Dude, Sweet Chocolate

At Dude, Sweet Chocolate we concoct, manufacture, distribute, and retail dark chocolate inspired creations as our core business. Our product line is very fluid and seasonal, but usually contains fudges, truffles, toffees, nuts, artisan chocolates, and basically anything else our chef decides to improve by introducing it to cacao.

Dude, Sweet Chocolate traces its roots to a dive bar just south of downtown Dallas, Lee Harvey’s, where co-founders Chef Katherine Clapner and Redding May were regulars. Heading towards the holidays in 2008, he partnered with her to send unique artisan chocolates as client gifts while working with Merrill Lynch. After that, she ran with the idea – pushing her chocolate creations in summer heat at farmers markets and the like. Mid-year 2009, she brought up the idea of opening a store, and the first small kitchen/store was built-out and opened in early December that year.

POTOMAC CHOCOLATE

Potomac Chocolate is an American craft chocolate maker based in Woodbridge, Virginia. Founded in 2010, Potomac was the first bean-to-bar chocolate maker in the Washington, DC metropolitan area.

Hand-crafting every bar, I work to coax out only the best flavors from the cacao bean in every step of the process—from roasting, cracking and winnowing the cacao beans, refining and conching, to tempering and molding the final bars. In order to highlight the beans’ flavor, my chocolate is made with only two simple ingredients: cacao (cocoa beans) and sugar, with no added vanilla, cocoa butter or emulsifier. To learn more about my chocolate-making process.

Since then, Potomac has continued to grow and improve. My chocolate is now available in many locations across the U.S. with a few in Canada and Europe. It has been highly reviewed and has even won a few awards.

Now, several years in, I am more hooked than ever. I continue to research and experiment to learn everything I can about chocolate and the chocolate-making process. While my equipment and process is radically different than when I began, my goal remains the same: to make the best chocolate I can.