“This shop is a hobby that got out of control” an interview with owner of Nuance Chocolate, Toby Gadd
I talked to Toby Gadd the owner of a local bean to bar chocolate store Called Nuance Chocolate located off of Pine street in Old Town. They buy fair trade cocoa beans and roast and make the chocolate just a few blocks away in town. Their chocolate contains no preservatives and not a single ingredient that can’t be pronounce. The shop has chocolate bars, truffles, and several kinds of drinks.
Interviewer: So what started your interest in Chocolate?
Gadd:
You know I was pretty much born that way, right? My wife and I have always loved chocolate. We grew up in different parts of the world. As kids, our siblings, after Halloween would trade us any kind of chocolatey stuff that we wanted for a turnover ratio of all the sweet sticky stuff. So it was like ten bags of skittles to one of something resembling chocolate. So I have always enjoyed chocolate. We used to do a chocolate tastings at my previous company that I owned. My wife’s would sit down and close the door in our office and giggle and eat chocolates, you know, I’m not sure the employees knew what was happening.
Interviewer: So I read that you guys went to a chocolate museum and that’s what really sparked the idea to open a shop, could you tell me about that?
Gadd:
Yeah it was a museum I want to say it was almost in Costa Rica. We were traveling around the country at um, the way south east corner down by the Caribbean side. There was a little sign. It was on the side of the road and it said “chocolate museum”. So pretty low key, I would hardly call it a museum, exactly, but, it was great. This lady took us to the jungle her name was Kendra, and she was carrying this little pink purse, with huge machete in it. [She] took us through the forest and showed us all kinds of the things.
Interviewer: So how did you go from there to where you are today?
Gadd:
I think we made chocolate with just ground up a nibs and sweetened, condensed milk. But it blew my mind, it was like nothing I had ever had before. It was very, very complex and very interesting. So, uh, that’s how Nuance kind of got started. It was never meant to be a company we just, we just got carried away and started buying beans from around the world, roasting things, turning half of our for a basement to a chocolate factory. So yeah, I got carried away with it. This shop is a hobby that got out of control.
Interviewer: I see you guys have a lot of collaborations with local companies, how did that get started?
Gadd:
We always wanted to work with local companies because there’s so many great companies here. The first collaboration we did was actually with Feisty Spirit. With the owner of it at the time, he doesn’t own it anymore, David. I was still banging nails and finishing here and things like that. So I was literally in [Nuance] banging nails one time, David, showed up with a box full of bottles of whiskeys and things. It was like, “Hey, you know, when you open up, we’d love to work with you in some way. So here’s some whisky to taste and have fun.” So we, we started tasting chocolate whiskeys and it was really fun. He had 35 or some different spirits at the time, so we tried different types of origins and we made some fantastic truffles that we still make today.
Interviewer: What other Collaborations do you guys do?
Gadd:
There are some amazing local coffee roasters in town. So we worked with about three or four of them right now. An amazing thing is, we work with Happy Heart Farms. They grow thousands of roses, pull the petals off, and soaked in honey to make rose infused honey. At the end they have this big block of rose petals with honey, and we buy the entire block because we add that to the Ambrosia truffle. That’s something that no place else has, right? It’s truly a one off. So, you know, one of the chilies we use for a long time was a Spring Kate farms, unfortunately no longer around but, they just grew best chilies ever. So we started using their chilies in some of our things. That’s how the collaboration is often developed. We reached out some time, they reach out to us, both ways.
Interviewer: Do you think that collaborating with other Businesses helped Nuance Flourish in a way?
Gadd:
Absolutely. Yeah. It helps all of us, first of all, you know, local for the sake of local is good, but honestly what’s even better is the kind of things we can develop working intimately with people who also have a similar mindset. So yeah, certainly it’s good for us and it’s good for other businesses to share with our customers what we’re doing. It’s really unique. The people of Fort Collins are a great community. People figure out the value of that as well. So a lot of that kind of stuff. I think the, brewing industry really pioneered that kind of collaborative thing, so we don’t take credit for starting it all but we are taking it to the next level.
Interviewer: Last question, do you think things like your chocolate flights open up a new possibilities for social experiences that are not currently available else where?
Gadd:
Most people have never even tried one single origin [chocolate], let alone five. Most people think that chocolate just chocolate, like it is just a singular thing. Thinking that is true is a lot like thinking that all cheese tastes like Craft Singles. There are three times as many a flavor compounds in dark single origin chocolate then there are in wine. So there are 600 naturally occurring compounds, while wines have about 200. So the complexity of chocolate is truly amazing. Most of them have no idea. So somebody coming here and experiencing that, it opens their eyes. A lot of people think maybe the flight is silly or they don’t quite get it, but at the end they’re like, and invariably at the end they are like, “I had no idea.” There is an educational aspect, all the guys I’ve trained I am not training to sell. I don’t sell. We do not sell sell push push. We are here to educate, inform, and then people will naturally buy stuff once they see what it is about. So you know, we don’t try to do add-ons here. We don’t try to do upsells and cross-sells and that kind of stuff. We introduce them to chocolate, and let them go from there.
