Long March Ahead
A quiet morning in the Queer Chocolatier Chocolate House in the Village in Muncie, Indiana.
Queer Chocolatier has been around since 2017. It is March of 2021 now and I’m a couple of weeks shy of both hitting a year of being closed to the public due to the pandemic and moving out of the Village altogether. There has not been a stretch of consistency with running my business, but that might just be the reality of being a queer businesswoman owning and operating a tiny business.
Moving into the Village
Cheri and I posing in front of our new place the day after signing the lease in December 2017.
I’ve mentioned more than once how Cheri has been my bedrock of forming my business. She is the one who encouraged me to find a space in the Village so that I could have my own kitchen and be near Ball State University to serve the campus community as well as the wider city.
Sometimes it is better to jump in not knowing what to expect.
Sometimes having expectations can make us hesitate to jump.
I’m glad I jumped.
Me posing with some of the furniture I built for the Chocolate House.
I learned countless things while building out the shop of my dreams!
I learned a great deal about construction and have a deep urge to build more things with my own hands.
I learned that bureaucracy can be challenging but manageable. Misogyny, however, cannot be manageable.
I learned everything takes so much longer than planned; it took almost a year to open for business.
I learned how to lay flooring.
I learned how to ask for help. I’m still learning this.
I learned to take pride in what I create.
I learned what I would do differently.
I learned that what I did—holding space—matters.
The inimitable Muncie Map Co. crafted this cocoa map of Venezuela for the Chocolate House as a beautiful piece of artwork and educational tool to explain more to customers about where my chocolate came from in the early days.
Collaboration and community
I got to meet and work with tons of people, businesses, and organizations over the years of being in the Chocolate House!
Muncie Map Co. has long been a trusted business partner of mine and their work never fails to take my breath away.
Flying Rhino not only provides some of the most delicious coffee I’ve chugged but sold me some of my initial pieces of equipment to build my shop.
Sis Got Tea is a new friend that I look up to and enjoy talking with as we both continue our entrepreneurial journeys, all while sipping tea and swapping cat photos.
I have the most extraordinary businesses as neighbors in the Village and love waving to them through my window and also visiting their cats or shooting the breeze with the humans. From reusing packing paper from Art Mart so that we don’t waste materials, to a socially distanced front yard hang outs with Travis and Sarah of VGR, to patio conversations with Martin and Kyle at the Cup, to window tappings at Gus of Travel Dimensions, to chatting about snacks with Sylvia at the Lash Boutique, to scarfing down delicious nachos and laughing with the folks at Chavas, to eating way too much cajun garlic bread at Yats and slurping bubble teas at Hoku Poke, I have been very comfortable weaving myself into the fabric of this little space in the City.
I and other Village businesses collaborated with the Riverside-Normal City neighborhood and made a smashing success of an inaugural $2 Tour of the Village during Welcome Week of 2019.
I’ve been honored to participate in a number of fundraising events for organizations such as United Way of Delaware, Randolph and Henry Counties; Boys & Girls Clubs of Muncie; Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky; and the Girl Scouts of Central Indiana (this opportunity gave me another opportunity: I was on WTHR-13 with my S'mores Truffles!). Organizations on along the coasts, such as GLAD (GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders) and The Pride Study at Stanford University, have purchased our truffles as a way to reward and acknowledge individuals in their communities.
We were even visited by Gloria Steinem and Amy Richards during Steinem's book tour!
Gloria Steinem visited Queer Chocolatier and Ball State University in December of 2019 during her book tour.
Her visit was coordinated by Betsy Kiel and the Women & Gender Studies program at Ball State University. To be able to discuss the importance of queer sober spaces and our name tags with pronouns with someone as well-reknown as Steinem in my shop was a gift I never knew I wanted or deserved.
Community, near and far or neighbors and icons, is everything.
Muncie organized a large Black Lives Matter March in June of 2020 shortly after the police murder of George Floyd. Photo credit: Benjamin Strack
Pandemic and Endemic
Shortly after the peak of Gloria Steinem's visit, the pandemic hit us hard and we fell toward the valley. We pivoted, we adjusted, but capitalism won out over humanity and public health, and the safest course of action I believed was to close to the public. I remain closed. Because a pandemic remains.
A GoFundMe was launched by a loving customer and uplifted Queer Chocolatier (and me in a deeply personal way) to allow us to survive in the early months of the pandemic as a reminder of the love a community can show.
We wanted to show it back.
Racism in our country is endemic. It is woven into the fabric of our nation and until we face it in ourselves and in our society, racism will continue to thrive.
