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The First Customer
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The First Customer
The First Customer - How a 350-Year-Old Chocolate Brand Still Breaks the Rules with Dan Abel Jr.
In this episode, I was lucky enough to interview Dan Abel Jr., the Chief Chocolate Officer of Bissinger’s Chocolate.
Dan shares how his family grew up immersed in the candy business—starting from a small family-run operation in 1981 to acquiring and leading the iconic Bissinger’s brand today. Dan walks us through their unique family dynamic, how each sibling found their place in the business, and what it’s really like behind the scenes of a chocolate kitchen—from caramel science to flavor innovation and why making candy is as much art as it is chemistry.
Dan also dives into the story behind Bissinger’s newest luxury product, the 1668 Collection, a meticulously designed line of shell-molded confections inspired by the brand’s royal French heritage. With flavors like cinnamon pear caramel and blood orange truffles, Dan describes how he personally locked himself in the R&D lab to bring this vision to life. Dan also touches on seasonal creativity, overlooked fruits like pears, why certain candies have stood the test of time, and what makes Bissinger’s chocolate different from the rest. It’s a delicious blend of tradition, innovation, and entrepreneurial storytelling—perfect for anyone curious about the business of chocolate.
Step inside the kitchen of Bissinger’s as Dan Abel Jr. shares the flavors, stories, and craftsmanship that define the brand in this episode of The First Customer!
Guest Info:
Bissinger's Handcrafted Chocolatier
http://www.bissingers.com
Dan Abel Jr.'s LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-abel-jr-15541765/
Connect with Jay on LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayaigner/
The First Customer Youtube Channel
https://www.youtube.com/@thefirstcustomerpodcast
The First Customer podcast website
https://www.firstcustomerpodcast.com
Follow The First Customer on LinkedIn
http://www.linkedin.com/company/the-first-customer-podcast/
[00:00:28] Jay: Hi everyone. Welcome to the First Customer Podcast. My name's Jay Aigner. Today I'm lucky enough to be joined by Dan Abel Jr. He is the Chief Chocolate officer.
Bissinger's Chocolate. God, that was a lot. Hey buddy, how are you?
[00:00:40] Dan: Good. How are you?
[00:00:42] Jay: I'm good. All right. Where did you grow up and did that have any impact on you being, the Chief Chocolate Officer?
[00:00:48] Dan: I grew up in St. Louis, which is where the company is headquartered. And, my parents started a candy company before I was alive in 1981, and then we acquired Bissinger's six years ago. So we are six years into the 350 year existence of the company.
[00:01:06] Jay: and, just give me, like, give us the, we talked about this before, but give me kind of the quick family tree slash corporate structure.
[00:01:13] Dan: my parents came in 81. They opened the business in February, got married in May, so they still in the business, still married, since then. And then my brother, sister, and I all got involved. I mean, we grew up like. Working in the, you know, working in as 12, 13, 14 year olds in the business. And then as we got through school, we all got in a different time.
So we're about three to four years apart. Each one of us and all have kind of different roles inside the business.
[00:01:42] Jay: And how did you guys sort out who would do what?
[00:01:45] Dan: You know, I think it was, the funny thing is I was one of our head candy makers at the time when we were a much smaller company, and then my brother came in about four years later when he got outta school. Started to work in our candy kitchen, so he kind of took over that role. But I was doing sales and traveling to see customers and helping make candy.
And so I love, I mean my favorite part of the business is actually making and RD and development, but I was kind of split between two things. So it allowed our kitchen to have a really good full-time second person in the kitchen that, you know, didn't disappear every two weeks to go on a sales trip.
And so, yes, he kicked me outta that position, but it was needed, so I needed to go out and sell what they're making. And then my sister, she just has a business mind, so, you know, accounting and payroll and, you know, corporate orders and everything else. Like, thank God one of us could handle that. 'cause I, like, she'll go on vacation and I have to, you know, reconcile the books every day.
I'm like, oh my God.
[00:02:43] Jay: It's the worst. That's my least favorite part of business.
[00:02:47] Dan: for sure.
[00:02:48] Jay: I have so many questions. why do we only have candy from like the fifties? Like, why is there like Baby Ruth and Snickers and like, all, why? I mean, maybe it's not the fifties, but like why is there not new like smash shit candies all the time?
