Chocolate makers hoping for sweet success

BOZEMAN (AP) — It feels like entering a little enchanted world when you walk into La Chatelaine Chocolat Co.’s shop.

Hidden in a tiny remnant of pine forest off Bozeman’s busy West Main Street, you pass the sign with French art nouveau calligraphy, drink in the seductive smells and find display cases full of jewel-like chocolates.

Have you died and gone to heaven?

Not until you’ve popped a handmade champagne truffle into your mouth and had the rich dark chocolate and soft creamy center melt on your tongue. Wow.

La Chatelaine is the dream of a handsome couple, Jean-Pierre Wlady Grochowski and Shannon Hughes Spratt. ‘‘To offer the very best chocolates, beautifully designed, that was our goal,’’ said Hughes Spratt, 36.

‘‘We wanted to bring the flair of both our backgrounds,’’ said Grochowski, 40, who speaks with the accent of his native Paris. He is the grandson of Polish diplomats who had the good fortune to be in Paris when World War II broke out.

‘‘I’m from France, and she’s from New Orleans,’’ he said. ‘‘We wanted to combine those and give our own taste.’’

They started their business a year ago in a rented kitchen behind a casino and met customers at the back door.

In a matter of months, they’ve built up La Chatelaine (French for lady of the castle) from a single glass display case the size of a hat box, to a charming shop with two large display cases they built themselves. They’ve expanded their line of creations from eight to 22 kinds of chocolates.

Bozeman, it seems, is ready for a gourmet chocolate shop. There hasn’t been a chocolate maker in town since the closing of downtown’s popular JoNae’s Chocolate Factory several years ago.

La Chatelaine is aiming for an even higher level of sophistication. Besides making chocolates with traditional flavors like coconut, caramel and espresso, the couple is experimenting with chocolates flavored with green tea, sea salt, chili powder, black peppercorn, candied violets, rose petals and geranium extract.

They take pride in using fine single-origin chocolate, from exotic places like Tanzania, Madagascar, Venezuela and Sao Tome. To connoisseurs, origin is as important to chocolate as to wine.

A matter of taste

If La Chatelaine succeeds, it will owe a lot to timing. Premium chocolate sales in this country soared 28 percent in three years, from $1.4 billion to nearly $1.8 billion, far outpacing the 2 percent to 3 percent annual growth of the overall $15.7 billion U.S. chocolate market, The Associated Press reported.

‘‘It’s like a revolution,’’ Hughes Spratt said of the gourmet chocolate industry. ‘‘It’s just exploding.’’

Still, they’re nervous about whether their dream will survive. Will people pay $2 for handmade chocolates? Some customers are a little shocked to see a box of 13 priced at $25.

‘‘We really can’t compete with Costco,’’ Hughes Spratt said. But customers seem to be accepting a premium price for premium quality. ‘‘Now people are more interested in, ‘What origin is this? It’s really sweet.’’’

Grochowski said, ‘‘We don’t cut any corners with quality.’’

The top national brands use additives to extend the shelf life to several months, he said, while La Chatelaine uses organic cream and eschews preservatives. It means their chocolates only have a shelf life of two weeks, but they have homemade freshness and flavor.

Even to an uneducated palate, its like the difference between tasting a chocolate chip cookie right out of the oven and the store-bought version.

La Chatelaine’s timing is also good for the Bozeman market, which has a growing number of businesses that cater to gourmet tastes, from the gentrified Joe’s Parkway, to food businesses like On the Rise bakery, Montana Fish Co., Rocky Mountain Seafood Co., and Plonk wine bar.

It’s ironic, said Grochowski (who goes by ‘‘Wlady,’’ pronounced ‘‘Vlady’’), that Europeans are flocking to American fast-food restaurants, while Americans are getting interested in and educated about higher-quality European foods.

Launching a dream

Their dream of making premium chocolates was born on a cold night on Hughes Spratt’s living room couch over glasses of red wine.

She had just quit her job as a writer for an investment company. She remembered how she used to watch the clock at work. She could hardly wait to get home to experiment in her kitchen. Then she would stay up late, researching the chocolate business.

