What do we think is important about our business?

We’ve founded Seth Ellis Chocolatier on a set of assumptions, ones we use as yardsticks for the choices we’re making to get this shop off the ground.

• We will be open, honest and welcoming in our business dealings with employees, customers, vendors and others in our field. Our collective experience in the food, restaurant and hotel business has shown us that transparency isn’t always a hallmark of our trade! The progress we’ve made in creating this business is directly attributable to those people, in large companies and small, who have been willing to offer honest feedback to us, and to share their personal experiences and gleanings. As firm believers in “what goes around comes around,” we will do likewise.
• We are committed to excellence in taste, appearance and packaging of chocolates. Our proclivity as artisans is to excel in those aspects of our craft most interesting to us, or areas of focus closest to our strongest skills. A chocolatier with a design bent may sometimes create gorgeous confections, but give taste shorter shrift than is wise. A chocolatier with a history as a cook might focus on taste and palate, when attention to packaging and presentation might be needed to give their great tastes a podium for success. Despite how seductive a specific part of our discipline is, we will give equal attention to all three aspects of our craft, taste, appearance and packaging, will drive our product and business decisions accordingly.
• We will be forthright about our choice of ingredients and processes. We will strive to bring high-quality ingredients to our customers. We will present the stories behind the ingredients, and allow our customers to understand where our chocolates come from and how we make them. We’ll also try to engage our customers in conversation about our ingredients and processes, and use these conversations to help shape our products.

While there are several more principles we use to drive investment and business decisions, these three precepts are the ones most directly affecting what you, our customers, vendors and peers, see of us from outside the company.

(And underlying all of these are the two basic questions we ask ourselves to test if we’re on the right track personally: Are we doing good? and Are we having fun?.)

Back to: Who are we?, onward to: What’s the back story?