Is there, is it really like. They found the formulas to these things that everybody loves and knows and they've been marketed to death. Like why is there Snickers and only like, you know, 50 other kind of main
[00:03:08] Dan: think, I think that's a great question. It's kinda like, you know, we're in St. Louis. It's all about, you know, Anheuser-Busch beer town. And like the reason Budweiser became the king of beers is 'cause they invented the refrigerated railcars. So they found a way to get a refrigerated product to other, you know, bars across the country before anyone else did it.
And I think it kind of goes to why the fifties and candy, because it's so perishable that it melts. I think the technology of refrigerated trucking and refrigerated rail cars started then. So it was, candy was everywhere and there was probably a thousand candy companies in the United States from the twenties, thirties, forties, and fifties.
But they were all just regional. So you know, if you're in Philly, you went to your local, you know, baker down the corner, baker, corner florist and corner candy maker. Now it's becoming. You know, you'll, it'll travel like Bissinger's products travel all over the country. We have customers in Alaska that order Bissinger's, where a hundred years ago, 95% of, or 99% of our business would be a 10 model radius.
[00:04:11] Jay: What is a head candy maker like? Give me, like, bring me in the kitchen. Like what is happening in there? I don't understand. Like I, it's all, it seems like so simple, but it's like there's some magic happening in there. What is going on?
[00:04:22] Dan: Yeah, it's so there's more art than anything to it. So the in inside the candy kitchen, there's chocolate is not even introduced. So that kind of happens next. So we're working with butter and, nuts. sugar, different types of sugar. There's liquid sugar, there's cane sugar, different fruits.
And so at Bissinger's we make our recipes have layers. So take like a raspberry cream, for example. You think, oh, that's simple. Raspberry cream. That's the piece I don't eat in the candy box. Well, when you try a Bissinger's raspberry cream, that's the, you know, that'll be the piece that you'll want next time. Because we make, you know, first thing we do is we make a French fondant, which is very different than your.
Other kind of extruded creams. It's very dense. it's very smooth and creamy. And then the second thing is take fresh raspberries and cook them and make our own raspberry flavor with the real fruit. We do that for all of our fruit creams, orange and lemon, and strawberry and raspberry. And then we combine those two things together with the fondant.
So it's different, you know, types of sugar coming together and you're cooking and you know, if you stir it too fast or if you cook it too high a temperature, you'll grain the sugar, which makes it like chalky. You or if you don't stir it enough, you know, you can burn it so you can scorch, it can grain.
And so just the technique of stirring the kettle and it's a big copper kettle is so important to the taste and the quality of that confection. you know, butter is a butter and whipping cream and milk are very sensitive ingredients that can burn very easily. So with caramel and toffee, for example.
We're balancing the flame of the fire in the kettle with how we, you know, slowly add the ingredients. So I'm confident if I gave you our recipe and all of the ingredients, your caramel would taste different than one of my candy makers caramels.
[00:06:05] Jay: Is there like a finite number of combinations that make sense when it comes to candy or you just, there's just like unlimited forever.
You
[00:06:13] Dan: Oh, it's unlimited.
[00:06:14] Jay: Like come up with new stuff forever.
[00:06:16] Dan: And we try to like, we love limited edition runs and seasonal runs like we have been, Bissinger's started in Paris, France, and it's only was mid 18 hundreds where they came to the United States. So as we create new collections, we try to give like Europe a little bit of personality and the United States.
So one collection, for example, we, for Autumn, it's two caramel and nut square pieces. So one was an apple cinnamon. pecan piece. So pecans, an apple popular you know, flavor profile in the United States, but pears and walnuts are very popular in France. And so Bissinger's, standard pecans, caramel chocolate, we call a bear claw.
You ready for this? The pear walnut one, pear claw. So, a lot of it is a little bit of wittiness on our end and then, but we'll make, you know, two batches a year. It goes in that autumn collection and then we move on to the next thing. So we couldn't really come up with a fun apple cinnamon name, but we're working on,
[00:07:18] Jay: I'm a great names guy, so just hit me up when you have,
[00:07:21] Dan: we have a Halloween skull collection and one of 'em is a blood orange and one of 'em cinnamon or pumpkin, sorry, pumpkin spice and apple cinnamon. And then the final one is cookies and scream.
