Notable Edible - Cape Cod Chocolatier
Had Rob and Carol Cronin never opened Cape Cod Chocolatier in 2002, working to build their gourmet chocolate business to where it is now – expanding to meet demand – theirs would still be a sweet love story. In 1983 Rob walked into Suzanne’s Bakery in Pocasset, owned by Carol’s parents, and her eyes lit up. “It was love at first sight,” Rob states. At least, it was for him. He thought it was for her as well. “I was excited because they had hired him to be the night baker, which meant I didn’t have to do it anymore,” Carol laughs. Rob eventually won her over, and the pair were married four years later.
When it came time to take the leap into business ownership, Rob was armed with info. Having studied at the American Institute of Baking and worked in the food service industry for well over a decade at the point, the pair opened their first Cape Cod Chocolatier shop in Sandwich. “I wanted to open the classic American candy company,” he remembers. Rob had gleaned nuggets of knowledge as he worked to help client bakeries, candy stores, and bakery departments of larger stores around New England, New York, and Pennsylvania.
Despite the combined experience of the duo, it was a tough road at times. Carol and Rob opened a second location on the Hyannis/West Yarmouth town line a year later. “Neither place could really make it on its own,” Rob points out. So, they opened the Centerville location in the Bell Tower Mall in 2008 to consolidate the operation. That was also the year of the housing market bust that sent the economy reeling. “We were way over-leveraged,” Rob bluntly states. Having left the corporate world years prior, it was back to the food service industry for Rob in 2010. “Those first ten years were rough.” Rob would work a full week and come to the shop and make chocolates on nights and weekends. “I would plan my vacations around Christmas, Valentine’s Day, and Easter, and come here to make the chocolates leading up to those busiest seasons.” Over those eight years, Rob was able to invest in equipment to make things easier. One example is the lift they installed for cooking one-hundred-pound batches of caramel. It also has an agitator to stir the caramel’s ingredients, freeing Rob to do other tasks.
It remained that way until 2018 when Rob was able to finally step off the corporate ladder he had been climbing. “I used to be sort of a somebody,” Rob says as both he and Carol have a good laugh. “Now I’m head cook and chief bottle washer.” Oh, and Rob does point out another silver lining. “I went from working one hundred hours a week to sixty. It felt like I was retired.” Now, Rob and Carol, and their small team of three part-time employees, work year-round in preparation for the winter holidays – by far the busiest time of the year. The summer months are filled with wedding and event favors as the small boxes of chocolates they assemble put the “goody” in guest goody bags.
The number of products Cape Cod Chocolatier turns out in a year would be impressive if they had an army of help. The fact that it is the equivalent of three full-time employees producing it makes the amounts all the more remarkable. Rob and Carol go through 8000 pounds of imported Belgian chocolate a year making items by hand with minimal automated assistance. “We make our own truffles,” Carol explains. “I don’t know of anybody else doing that, and they’re by hand.” Rob adds, “We need to make 20,000 truffles by the first couple of weeks in December.”
There are six hundred different packaged items for sale on the shelves of Cape Cod Chocolatier. This number doesn’t include the dozens of chocolate choices available by the piece on display in the two rounded glass front cases where customers can mix and match to make their own personalized box.
The Cronins have seen how tastes have changed over the years. A chocolate-covered cracker akin to an unsalted saltine, a favorite for decades, has faded, and chocolate-covered pretzels have exploded. Even the pretzel breakage from the shipping, which would normally get tossed, gets a coating of chocolate. “We had a really good customer asking for pretzel bark,” Rob explains. So, he figured out how to coat the pieces to seal out the humidity and sprinkle it with salt. It was a huge hit for Cape Cod Chocolatier. “Who knew? Now I have to break pretzels,” he laughs. They have also seen their Cranberry Thins, made with cranberry concentrate from local Cape Cod bogs, overtake peppermint as the top selling thin. It’s easy to taste why. The filling is sweetened just enough to balance the usual tartness of the cranberries. The nonpareils are another fan favorite: dark or milk chocolate discs in the shape of a sand dollar (Cape Cod Chocolatier’s logo) covered with white sugar pellets for the dark chocolate or multi-colored sugar pellets for the milk chocolate. “I can’t make enough of them,” Rob exhales. For some of us, chocolates begin and end with the caramels. Dark or milk chocolate, theirs is the rich decadent caramel that is just the right consistency. It’s not too stiff where it’ll give your jaw an ache. Nor is it too gooey where you need to pop the whole piece in your mouth for fear of it running onto your chin or clothes as you take a bite. Orange peels, pineapple – there so many different chocolate-covered flavors to select from, choosing what to try next can be a challenge.
The underlying connection to all the items available is quality. Cape Cod Chocolatier only uses imported Callebaut chocolate. The dark chocolate has a 54.5% cacao content yet is remains sweet and not bitter. The milk chocolate checks in around 30% cacao. With the higher grade of chocolate being used, and the labor intensity of hand-making the chocolates, how can they stay competitive in the retail market? “The volume we produce allows us to be competitive,” Rob explains. As a testament to the appeal of Cape Cod Chocolatiers’ chocolates, several local cardiologists and dentists are some of Rob and Carol’s best customers.
Online ordering has exploded since Cape Cod Chocolatier improved their website in the wake of COVID-related shutdowns, and it’s not just shoppers from faraway places making purchases. “People still go there and order, and they swing by to pick them up,” Carol says. Another pandemic-inspired change was to buy two storage containers to hold the massive amounts of packaging needed to ship their products, including disassembled boxes and bubble wrap to avoid any supply chain hiccups nearly every business faced back then. “It takes two weeks just to assemble all of the boxes for Christmas,” Rob claims.
At an age when many people start looking to wrap things up when it comes to their careers, Rob and Carol are ramping up. At the time of our meeting, they were close to putting the finishing touches on their new, larger retail space two doors down from their present shop in the Bell Tower Mall. The new site will be their expanded retail store. The current retail location will be made into a much larger production facility than their current back room to keep up with demand and offer a roomier area in which to work. “I can have a real office,” Rob enthuses. With all apologies to Mama Gump, life is like a box of chocolates, but when it comes to Cape Cod Chocolatier, we do know what we’re gonna get and that’s something wonderful because it’s Rob’s passion. “To me it’s life. It’s not work.”
Cape Cod Chocolatier Bell Tower Mall
1600 Falmouth Road, Centerville
508-790-4674
capecodchocolatier.com
