. I wrote about one of them in a newsletter column a few weeks ago, Peace by Chocolate.
Tareq Hadhad’s father Isam was a chocolate-maker in Syria with a successful export business but lost everything after his factory was bombed during the war. Tareq has since helped him rebuild the business in Canada and now employs people in Antigonish and is developing markets across Canada and the U.S. for their products.
Podcast: Syrian Chocolate Maker Joins Ranks of Cod-Fathers And Code-Fathers
Near the end of the podcast, I began to crave chocolate after talking about it for an hour. I joked that it was like talking to a brewmaster or a chef with no beer or food on hand. I said I’d bring chocolate to our next interview.
On this week’s “Home Office” podcast, I chat with Bryana Ganong, the CEO and president of the St. Stephen chocolate and candy maker, which will be celebrating its 150th year in business in a couple of years. I came prepared for my conversation with Bryana, a box of dark chocolate Ganong Chicken Bones Bark at my side.
Podcast: Bryana Ganong And The Chocolate Factory
Bryana has been in the family business for decades, starting as a summer student on the factory floor and eventually becoming president and CEO, part of the fifth generation of family members working in the business. Bryana’s birthday is also on Valentine’s Day, and when she was young would pose for a picture every year for the front page of the local paper.
The company has expanded and innovated over the course of 150 years and now employs around 300 people. It still makes its own branded products, with customers frequently sharing stories about their memories associated with Chicken Bones, peppermint candies and boxed chocolates going back decades.
But she says manufacturing for other global candy and chocolate companies has become a very important part of the company’s continued growth. It’s also making St. Stephen a more diverse community with immigrants moving there to help fill their labour force needs that can’t be fully met through the people already living there.
My interview with Bryana is part of a series we put together for Valentine’s Day weekend, celebrating the chocolate makers, big and small, throughout the region.
Cherise Letson did a story on a company just up the road from Ganong in St. Andrews, McGuire’s Chocolates. Owners Mark McGuire and Victoria Myers make their chocolate out of fermented cocoa produced by small farmers and profit-sharing co-ops. The company got its start three years ago when McGuire was traveling in Nicaragua where he first learned how to make chocolate from fresh cacao.
They opened their St. Andrews shop in 2019 and have continued to grow throughout the pandemic, shipping to new retail clients in Atlantic Canada and Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia.
“We just take it as it comes, but we found the chocolate business itself continued to pick up momentum and we’ve been shipping chocolate regularly without break,” McGuire told Cherise.
Elizabeth MacLeod wrote a story on Adorable Chocolate in Shediac. The co-owner, Frédéric Desclos, grew up making chocolate and pastries in Bretagne under the tutelage of its fine chocolatiers.
“Every morning he does everything by hand, there’s no manufacturing – every piece is made by hand,” account manager Jonathan Keeley told Elizabeth.
Trevor Nichols profiled Julien Rousseau and Nathalie Morin, the owners of Rousseau Chocolatier in Halifax. The couple is so busy making chocolate for other people (they once created a chocolate dome to hold an engagement ring) that they haven’t celebrated Valentine’s Day themselves in 13 years.
“We’re always just so exhausted and there’s just really no time to even think about it, or plan it,” Morin told Trevor. “For us, Valentine’s Day it’s more like a good meal at home with a good bottle of wine.”
Near the end of my interview with Tareq when I was craving chocolate, as I am again as I write this, I told him the story about that Valentine’s Day in Ghana. I jokingly said he should copy that campaign for his company. That’s the theme in our house at least, something we’ve said on Valentine’s Day every year since 2007.
Happy Chocolate Day.
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Banner photo: submitted.