[00:07:31] Jay: There it is. See that's the,the right up my alley. I will say you sent me a sample box, which made it doing 249 episodes before this one worth it. so thank you for that. I mean, just Fanta, by the way, we did talk and I told you Perry is my favorite. you told me this story.
[00:07:48] Dan: Oh, send 'em in there. Yeah.
[00:07:50] Jay: you told me the story of like this was you getting back in the kitchen to kind of prove that you still had it, which obviously that sample box proved that you did.
Can you tell me that story again? Like how, why were you in there monkeying around with stuff again, when you're your big business guy?
[00:08:03] Dan: I always say like. You know, five of the seven nights the week I wake up at three in the morning and it's not something I'm proud of, like, drives my wife crazy, but I always get up 3:00 AM I have these thoughts, I write 'em down, I try to, you know, try to go back to sleep. But one of them, like two years ago was this, I wanted to create a new style collection of all shell molded pieces.
And, you know, so every mold is about five grand, so it's nine different molds. So it was gonna be a very, very expensive endeavor to do it. And so I had been putting it off and I really was thinking about. Each, you know, each piece, and to truly make it special and having that box open in a different way that it slides open.
And I wanted blue, which is a non Bissinger's color, but we figure it's this Paris blue. It kind of, it really leans into the history. So this thing has just been compiling and I'm like, well, how do I close this box? Oh, let's just melt wax on it and stamp stamped the Bissinger's crest on it. So all of these things were coming together.
And we had it designed, we had the color, we called it the 1668 collection because that's the first year Bissinger's was appointed the confectioner to the Empire by the King of France. But we had not designed a single flavor in the box yet. And so usually what we do is we create a product and then wrap packaging around it.
Well, this was a complete brand exercise in the opposite, and so. Everybody was kind of asking me, because, you know, we have deadlines and we're coming up to our 2025 deadline. Now we're doing the, you know, the holiday photo shoot in about two weeks. And if it's not in the Christmas catalog, by then it's over.
You know, you go to next year. So we were coming up to this deadline and we had the molds and we had the boxes, and we had the wax, and we had the stamper, and we had everything. And I was just, all right, I gotta get this done, I gotta get this done. So I locked myself in the r and d lab. And normally what we do for r and d is my sister, my brother, my head candy maker myself, sit down at our conference table in just informal so we could, you know, we may, they may have extra time at three o'clock on a Tuesday and I say, Hey, let's go talk about, you know, things or, you know, whatever.
It's at least once a week. Sometimes bourbon's involved, you know, sometimes beers involved. You never know where, what inspiration gets to us. And I always sample and we talk about ideas, but they were just like. Once this guy, I said, oh no, you, no one gets access. And so I locked everybody out.
and I came up with eight flavors and everyone has a story behind it. and you know, kind of this like combination in my mind of why I did this one for that one. And I can go on and on about the brand story of each one and, but I fell short on the ninth one. I was just like, I can't. I can't come up with one.
So I kind of threw, I kind of pulled something out of thin air and it was the cinnamon pear caramel, which was this beginning concept of the pear claw that I was telling you about. And everybody loves that. But it was with walnuts and it was, you know, so, and that's a chewy different style. Caramel, not the soft one.
So I kind of took the recipe for that and tweaked that and handmade it, and it's like the favorite. And I was even talking to someone the other day since we talked about this. And they're like, oh, I love your 1668. I was like, oh, what's your favorite one? And they're like, oh, it's cinnamon. Just
[00:11:08] Jay: Yes. That's what I said. That was my favorite. It was great. We don't, you hit a, you hit an interesting point. I always like, I love pears and I think I'm partial to 'em because we had a like wild, there's like a wild pair. There's like wild pears are somewhere where I grew up. Like there's all these trees everywhere and you like get 'em and you can, and my grandma had anyway, but like. Americans don't appreciate pears as much. They just don't like, it's weird, like they're such a great fruit. I love it. So, I mean, my
[00:11:36] Dan: Yeah, apple strawberries and raspberries are the
[00:11:38] Jay: Yeah, it's just the apple and, I don't know,
[00:11:40] Dan: cherry. But if you wanna go like very artificially, like Cherry's gotta be like, you know, what's your seven 11? What's the big slushie to the red cherry? You know,
[00:11:48] Jay: Right,
[00:11:49] Dan: it comes to the clean, natural, I would say it's, you know. it's hard to make, like we've tried to, 'cause we only work with natural real fruit.
