The start of ChocXO
While in my first year of college, I took a few blocks of bulk chocolate from my father’s candy factory and sold them to professional chefs, which led me to start Qzina Specialty Foods in 1982 from the basement of my family home. Recognised years later as one of the largest importers and distributors of fine chocolate and specialty pastry ingredients in North America, I supplied top chocolatiers, pastry chefs, cruise lines, resorts and fine dining restaurants with some of the world’s finest chocolate, dessert and pastry ingredients.
In 2013, I sold Qzina and set off to satisfy my lifelong dream of making my own chocolate from the bean, and so the brand ChocXO was created – the two last letters symbolising my affection for chocolate (kisses and hugs). ChocXO started as a bean-to-bar chocolate company that used only fine flavour cocoa beans which are naturally nutty, fruity and less bitter than traditional ‘bulk’ cocoa beans. We use only a small amount of organic sugar to underscore our chocolate’s already delightful taste, without any substitute sweeteners or natural flavour enhancers.
Growth, change and challenges
In late 2019, we saw the demand for ChocXO’s high cacao and low sugar dark chocolate beginning to trend at a pace we knew we could not meet, with our plant’s current capacity. So that autumn, I attended the Pack Expo trade show in Las Vegas on a quest to select and secure additional equipment. Decisions were not complicated, as we had already purchased much of the same equipment for our other lines over the past few years, and this project was just added capacity – the addition of third line. The only difference was that I wanted to add automated bar/caddy packing, which was something we didn’t have on our other lines. At that time, our strengths were bagged items and boxed chocolates.
We all know labour is becoming harder and harder to find, and the reality is that everyone wants to work in technology
By the end of 2019, we had signed all equipment purchase contracts. However, the new third line would not fit in our current plant layout, so we began the task of engineering production space expansion. This meant expanding production space into existing storage warehouse space. In order to maintain adequate storage space, I was fortunate to find additional space in an adjacent building, allowing us to use the area in our existing facility for line three. Of course, this posed a challenge for our company because we were in the middle of a huge period of growth, with little to no time to shut or interrupt our current production lines.
ChocXO’s Coconut Almond Butter Cups and Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups are made with simple organic ingredients and are low in organic sugar
Thanks to our outstanding engineering and maintenance team, we were able to plan and work around existing production and facilitate the expansion project with minimal disruption. We have always strived to build a world-class plant, and in doing so, my philosophy was to purchase the best equipment on the market.
As we continue to increase our brand’s footprint across North America, more production and storage space means increased opportunity for ChocXO. Our upgraded plant will allow us to increase throughput and efficiency, and with added capacity, we will be able to double our sales.
In the middle of a pandemic, we not only had to accomplish this facility expansion, but also install most of the equipment. This included many pieces from Europe, without the benefit of having suppliers technicians on-site, due to travel restrictions, closed borders and lockdowns. Despite the challenges, we were able to complete the project on schedule by June 2021. It’s humbling to think that in the last five years we’ve spent more than $25 million on upgrades just in the plant. We bought the Delta, B.C. plant as we outgrew Irvine in 2015. In the early days, we would produce nut butter cups at one third the speed that we do now and with six times more staff. The turn of the new decade has brought many challenges, but I’m ecstatic for what’s to come for us, and the chocolate industry overall.
The North American chocolate market
The North American chocolate market is growing quickly, especially as consumers are more educated with the known health benefits of dark chocolate. At ChocXO, we make high cacao content items, which contain more of the healthy antioxidants and flavanols that would typically be diluted in traditional brands with more sugar. On top of that, our products are naturally low in sugar; there is a trend not just in chocolate, but in the entire snacking category, towards healthier low in sugar snacks.
Our brand fits that channel perfectly, and we do it with real high cacao dark chocolate. ChocXO does not use flavour substitutes or sweeteners like erythritol, and we don’t believe that chocolate should be reinvented by food scientists. We are chocolatiers, plain and simple.
Technology is the future
Delivering on the growing demand for ChocXO’s healthy high cacao and low sugar chocolate was made possible by streamlining processes, automation and capacity expansion. I am a manufacturing lover as much as a chocolate lover and combining both is a passion of mine. We added capacity first, as our brand was growing quickly and we needed more production. In doing so, there was a built‑in opportunity to modernise and capitalise on technology. We all know labour is becoming harder and harder to find, and the reality is that everyone wants to work in technology. It seems that fewer people want labour-intensive jobs, so we designed our expansion and upgraded the rest of our plant by adding high-tech robotic caddy/bar packing machines, automated case packing machines, high‑speed flow wrappers with integrated feeding systems, as well as more automated chocolate delivery, filling, inclusion and mixing technology, most of which is run from touch screens and computers.
This expansion reduced the need for manual labour positions and increased the need for more technically trained staff. This fits well into the new world of technology, automation, and even supervision oversight of production using technology, while at the same time making ChocXO cost effective.
What’s next for ChocXO?
As our sales grow, both in our contract and branded channels, we realise our current plant can’t be expanded further. In addition, our volume is becoming too big for our geographic location, meaning that as our plant grows north of $100 million, it needs to be closer to our customers and the concentration of population.
We have recently contracted for the purchase of 11 acres from the City of Rockwall (Economic Development) just outside of Dallas, Texas, and are designing a new 204,000 square feet state‑of‑the‑art production facility, which is scheduled to start construction within the next 12 months. This new facility will be designed to add an additional four manufacturing and packing lines and will include equipment for innovations, such as whole nuts inside fillings; whole or chopped nuts on top of molded items; thin-shell items; filled items made with 85 percent cacao chocolate; multi filling items; and large and small bars with fillings with inclusions and ‘on-clusions’.
In short, ChocXO is a young brand, with huge potential and growth opportunities and I am pleased with the prospect of bringing better chocolate to chocolate-lovers worldwide – one expansion and product innovation at a time.
About the author
Richard Foley is the CEO and Founder of ChocXO. He has more than 40 years of experience in the chocolate industry working with top chefs and chocolatiers. In 2014, Richard set off to satisfy his lifelong dream of making his own chocolate from the bean. He created ChocXO’s first factory in Irvine, California, sourcing fine flavour cocoa beans from Central America.
