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All assets associated with the tag: Videri Chocolate Factory

Videri Chocolate Factory Coverage

Videri Chocolate Factory has placed a "golden ticket" under one of its 70% Classic Dark bars. If you find it, you will win $500 worth of Videri chocolate.



Raleigh shop offers 'golden ticket' worth $500 in chocolate 

videri

Sam Ratto's chocolates are great, but it's not what he's most proud of. 

Great chocolate, better priorities: Raleigh candy man mixes it with love 

Sam Ratto

Sam Ratto knows how to make some top-notch chocolate, but it's the way he runs his business, Videri Chocolate, that's truly impressive. 

Welcome back to WRL small business spotlight. I'm kevin Kozminski. And if you haven't noticed lately, it's really hot outside. That's why this week I'm at the warehouse district in Raleigh, checking out the perfect place to beat the heat with something sweet. Welcome inside the battery. Chocolate Factory. Sam ratto engineers the sweetness. Around here. He moved from California to Raleigh in nine with plans of running golf courses for a living up until 2000 and nine. I didn't know chocolate bar on a tree, but once he was introduced to the process, he took a career Mulligan, starting an entry level job at another factory. My job was to sort and roasted beans and I fell in love with it the first time I touched the beans. Just kind of a winding road that got me here. There was a lot to learn, but sam he's a quick study. I did a lot of reading and a lot of research. I did a lot of eating. Um, and then I just kept on refining it. So he opened battery in 2011. Ever since that point we've been making bean to bar chocolate in the bars, bond bonds, caramels, big blocks per cent stick selling cocoa Nibs to breweries and everything in between. Let's get back to that bean to bar thing for a minute. This is a bean that we turned into a bar of chocolate. Approximately 100 of these beans will make a bar of chocolate that many beans for just one bar means he's going to need a lot. So where does he find them? We get all of our ingredients from central and south America, mainly Ecuador, Dominican republic Guatemala and from whom one of my favorite brokers that I've ever met, walked up to me at a trade show and said I live in Belize, would you like to try my cocoa beans? And I was like sure, uh two years ago I went to her wedding in Guatemala. So building those relationships are being important to us. Sam takes this seriously not only for the quality of the chocolate, but for the humanity of the process. When we talk to brokers or farmers or co ops, we asked them how much they're paying each farmer and we ensure they're getting paid above Fair trade wages while that humanity extends across borders. It's also plentiful. Right here at home. During the pandemic, we added a roundup feature to our checkout process and we've raised over $10,000 for local and national charities that we believe in. Um in the month of june we just raised about $1300 for Rally Tribe and LGBT Center of Rally Everybody that works here is a part of that every month, somebody else picks in a charity that we fundraise for. When you treat people well, it's generally reciprocated and it was SAm who needed the support when the pandemic struck it just put a lot of strain like it did on most people trying to figure how to be safe. Still keep his employed, still pay your rent. It was pretty hard. He says things are slowly improving but are nowhere near back to north feels a little shaky because tourism isn't back yet. Business travel isn't back yet. The people in our community is just show up for us in the show up for them. So come on down and grab some chocolate or maybe some soft so and even take a tour. Sure your kids around the factory, see everything that we're doing and then walk up front and get samples and ask us more questions if you have them. I mean who can just teach themselves how to make chocolate, create ethically sourced organic treats, survive a pandemic and still give thousands back to his community. Well, the candy man can still being in business and raising money for our community is two things that I'm most proud of.

Videri chocolate owner brings the sweetness

Videri confections

When Videri Chocolate Factory opened in 2011 in the old home of Ess Lounge, soft serve ice cream was definitely not on the menu.

VCA spotlight: Videri Chocolate Factory to keep soft serve ice cream on the menu

Soft serve at Videri Chocolate Factory

Videri Chocolate Factory is a multiple WRAL Voters' Choice Award winner for best chocolate, but when the pandemic hit, they decided to start making ice cream. 

but very chocolate factory was founded in 2000 and 11 and we're bean to bar Chocolate Factory, and we get all of our beans that we make our chocolate from from Central and South America, specifically Ecuador, the Dominican Republic. In Guatemala, we bring them into our factory. We sort them. We roast them, we went on, we grind them way will find them, and then we turn them into delicious chocolate that you eat. We also make award winning bond bonds from that chocolate. So we've been open since 2011. We'll celebrate our nine year anniversary on December 15th of 2020 and right now, during covert times, we've opened up a delicious soft serve window way. Get a soft serve and way. Make all the toppings in house. Except for the rainbow Sprinkles and the gummy bears, everything is nut free and allergen free. So I was sitting out here in May of this year of 2020 right in the beginning of essentially learning how to run a new business, um, and I was actually sitting in the parking lot, and I was looking at this window, going eyes that would know too tall for people to stand at. Is it too short for me to stand inside? I wonder if I could serve ice cream out of that. And from that simple kind of idea, we got a soft serve ice cream machine. And then our team went to work on making housemaid Chocolate fudge with our award winning Ecuador 90%. Uh, caramel sauce, uh, cookie crumble Granola house made toffee All these different, Really fun toppings. So we're gonna keep serving soft. Serve ice cream in the winter time because people still love ice cream when it's cold. For some fun reason, Andi, then we're gonna start making our hot chocolate again so you can come get a hot chocolate If you don't like something cold in wintertime where you can still get soft, serve ice cream in the wintertime way. Can't thank the everybody who voted for us for the Voter's Choice Award for the past couple of years. It's such a pleasure and honor to win an award. That's voter, that the voters vote on us and say this is the best chocolate around

Raleigh chocolate shop finds success with ice cream