It's hard to make a blueberry truffle taste really good because like blueberry and watermelon, it's juicy. It's Melanie, there's, but there's really not a lot of flavor like
[00:12:07] Jay: comes in, you know, oranges and lemons and limes. If so much acid in them, natural acid in them, that, you know, that punches and so certain fruits just don't work.
Yeah.
[00:12:16] Dan: You kick that artificially
[00:12:17] Jay: does pear work? Dri pear works great. what's your thoughts on chocolate? dipped fruit,
[00:12:24] Dan: So I love it.
[00:12:25] Jay: different. Okay. All right. So chocolate chip, chocolate dipped. Strawberries are in.
[00:12:29] Dan: Every we make them every day, every
[00:12:31] Jay: Do you
[00:12:32] Dan: Yeah. my brother and sister, that's one of the things they do every morning.
[00:12:35] Jay: Okay. How often do people ask you to bring free samples? is your trunk just like full of free sample chocolate right now?
[00:12:42] Dan: I get like, I'll be 95 degrees on the golf course. Like, you didn't bring chocolate. I'm like, not, no, not today. but the other thing is like, I love, you know, giving out the product we make. So I love giving people chocolate and having 'em taste it and seeing their reaction. You know, I'm watching.
There's always, it's always like a, you know, there's no such thing as a free, you know, sample, right? So I'm giving you a free sample, I'm watching your body language and I'm seeing
[00:13:07] Jay: Oh yeah.
[00:13:08] Dan: is. And so all of that is my own little market research. we just created a new piece for one of our new, big endeavors is we're launching, retail in Florida.
And I created this new coconut piece and I had, I brought it 90%. My brother and our head candy maker had an idea for the last 10%. And it's what makes it so remarkable like that, that last 10% is amazing and, of how they caramelize the sugar in it. But, everybody's loving it right now and we're very proud of that one.
And we've been sampling it. and that's kind of like my, you know, I think that will be the new cinnamon pair.
[00:13:44] Jay: All right. I love coconut, so I think, I think I'm gonna have to, try that one when it comes out. are you, do you just like swear off normal? Do you eat any normal candy outside of what you like?
[00:13:57] Dan: I love peanut m and ms. I just think they're amazing.
[00:14:00] Jay: Okay, so you do eat some I was gonna say, I was gonna say like, gimme an F Mary, kill. For mainstream chocolate candies. So it sounds like I know what the F is. what about marrying, kill,what is
[00:14:11] Dan: I would say Mary
[00:14:13] Jay: Twix. Okay. All right. Okay. And what about Kill? Which one?
[00:14:17] Dan: Hershey Bar.
[00:14:18] Jay: Hershey Bar.
[00:14:19] Dan: Can't do it.
[00:14:20] Jay: Wow.
Tell me why you can't do it. I can, I feel like I know the answer to this, but tell me why you hate it.
[00:14:28] Dan: it's just not my flavor profile. I mean, they're, we really like a, I don't even know if they're using. They change their recipe and it's different in different places. So I don't know if they're using cocoa butter in the chocolate or, but it's just to me, does not taste
[00:14:43] Jay: It melts weird.
[00:14:45] Dan: Yeah. I think they're using different fat instead of the cocoa butter.
So cocoa butter's the natural fat in the chocolate. When you crack open that bean, there's the white stuff that's just the natural fat, the cocoa butter, that's really like the food of the gods. I mean, that's the magic. That's where the smell and the texture of chocolate comes from. And then there's the chocolate liquor.
Just brown. And that's the cocoa, you know, it's like brownie, like chocolate. So you bring those two together. and so what's the most expensive? It's the cocoa butter. So how do you cut costs? You know, either remove the cocoa butter or put very little in it. so, and it just, it's just not my thing. I just never liked a cursive.
I mean, I was 12 years old and I told my dad one time, I was like, I don't like this. And he goes, oh,
[00:15:20] Jay: I mean, to be fair, like you grew up in a situation where you were able to say that like you are, like, we have a better alternative here. I, it melts weird. I'll say that. Like if you see it, like if it's a hot day, like it stays together, but it's like mushy and like it doesn't like melt.
[00:15:37] Dan: Different. Yeah. and that's that different type of fat, like cocoa butter has that wonderful melting properties. And so it's, just not my thing, but like number one chocolate bar in the world. So like, you know, they sell more in a minute than I make it a year. So like, I'm not.
