We must get this question 100 times a week. We make or craft chocolate, starting with cacao beans from 12 countries, and follow a 12 step process converting beans to various forms of chocolate. We are FDA approved food manufacturer. We make 104 unique bars, each with subtle nuances and variations you will only find in hand crafted chocolate manufacturing. Each step builds on the previous, and with minimal automation, most are done by hand including the molding and packaging. Why artisan you might ask? Because the big chocolate companies have equipment that is cost prohibitive and doesn't make financial sense until you get to a bigger operation. How do you compete with the larger companies? We can't and don't. We have...
It's hard to believe this is year 5 of Kyya Chocolate. I remember the first year, when we were trying to figure how to sell a chocolate bar. Our first year sales were $5,500. It was discouraging. My quota at Dell Computer was $40,000,000 annually. I remember being up late at night or maybe it was early in the morning, and nothing worked, it was too hot, too humid, the temperer acting up and I just wanted to quit. But grit persevered. I remember early on when we visited Askinoise and Mast Brothers, leaders in the craft chocolate industry, and was blown away (and still are with both of them). Now, 5 years later, we have hit our stride....
We are excited to take a road trip to Nashville next weekend (March 17-19) to hang out with some of our single origin kindred spirits at CoffeeFest Nashville.
We are excited to share our single origin chocolates with the Southeast Coffee folks. We're taking our Single Origin Chocolate Syrups and our Coffee Infused Chocolates, including Guatemalan, Colombian, Uganda offerings, along with our 30+ single origin bars.
We're looking forward to meeting new friends.
2016 was an exciting year of growth. Kyya has become mid-sized bean to bar chocolate maker, creating 35 different chocolates under the Kyya Brand, and 9 private label bars and 10 collaboration bars with business partners in various markets. Beyond the cacao itself, Kyya's agility is our greatest asset. As we enter our next growth phase, we believe that infused chocolates, and specifically coffee infused, is a customer trend that will continue to grow. Coffee infused chocolate was 22% of our sales last year. To that end, we want to offer our services and partnership to more Coffee Houses beyond our local region. Kyya's name comes from the Greek, KAIA, meaning simple and pure. Since our ingredients are also...
My dad and I were involved in the Boy Scouts growing up. The Boy Scout Motto has always been "Be prepared". The motto in engineering school was, "you don't have to know everything, just know where to find it when you need it". And at Microsoft, our motto was "have a Plan A, Plan B and Plan C, as things never go as planned". The single most challenging event I ever was a part of was the original XBOX launch, where we got to Plan "G" before it was all said and done. As Kyya enters it's 4th year of operations, these words continue to ring true. We spent thousands of hours creating hundreds of batches of chocolate to learning every aspect of the...
