Community Highlights: Meet Carson and Lena Storey of Smitten Cacao

Today we’d like to introduce you to Carson and Lena Storey. They and their team shared their story with us below:

Carson has always loved to make things and enjoyed “the hustle,” as he puts it. From a young age, he was building things out of cardboard, tape, string, PVC pipe, and any raw materials he could get his hands on. From bake sales to carnivals and magic shows, he enjoyed putting his ingenuity to work for the local neighborhood kids. 

While he’s always enjoyed dark chocolate as far back as he can remember, Carson’s interest in artisan chocolate started when running past an artisan chocolate maker’s factory in his hometown growing up. With many international awards, chocolate from this local artisan became a special treat and the go-to birthday present for mom and dad. 

Fast forward a few years, and in 2015 he graduated with a degree in Mechanical Engineering and started working at Ford Motor Company here in Michigan. During his first few years at Ford, Carson and his engineering roommate started talking about how they made chocolate and considering it themselves. After pitching the idea around for a few months, they decided to take the plunge, buy a melanger (a stone grinder for refining chocolate) and try making chocolate themselves. What started as an investment into a curiosity blossomed into designing and building a cocoa bean roaster, winnower (separates the husk from the nib), vibration table, as well as other speciality hardware. Ultimately, with a little convincing from his wife Lena (me), we took the leap and created Smitten Cacao in early 2022 so we could better share our chocolate with others. 

We’ve now been at the Ann Arbor Farmers Market for a little over a year with chocolate-making having been a part of our daily lives since we started. We have grown a lot in the last year both from an equipment and recipe perspective. One of our biggest equipment purchases so far was a tempering machine (tempering is what gives chocolate a nice snap and texture); we’re glad to have the days of hand tempering behind us! It’s fun to look back at the small 6-item menu we started with at our market debut to where we now have a menu about 3 times the size. Being such a small business, we have a lot of flexibility in what we make and often do voting boards to let marketgoers help us decide what to make next. In the past, we’ve made bars such as Spiced Horchata, Pistachio Cranberry, Cinnamon Butterscotch, Blueberry Hazelnut, and even Piña Colada- there is just so much to do with chocolate! Carson loves being able to share how nuanced chocolate can be and is a big advocate for educating and empowering those who want to know how they can make their own chocolate at home too. 

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
The road has been fairly smooth as we’ve increased our capacity slowly. Our primary challenge to expansion today is a regulatory one. We currently only sell at the Ann Arbor Farmers Market, where we can sell directly to customers, being unable to ship due to the legal restrictions of selling under Cottage Food Laws in Michigan. The dream is to someday upgrade to making our goods in a licensed commercial kitchen, which would drastically improve our reach and remove many of the constraints we currently operate under. With all of our custom manufacturing equipment, this is quite a step! 

We’ve been impressed with Smitten Cacao, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
We are a small artisan chocolate maker based near Detroit, Michigan. To make our bean-to-bar chocolate, we start with dried and fermented cocoa beans, which we roast, winnow (separate the husk from the nib), and grind the nibs into chocolate liquor. From there, add-ins such as milk powder or sugar are added, and the chocolate is further refined before tempering (coercing the chocolate to form a stable crystal structure), forming, and packaging. 

We primarily focus on making chocolate bars. We make dark, milk, white, and fruit powdered chocolates with a number of different add-ins (fruit, nuts, spices, herbs, etc.). An advantage of making chocolate at such a small scale is that we have the flexibility to make unique flavor combinations which can be incompatible with traditional commercial equipment. Since there are simply so many things we could make, we interact a lot with current and prospective customers on what flavors they would like to see next. 

While the inside of the cocoa bean is used in making chocolate, the outside of the bean is used to make cacao tea, which is prepared like a loose-leaf tea and comes from the husk of the cocoa beans that we get from places all over the world. Other products we sell include cocoa nibs (roasted unground cocoa beans), single-origin cocoa powder, sipping spoons in the winter, and frozen chocolate-covered bananas in the summer. 

Some differentiators between us and other artisan chocolate companies in the area are primarily cost and bean variety. Our bean sourcing is very transparent, which allows us to purchase beans from all over the world with minimal risk of worker exploitation while maintaining unique flavor profiles and low costs to the customer. 

The transparency in our bean sourcing highlights a focus for our brand: openness. While artisan chocolate can seem expensive for people not familiar with it, we love being able to give samples at the market. This lets people decide if they think it’s worth it. We don’t want people to believe us that the product is good; we want them to try it and decide for themselves! Being able to see people pick out the differences between the bean origins and recognize the nuanced flavors is our favorite part. Carson enjoys talking chocolate to anyone who will listen and is happy to explain our process in hopes of spreading the love of good chocolate. 

Are there any books, apps, podcasts, or blogs that help you do your best?
We’re Christians and read daily from the Book of Mormon and the New Testament. We believe keeping Christ’s teachings front and center helps to keep our lives balanced and focused on what matters most. 

Other inspirational resources we like include the book Atomic Habits, and for aspiring chocolate makers, John Nancy with Chocolatealchemy.com is a great resource for starting out. 

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/smittencacao/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/smittencacao