[00:15:52] Jay: marketing is king. That's, we definitely know that. what's your dentist say about your life choices? Does he judge you?
[00:15:58] Dan: Oh, he loves it. He's
[00:16:00] Jay: bet he does. He probably is. Like, I just come on in your whole family. We need your whole, the whole family in. Oh, I love that. well back to like the business side of things and like the actual point of this podcast, because as you could imagine, you know, me thinking about how I'm gonna put this show together and then you guys making chocolate since like the 16 hundreds, like the first customer sure, you could go with the King of France or whatever.
What I'm curious about, like how well do you know your customer today? Like who are they today? Like if you were to go to draw a picture of them, who is it?
[00:16:33] Dan: I, that's a really good question. And I, so at Chocolate, Chocolate Company, this is the company my parents started, I grew up in the business and it, after just. Doing it for so long. I, we created products to our customer and our customer likes really fun things, really dessert forward items. So like we created a caramel fudge, brownie truffle instant success.
We created a waffle cone, caramel chocolate bar, instant success, a cannoli chocolate bar, instant success, happy birthday bar, instant success, and that to learn. That took us a long time to figure out that, you know, that really fun, bright, you know, bright colors, vibrant packaging. Great photography and then taking some great dessert and bringing it into chocolate.
So when we acquired Bissinger's, and so I had been born and raised in St. Louis and Bissinger's has been here for almost a hundred years. and they were, you know, they were the high-end, you know, luxury brand of the town. So I very much knew I was, you know, I shopped in the same malls where they had locations and so I was not immune to not knowing who they were at the surface.
But my biggest fear was, oh my gosh. I'm gonna make the wrong product because I don't know the customer. And so the first year I pretty much, you know, the first catalog, 2019, it was, there was nothing new. It was, we just, you know, our goal was maintain continuity of business and consistency. And then, you know, we're coming into 2020 thinking that it's gonna be a, you know, a big year for new product development and COVID, which actually it was because of COVID.
And everybody was buying online, I would just go have our photographer take a picture of a new product, put it online, send an email newsletter to a hundred thousand of our closest friends. And we would know right away if it was, if our customer liked it. So because of that, you know, good size customer base we had with our text marketing and online marketing and catalog customer base, we learned very quickly.
And so who are they? They, really like the finer things in life. And so it's not that they're, I don't, and I don't like to say it's an income level thing as much. Because we're not a car. You know, you can, if you want to go spend a little bit extra money on a box of chocolates, it's obtainable.
And we're in, we're very much of a gift giving brand. And so, you know, if your wife's birthday, it only comes around once a year, so why not go spend an extra $10 on a box of this really premium handmade confection that you know has the brand story. So, because we're not. That chocolate bar you get at the checkout aisle every single time you go to the grocery store, which is once a week, you know, when that product goes up, a dollar, that's $50 a year.
When our product goes up $2 you and you buy it three, four times a year, that's eight or 10 bucks. So, it's a, you know, and I just think that's the customer that appreciates fine wine craft cocktails, you know, just kind of the finer things in life where you just kind of step up and really about foodie as well.
[00:19:29] Jay: And do you use that information about the profile of your customer? To pick where to advertise or pick what shows to go to or pick. Like, tell me about kind of how you execute on the strategy of like going after those profiles of people by now that you've spent some time identifying them.
[00:19:47] Dan: The big thing is with, we still print a catalog. we do seven national catalogs a year, and that's one of my favorite part of.
[00:19:54] Jay: I want one, by the way. I want one of these catalogs. You keep
[00:19:57] Dan: Oh yeah.
[00:19:57] Jay: I want one badly. I
[00:19:58] Dan: just because you said this, drew, you'll probably get an Instagram
[00:20:01] Jay: I'm sure.
[00:20:01] Dan: and you'll get a, you'll get a CATA plug in the mail. Yeah, we're, you know, we're starting to dip our toe in ai and it's, I was talking to my brother the other day about, you know, he was redoing his garage and I was like, oh, you should do, like, you know that epoxy one where you put the paint
[00:20:15] Jay: the little paint chips?
[00:20:17] Dan: What ad did I get served on my Instagram feed
[00:20:19] Jay: Oh, of course. yeah. They're listening. They're listening. For sure.
