{"id":9384,"date":"2023-06-30T14:22:57","date_gmt":"2023-06-30T18:22:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/?p=9384"},"modified":"2023-07-28T13:50:28","modified_gmt":"2023-07-28T17:50:28","slug":"sweet-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/issues\/summer-2023-cat\/sweet-success\/","title":{"rendered":"Sweet Success"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Ella Schneider \u201926 launched an award-winning bean-to-bar chocolate company with her father. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the COVID-19 pandemic, some people made sourdough starter. Ella Schneider \u201926 made chocolate. She and her father, Steven Schneider, purchased a melanger\u2014a stone-on-stone chocolate grinder\u2014in January 2020, just before the pandemic. But it was during the long hours of lockdown that the Wakefield, R.I., residents experimented with different varieties of cacao beans\u2014along with sugar, milk, and cocoa butter\u2014to perfect their recipes. Ella gave bars out to friends and teachers, while her father, an OB-GYN at South County Hospital, gave them out at work. \u201cWe got such great feedback,\u201d she says, \u201cwe thought we might actually have something.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It turns out they had the seeds of a business. In 2021, the Schneiders started Gansett Craft Chocolate<\/a>, now Rhode Island\u2019s only bean-to-bar gourmet chocolate company. In the past year, they\u2019ve sold thousands of chocolate bars and won national awards. Ella, a business major at äçÐÄvlogÃâ·ÑBÕ¾, has been perfecting the company\u2019s business plan with the help of Launch Lab, an initiative combining mentorship, networking, and events for budding entrepreneurs on campus. \u201cIt helped us map out our true costs and better plan for the future,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Ella Schneider (above) and her dad, Steven Schneider, working on their award-winning Gansett Craft Chocolate at Town Made shared kitchens in Wakefield, R.I.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Steven Schneider has long been obsessed with small-batch bean-to-bar chocolate and got his daughter hooked when they toured a chocolate maker in 2013. When they got serious about experimenting, they used cacao beans from a small producer in Peru. \u201cThey come in smaller quantities and cost more, but they were the best ones we tried,\u201d Steven says. The Schneiders also add less sugar\u2014just 30 percent\u2014compared to some commercial chocolate makers who use up to 70 percent. So, the pure taste of the chocolate comes through. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Father and daughter started making dark chocolate, then milk, before getting increasingly creative with recipes\u2014like Rhode Island coffee milk, a white chocolate and coffee combo. \u201cIt\u2019s amazing how much it tastes like the drink,\u201d Ella says. \u201cIt\u2019s our most popular flavor now.\u201d Other top sellers include Lil\u2019 Rhody Sea Salt and 70% Dark Brown Butter Sage. For next Easter, they are considering releasing a \u201cWhat\u2019s Up Doc\u201d bar, with carrot cake flavor. (A milk chocolate with everything bagel spice, on the other hand, didn\u2019t make it off the drawing board. \u201cThat was just gross,\u201d Ella says.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite being new to the industry, the Schneiders achieved a sweet victory at the 2022 Chocolate Alliance Awards when they were among six out of 150 entries to win a gold medal for their milk chocolate\u2014conferring instant acclaim on their fledgling enterprise. \u201cIt was a really emotional day for my dad,\u201d Ella says. \u201cHe cried a little.\u201d Since then, they\u2019ve also won a gold for their Rhode Island coffee milk and a silver for milk chocolate at the 2023 Craft Chocolat Challenge, a fledgling bean-to-bar chocolate competition sponsored by Kentucky craft chocolatiers Chocolat Inn & Cafe. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The business has brought the Schneiders closer together, as they bounce ideas off each other and spend long hours roasting beans and setting chocolate bars in molds. \u201cElla is a go-getter and dedicated to the business,\u201d says Steve. \u201cWhen other students are sleeping on weekends, she\u2019s spending most of her Sundays with me making chocolate.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ella plans to continue working for the business part time while she earns her äçÐÄvlogÃâ·ÑBÕ¾ degree, then launch the business full time in a storefront upon graduation. Even after all the hard work, she remains a chocolate lover herself. Her favorite flavor? \u201cMilk chocolate,\u201d she says. \u201cYou can never go wrong with that.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014Michael Blanding <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ella Schneider \u201926 is finding sweet success in the world of bean-to-bar chocolate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":9385,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[316],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-summer-2023-cat","architecture-currents","architecture-innovators"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9384"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9384\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10350,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9384\/revisions\/10350"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}