When Muncie came together on a hot summer day to march from campus to City Hall to show that Black Lives Matter, we gathered donations of water and handed them out to marchers as they passed by our shop.
We wanted to care for those who were caring for others.
Queer folk know (or should know by now) that liberation for us is tied to the liberation of BIPOC individuals. Queerness isn’t the sole domain of white people; white queer people are already indebted to queer and gender-diverse POC.
We have work to do.
Queer Chocolatier is committed to the work.
Craft Chocolate Maker and Chocolatier
Community is what guides and energizes me as a businessqueer, but I also have a craft that I am devoted to learning and honing.
Without chocolate, Queer Chocolatier doesn’t exist.
Me working chocolate on granite. Tempering by hand is as much science as it is art, but it is tasty even when you mess up! Photo credit: my wife, Cheri Madewell.
I’ve made truffles since 2004, so I’m not far from twenty years in dabbling in this confection (which, this realization made my heart catch just a bit). I started with grocery store chocolate, mostly Ghirardelli.
Then, as I grew in my truffling, and as I went to school for Sociology specializing in the Sociology of Food and Agriculture, I started asking myself more questions about chocolate, where it comes from, how it’s made and under what conditions.
When I launched Queer Chocolatier, I made my first big decision in this exploration by selecting Chocolates El Rey as my source of chocolate. For the first three years of my business, I used El Rey not just for making truffles (and drinking chocolate and pain au chocolat) but also to share this educational journey I was on with others through Guided Chocolate Tasting Events.
Starting in the craft chocolate wilderness meant using a lot of DIY tools and learning from what others did before me. My first sack of cocoa beans shown here is from Tumaco, Colombia and was sourced from Uncommon Cacao.
But in the last ten months or so, I’ve been buying cocoa beans to start making my own chocolate.
Every time I go through the chocolate-making process, I learn something new. But because I’m still primarily a chocolatier, I am not getting much opportunity to savor the knowledge as I am immediately transforming the fresh chocolate into truffles for orders!
But I am learning!
And I’m growing.
I’ve found that my biggest insecurity with owning this business has nothing to do with my being queer or being in a small city having to compete with mass chocolate or being a business owner in general or anything like that whatsoever.
It is that I’m insecure in where I fit in the craft chocolate industry.
I’m so small and so far away from many other chocolate makers, and I struggle to think what it would be like if other chocolate makers thought I was a joke and should just hang it up.
But that hasn’t been the case.
People have been generous and caring. I’ve asked questions to a few chocolate makers and they have gladly shared their experiences. I’ve been invited to speak via FB live with Lauren Heineck who has a podcast within our industry. More recently, I’ve joined CISJ, Chocolate Industry for Social Justice and I hope this is yet another way to plug into the community.
I have a long March ahead in every conceivable sense.
What’s next? Figuring it out
Starting at farmers & makers markets, then going “away to college” has been such an adventure. I’m looking forward to a homecoming. Photo credit: Anna Mitchel.
Starting with what I do know, I'm leaving this space by the end of this month.
I’ll fulfill orders until March 22nd and no longer accept orders.
I’ll have to wind down my operations and begin moving items and equipment into storage.
Today's the last day I pay rent here.
I have orders to ship and deliver today.
But beyond these things I know, I only have educated guesses and trust falls for the universe to catch me in its waiting arms.
I do have a space identified that Queer Chocolatier very likely will move into. I am filled with excitement but I am holding off on announcing the news until all things are settled. I got burned by this with an earlier place I viewed and fell in love with but isn’t accessible and that is a baseline requirement for any space in which I’ll ever do business.
But the space I want to move into will take some work and capital.
One of these has me thoroughly excited as I'm planning building projects again and eager to apply all of the “What I would do different” lessons I've learned!
I am nervous about the capital as I've apparently and unwittingly decided my business is to pay people to renovate their properties. However, the building owner seems like a very nice fellow and he and I have many mutual friends, so this feels like it can be a healthier process and relationship than the space I’m leaving.
Gonna do a capital trust fall!
Might not be the wisest business decision to make, but I've heard lots of wise people along every step of the way question many decisions I've made.
If I’d heeded their words all along, Queer Chocolatier simply wouldn’t exist.
I’m going to listen to my gut.
There are a few butterflies fluttering, but they’re excited!
And I'm training myself to believe more in myself, my abilities, my commitments, my passion, my talents, my experiences, my knowledge, my vision, my place in this community and in this world in this moment.
My friend Renae once told me to not worry about proving people wrong. It’s about proving myself right.
I’m ready.
Take up space and drink chocolate. It’s what I do. Photo credit: Brooklyn Arizmendi.