[00:20:22] Dan: but yeah, the catalog, I mean, we spend so much time on this photo shoot, you know, it's a big deal and how we present the, you know, and it's, it's one of my, you know, like I said, it's one of my favorite parts about it. So we're not just like, here's a picture of a product in a, you know, everything is so meticulously thought out.
And how we present the brand is, you know, in the voice and vision of the brand or in that catalog. But what we do is we take our list. and now AI is getting better, but we analyze it and we find not five or 10 or 20 data points. We find like 200. And then we take that to look at for prospecting as well.
So for, you know, and then we, for retargeting we're trying to retarget our existing customer that, you know, maybe hasn't committed to a purchase but is going to. So a lot of different metrics for that. Our newest, you know. Kind of thing. So online catalog, direct to consumer, all is one category. And so as we're looking at different acquisition models and different ways to market, we're using that data and we're using, you know, in those funnels.
wholesale is, we know we have standards for wholesale, so we wanna be specialty, we wanna be in boutiques. We're not gonna go in any discounting. We're not gonna be under, you know, under retail. We're not going to. Go in big box, we're not gonna go into mass because, and nothing against those, like typically the big mass accounts are kind of like the, you know, when you made it in life as a chocolate, you know, as a brand, right?
If target comes knocking and that's the most exciting thing. But for us, we still hand make every single confection and so we just don't have the bandwidth to properly serve a target with, you know, handmade bissenger confections. So we really go into more smaller. Specialty boutiques and, like Barnes and Noble for example, they came on board in, the end of 2023.
Phenomenal fit for Bissinger's. There's just great people, but the consumer, you know, someone that comes in and likes to read books all the time and just understands and appreciates the finer details, which is what really, but Bissenger is. I always say that, you know, the, because of the brand history and because of the product's truly handmade, the brand has so much soul, just like, what a, you know, what a book is has.
And so, but the, but that's kind of how we approach wholesale. And then our newest, latest, and greatest idea is we're gonna open 10 luxury retail boutiques and luxury locations across the United States.
[00:22:48] Jay: Beautiful. Well, I thought I was gonna be safe hearing about ai, but you somehow mixed the AI into chocolate, which is quite an impressive feat. white chocolate imposter or misunderstood genius. Is it good? Like what do you think about white chocolate? What
[00:23:04] Dan: So there's like, I always say like, it's the paper test. If you take a like something white chocolate and put it against a piece of paper, if they match, it's not real. You take our like a white chocolate truffle and put that against a piece of paper. Ours is very yellowy. You know, it looks white until you compare to something that's whiter.
but the cocoa butter, which is that, you know, really good special ingredient inside the cocoa pot. It's not actually white. It's kind of more of an ivory
[00:23:31] Jay: we use real, you know, cocoa mass. Cocoa butter from the bean to make our white chocolate.
How big of a spike did you see in sales from Forrest Gump? And, life is a box of chocolates. Anything? Was there any correlation? No.
[00:23:43] Dan: No.
I was eight years old, but I think, I'm sure there was something there. Yeah.
[00:23:47] Jay: I had to ask. So what's next? I mean, you're gonna open a bunch of stores. you know, I think you mentioned expansion and buying different things and doing stuff.
Like what is the vision for the company in the next 5, 10, 15, 20? Like, what are you guys trying to be? Just keep who you are and kind of grow your footprint. Are you trying to be something new and different? what is the future hold?
[00:24:06] Dan: I think that, so I've been listening to a lot of podcasts and one
[00:24:11] Jay: This one, I'm sure. I'm sure this is on the top of your list, but Go
[00:24:14] Dan: Yeah, for sure. And I mean, all different and really like, you know, there's like five or 10 that I listen to consistently. And, one of the things that I, you know, I hear over and over again is like, when, you know, businesses make mistakes, you know, it's tuition.
You know, that's your education. And so I feel like we've made. The right mistakes over the last 10 years. Like we wanted to go really big at one time and we invested a lot in very automated high speed, bigger production lines, and we got into some really high volume truckload size orders and we just hated it.
And I always say like sometimes when you get too close to the sun, you can get burned. We didn't get burned financially or lose a customer or upset anyone. We just realized it's not like our core DNA is we, like, we still like stirring a kettle. You know, of sugar and making it into something magical.
we're like the only ones that wanna do that. Everybody else is, you know, comes in and loves, you know, I talk to everyone in the industry. They love automation. They're looking at how can we run the product faster with less human touch. And so what we wanna do is continue this trajectory of growth, but we're going back to buying those smaller production lines.
