The Business of Chocolate: Geneva Getaway
During the last excursion of the week we discovered the business of chocolate.
So we met at 8 o’clock at the lobby to go to take the train. We arrived at 10 o’clock in Geneva Gateway.
The first stop was in “Graham’s”. It is a family’s company. The father built this business 27 years ago. Moreover they have three different shops in the city: one where you can see the production, another one where you can take a coffee and ice cream and the last one is just to buy chocolate. They want to keep this business small. They have a real important value: the integrity. In the business of chocolate there is one thing who’s really complicated: the supply chain management. You are dependent of the cocoa’s production, so their price too. They explained to us it is really important to establish a contract to have the same price during six month for example. They have to do this because if the price increase too much they are going to spend too much money in the cocoa beans.
I really enjoyed this first stop because when you come in this little house you can see the production, you can smell chocolate and obviously they all are very nice.
The second stop was in “Sugar Path”. It is also a family’s company because the owner are two sisters. They are very complementary because one is more creative and the other one is more sociable. We ate little cupcake and it was very delicious. We had a guest speaker who’s Valerie Beck. She spoke to us about the cocoa beans and her business.
Then we had a surprise. We visited a very great hotel “The Herrington”. It is the most famous in this little city. They showed us a typical suite.
And finally we went to a pretty veggie restaurant.
During this day we ate a lot of really good chocolate: Ice cream, cupcake, cookie… But my favorite degustation was in the first stop because we ate something special. It was a bretzel buxom of chocolate. It was so delicious!!
Finally I really enjoyed this excursion. Geneva is a really cute city and despite its little size the different business of the city work very well. The different business we saw find their own marketing to attire and keep their customer.
Some links:
http://www.geneva.il.us/
http://www.grahamschocolate.com/
http://thesugarpath.com/
http://www.herringtoninn.com/
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| Graham's Production |
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| Bretzel's production |
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| Sugar Path: their cupcake are so delicious!! |
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| Sugar Path: They make a lot of different cake. |
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| The Herrington: a very calm place |
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| Little snack at the hotel |
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| Finally the lunch. It was really good and healthy |
Hi,
ReplyDeleteI liked this excursion to, the city and people are very nice! I really enjoyed “Graham’s”. I think that the idea of putting production of chocolate is store is very good, when you come in you see how chocolate is done and all products that they have! This is good marketing strategy!
As you sad, two businesses than we visited are family businesses. Do you think that it is complicated to work with members of your family?
Lea, nice post, photos, and links. I'm glad you enjoyed the chocolate covered pretzels!
ReplyDeleteRemember you can create a more integrated and aesthetically more sophisticated blog post by putting the photos and links directly into the blog post, not just at the end, as in our sample posts.
Good job adding captions to your photos, as a nice guide to the reader.
Hi,
ReplyDeleteIt can be difficult to work with your family but for me I think it is a good way to succeed. You can trust the people you work with.
But you have to follow one important rule: you have to separate the Professional and the personal life. When you come back to work you have to stop to talk about business in order to have a real separation between this two world.
Hello Léa,
ReplyDeleteI liked this excursion to, the city and people are very nice!
I found bakery incredible and the city was amazing. We learnt many things on the networking thanks to the owner.
Moreover we saw all the problems of the supply chain management
For me this day was really very instructive
Best,
Pierre Benaim