‘‘This has been a dream of both of ours,’’ she said. ‘‘I thought if I’m going to take the plunge, I better jump in now.

‘‘I wanted to do something I was passionate about and be a business owner.’’

Both had dessert-making businesses in the past. Grochowski said he has been interested in food all his life, growing up in France with a mother and grandmother who were fantastic cooks. When he was 10, he asked for a cookbook for his birthday. ‘‘I wanted to make desserts,’’ he said. He still has the cookbook.

Hughes Spratt, growing up outside New Orleans, asked for an EZ-Bake oven. She and her brother played restaurant.

Once they had the idea for La Chatelaine, a key moment was attending a business conference at Montana State University. She remembered taking notes as Greg Gianforte, founder of the RightNow Technologies, talked about how to ‘‘bootstrap’’ a business.

‘‘We really took in everything he said,’’ she recalled. That means not incurring a lot of debt, Grochowski said. ‘‘We started with basically nothing. We borrowed against our home.’’

They also sat down with Roger Klingman, owner of the former JoNae’s. ‘‘I think he was prepared to say, ‘Don’t do it,’’’ Hughes Spratt said. ‘‘He encouraged us to start very small, and not to go downtown’’ to avoid the high rents.

‘‘It’s a leap of faith,’’ she said. ‘‘It’s still a little scary.’’

In July, they rented the back half of their out-of-the-way building, behind Café Zydeco and the Round House sports shop. In November, when a real estate office moved out of the front half of the building, they took a risk and expanded into the larger space.

They’re glad they did. The business is growing steadily. They reinvest the money they make back into equipment, which costs thousands of dollars.

‘‘I think well make a profit this year,’’ Grochowski said.

Another key moment was when they brought their chocolates to Judy Wantulok at Joe’s Parkway to ask if she would carry them.

‘‘She was the first one who believed in us,’’ Hughes Spratt said. ‘‘I remember walking in — she took one bite and said, ‘Yep, we’ll do it.’ That was our launch.’’

French connection

Chocolate may be a romantic business, but it’s also a lot of hard work. In their back kitchen, the couple makes all their own shells by hand, rather than buying them pre-made.

It’s hypnotic to watch as Grochowski pours molten dark chocolate into plastic molds in the shape of hearts or round bonbons.He flips the tray over to pour out the extra chocolate, leaving a coating on the mold, which is refrigerated to form the shells. The shells are later filled with ganache, which is made by mixing cream with chocolate.

One of their business secrets is their French connection. Grochowski’s mom finds wonderful new molds in France for them. And he was able to sweet talk the Amedei chocolate company in Italy into letting La Chatelaine carry some of its renowned but pricey, $12 bars.

Hughes Spratt sampled Amedei chocolate, viewed by many as the best in the world, when she traveled to Perugia, Italy, in October for the Eurochocolate festival. It draws up to a million visitors to celebrate what the festival calls the ‘‘food of the gods.’’

‘‘She tasted it and said, ‘Oh, my God, this is unreal,’’’ he said.

La Chatelaine also sells fleur du sel (‘‘the platinum of sea salt’’) and traditional butter cookies from Brittany.

Chocolate is also a dirty, demanding business. The couple wears black aprons in the kitchen because chocolate gets on everything. They worked around the clock at Christmas, and more long hours at Valentine’s Day and Easter. It’s a lot of work, in addition to their duties as parents of a combined five children.

‘‘We have our discouraging days,’’ she said. ‘‘After you have truffle elbow from dipping (molds) for the thousandth time, it’s not fun.’’

‘‘It’s just us doing it all,’’ Grochowski said.

When they are in ‘‘the depths of despair,’’ Hughes Spratt said, they go to their answering machine and play back a message they may never erase.

The message is from actor Henry Winkler, who was in Bozeman last summer for the filming of ‘‘A Plumm Summer.’’ Someone had given him a gift basket with their chocolates.

‘‘It was amazing what he said,’’ Grochowski recalled. ‘‘He said, ‘There’s nothing more beautiful than your chocolates — your chocolates and fly fishing.’

‘‘So,’’ he said, ‘‘we have hope.’’

Information from: Bozeman Daily Chronicle, http://www.bozemandailychronicle.com