So the lines that we bought 15 years ago, we're buying those again. And it's just a team of three. It's very slow and it's, everything's very handmade. And so that's the model. So instead of having four big lines, we wanna have 15 small lines. and it allows very small batches, everything to be very handmade, everything not to run too fast, where you're starting to lose quality.
So it's kind of this reverse logic of the 20 25, 20 26, but it's really, you know, as I. As I study and you know, who do I watch? You know, and outside chocolate, it's like, this is what Hermes is doing. This is what Rolex is doing, this is what Omega's doing. and they're truly, everything is handmade. And, you know, with, they have to train people in their way of doing things and they're truly, and so I'm, I've been more inspired by that lately of, you know, like I look out there, I'm like, oh, there's someone else as crazy as we are.
and so that. Parlayed with our own, expand our own, you know, retail brick and mortar outside of St. Louis is kind of the next, I would say, two to three year vision. Also wrap, wrapping up, we're wrapping up a two year construction project where we're doubling the size of our factory. So this has been going on.
We're like, probably it's gonna be finished in September, so it's a. It's been a long process. Like even this morning they were, they had nine cement trucks out front pouring concrete. So it's been fun to see, like, I love controlled chaos, so it's been fun to be in the middle of a job site. 'cause it's, the expansion is connecting to this facility.
So I don't have to walk far to go on the job site.
[00:26:55] Jay: I like that. Do you trust people who say they don't like chocolate, and should we be watching them closely?
[00:27:00] Dan: no. Unless they're allergic to it. I'll give 'em the benefit of the doubt if their body rejects it. But if. If it's either, either you, they can't be trusted or they just haven't had the right chocolate
[00:27:09] Jay: Right. You go, that's the right answer. Can you, is it possible to do any of this at home? if I, my, me and my daughter love to bake, like, is, would it be possible to like make a small batch of something at home that's not terrible?
[00:27:21] Dan: I do it all the time. I mean, I
[00:27:23] Jay: Well, I mean, you do. I'm not, I mean, you gotta, yeah, you do.
let's not say, can Dan make it at home? I'm saying can I make it at home? I, no, you can, you could make it in the, like under an underpass. I'm talking about like, could I acquire the right things at a reasonable price to just like make some good chocolate candy at home.
[00:27:42] Dan: You can. So, you know, ba baking is properly combining the right recipe and stirring and letting the oven kind of do the work. And there's a little bit more to it than that. I don't wanna offend a baker listening to it, but chocolate is more about, you know, like if I say, you know. Slowly, you know, take the sugar butter, you know, when whipping cream and milk and slowly stir it on a open, you know, stove on a low flame, the electric oven, you know, electric stove versus a gas stove.
I mean, everything's gonna be different. I would do it, walk in and just kind of see it and understand it and just look at it. But, so there's so much more, it's like so much unwritten rules to do it, so you could you do it Absolutely. Tempering, chocolate's challenging because you can't just take salad chocolate, put it in the microwave and let it melt.
You actually have to slowly melt it and then, kind of bring it to a really cold temperature and then heat it up again. So there's, but like, you know, I think there's probably a good TikTok video on how to take temper chocolate now. And, so it is doable. if you wanted to like, take chocolate, melt it and dip strawberries, they may not be it could be dry.
Dry. They could dry out of temper. So they may look streaky a little bit, but they'll still taste or.
[00:28:53] Jay: I've done the chocolate covered strawberries thing. I'm thinking more like, you know, you know, like a, like the little squares, like make something that I could,
[00:29:01] Dan: I mean,
[00:29:01] Jay: Or something, you know? I don't know. I don't know. It just seems like a fun family project. You know, something to.
[00:29:07] Dan: the thing I would like caution with, like caramel, we, you know, we cook to the, you know, 2 40, 2 50 something like coffee cooks to 300 and you know, if it burns you, it really hurts. then also like, but like say for example, like if you're frying something, if you're frying something, you know, and like a little bit of oil shoots out at you, it just, it like stings for, it's like a bee sting.
It
[00:29:31] Jay: second
Yeah.
[00:29:32] Dan: 10 seconds, but caramel doesn't come off
[00:29:36] Jay: Sure. yeah. I
[00:29:37] Dan: continuously burns. And so I would say like, if you're gonna be cooking with it. Really be, you know, cautious and, you know, I don't want anyone to go burn themself and hurt. 'cause you can take off skin at 240 degrees and it's
[00:29:48] Jay: Oh, yeah.
[00:29:49] Dan: odd.
So, but it can be done
[00:29:51] Jay: All right. Well. If I make any, I'll send you some and get some feedback, and my box isn't gonna be as fancy as the one that you sent me, but I'll put something together. All right. I have one last question. Non-chocolate related, non-business related. This is just for Dan,
[00:30:07] Dan: one.
[00:30:08] Jay: not the alien one. I already asked you that.
What would you do if you could do anything on Earth and you knew you wouldn't fail?
[00:30:17] Dan: Wow. I like it. What would I do if I could do anything on Earth? And I knew I wouldn't fail. And it's not a business, it's just
[00:30:30] Jay: Nope. No business, no chocolate, just something that you want to do that you're probably afraid of doing you're afraid of failing.
[00:30:41] Dan: You're stumped me. I don't know.
[00:30:43] Jay: Oh, come on. I've never, I've ne people take a long time. I've never stumped anybody. I gotta, you gotta gimme something.
[00:30:49] Dan: Meet me halfway. gimme one. Gimme like, what would you, how your response, because I'm really interested in giving the
[00:30:55] Jay: I mean, you know, like go to space, that's an easy,
an easy one. Yeah. something you've always wanted to do.
[00:31:05] Dan: We were talking to the guy that does
[00:31:07] Jay: I know I, yeah, yeah, yeah. You'd be surprised at how many people try to weasel out of this question, but I don't let it happen. This is not happening. You're gonna gimme, you gotta gimme something here.
[00:31:16] Dan: that space, I don't really, like dislikes or like space, but I'm like, that wouldn't be it. Let's see. if I couldn't fail.
I'd probably jump out of a plane
[00:31:29] Jay: There you go. Okay.
[00:31:30] Dan: would be like, I would, I think that would be fun, but I don't, you know, I like living, so I don't, you know, I try to be risk averse, so I think skydiving.
[00:31:37] Jay: Okay, fair enough. Good answer. See, I would've said, for me. Swimming with sharks is the answer, but next week I'll be turning 40 and my wife is taking me to dive with sharks. So I hope I don't fail. There is a chance I'll fail and I'll die, and this never airs. So if, nothing else, we just had a great
[00:31:56] Dan: Yeah,
[00:31:57] Jay: for 33 minutes, so I
[00:31:58] Dan: I was just gonna say at least we got this in, but if you don't have it published, then yeah.
[00:32:01] Jay: Yeah. Well my team will figure it out though. it'll be out, I promise. It'll be good. alright, well you're awesome dude. This is fantastic. I knew it was gonna be great. if you wanna find out anything that they heard about, from you today specifically, what's the best way to get in touch and then how do we buy this fantastic chocolate?
because I'm sure people are gonna be clam for it after this conversation.
[00:32:18] Dan: Easiest way to go to is Bissinger's.com. It's B-I-S-S-I-N-G-E-R-S.but you can also find out all the Barnes and Noble Stores Nation nationwide. select Dillard Stores Nation. Wide, and there's about a thousand other boutiques that you can find it as well. So, and hopefully in a retail store near you.
I've been traveling all over the country, so we've announced one location so far, but we have about six deals done, so
[00:32:41] Jay: Is this like the FIFA World Cup or like the, like people are clamoring for, to get. You into their city. They're
[00:32:47] Dan: I, I would love that to be the
[00:32:48] Jay: I'll start a campaign and get you
[00:32:50] Dan: I mean, we're not the Savannah Bananas just yet, but like, but hopefully.
[00:32:53] Jay: one in Philly. Put one in Philly. It's a great place.
[00:32:56] Dan: I love Philly. I keep going up to Philly and there's a beautiful mall there. I'd love to be there, but,
[00:33:01] Jay: King of Prussia.
[00:33:02] Dan: take Impress. It's a great mall.
[00:33:03] Jay: I was just there Sunday. so yes. All right. Well it was awesome talking to you, brother. Be good. Thank you for everything. Keep up with the awesome work and we'll catch up soon. All right, thanks Dan.
[00:33:10] Dan: much.
[00:33:11] Jay: See you buddy.