Better chocoLATE than never | Dinner Plus Drinks #58

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So happy today that Julie Waterman, owner of Indulgence Chocolatiers in Milwaukee, could join us. Julie, how are you doing today?

SPEAKER_01 0:07

I'm good, thanks. How about yourself?

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Excellent. So, Julie, we've known each other for a while, and um I love chocolate. But before we met and before we started selling your chocolate in the store, I thought a Hershey's bar was like awesome. And not to say there's anything wrong with the Hershey's bar, but I had your chocolate and I my mind was blown about chocolate. So I just need to say thank you for ruining a Hershey's bar for me.

SPEAKER_01 0:37

Of course. Any time.

SPEAKER_00 0:39

So uh Indulgence Chocolatiers does craft chocolate. Is that what you like to call it? Or artisanal chocolate, or like what's the technical term for what you guys do? Awesome chocolate?

SPEAKER_01 0:51

Well, whatever, however you want whatever you want to call it is just fine. We say it's handcrafted artisan chocolate. That's what we've been calling it since we started making it. Um, you know, it gets somewhat diluted now because you see the terms handcrafted and artisan um on pretty much everything, but um we'd like to think that we're the real deal.

SPEAKER_00 1:12

So how did you get interested in doing handcrafted artisan chocolate? Was it just you were a kid and you ate a lot of Hershey bars and decided to have something else? Or what how did you get interested in this?

SPEAKER_01 1:26

Sure. Um, you know, what's interesting is I uh growing up was never really interested in food and didn't really care about where it came from, its origin, how it was made at all. Um, but I actually had kind of a backwards way of getting into um chocolate. I had joined the army when I was 17 and um then went to a military intelligence school. And right after I graduated, I was deployed, and it was after this deployment with the army that I had an awkward amount of time off. Um, so I backpacked through Europe. And on this Europe trip, a common theme was just my interest in these artisan foods and the fact that there were people involved in the process and that these people could tell me about um what it is they were doing, the ingredients that they were using, and they were really passionate about their craft. And when I saw this in chocolate shops in particular, I was just really taken by it. I loved the innovative ingredients, the thoughtful way that these flavors were put together, and how there were people to really share this with the customers, the um and make it this full experience. And so I needed to bring that idea back here to Milwaukee.

SPEAKER_00 2:40

What time did you start indulgence chocolatiers? And how how do you go from saying, like, wow, this is really cool stuff, to being a chocolatier, starting to make these chocolates, and owning a business. So did you get like training? Did you get like a I don't know, how do you be how do you start a chocolatier? Chocolatier? How would you call it?

SPEAKER_01 3:02

Um Yeah, uh a chocolatier company. Um so ironically, I I have a degree in music. I studied music education at um the University of uh Milwaukee, Wisconsin. And uh it uh it was um interesting because um I don't have a background in business and I don't have a culinary background, but I've always really been curious about how things work together, solving problems and kind of thinking outside of the box about how to solve problems. And with chocolate, um, you know, it's about understanding the science behind the chocolate and how it interacts with ingredients and everything from temperatures to um the amount of liquids you can incorporate into it. And I really like that side. And the same thing with the business side. I'm curious about, you know, um, what do you need to do to strike a balance to make sure um that you can run this successful business in order to also be able to practice your craft of making chocolate? And so um I I don't have a back an official background in any of those things, but I've really let my curiosity drive me through that.

SPEAKER_00 4:13

That's a great way to learn. I feel like, you know, everyone says you want to know how sausage making happens. But same thing for me, like how do you learn how to make sausage? Well, you're curious and you just try a bunch of stuff, and a bunch of it's not gonna be good, but when you hit it, it's gonna be great. So when did you start the company?

SPEAKER_01 4:32

Um, so this fall will be 11 years that we've been in business. Yeah, and um, so it was kind of interesting because I was finishing up my undergrad and um thought I really have to give this a go or I'll just always wonder about it. And um, I think people maybe thought I was a little crazy at the time since I didn't have a background and uh for them it kind of came out of left field, but I thought I can't think of a more perfect moment in my life where I can try to give this a go and I have the the time and energy to to do that. Um yeah, so then uh fast forward 11 years and we're we're still making chocolate.

SPEAKER_00 5:15

Well, and 11 years ago, like it was a very different world. I I feel like, you know, the oldest person in the room, but craft chocolate, artisan chocolate wasn't really a thing 11 years. You know, craft beer wasn't a thing, craft butchering wasn't a thing. You took a huge risk. Was there anybody else doing kind of what you wanted to do that inspired you, or were you just really, you know, this is my vision, we can do this thing where people understand where the chocolate comes from, or were you just taking the risk?

SPEAKER_01 5:44

Um, a little bit of both. So I wasn't seeing anything like this on the chocolate side in the Midwest. It really was the brink of that artisan food movement where people were starting to have curiosity about who was making their food, where was it coming from? Um, but there were already some great um producers in the beer world. I mean, we're in Wisconsin, so there are tons of fantastic handcrafted beers, you know, were around Lakefront Brewery here. Um, a couple of new distilleries were popping up in the area, and um, beyond that, we have this really vibrant uh dairy and cheese community, and you saw all of these great artists in cheeses, and I thought, well, why not chocolate?

SPEAKER_00 6:28

That's a great question. Why not chocolate?

SPEAKER_01 6:30

So and the answer is always there should be chocolate.

SPEAKER_00 6:34

Yes, there should be chocolate, and there's chocolate cheese as well. Um, weird thing, but it works. So you guys do a whole bunch of different products. You do bars, you do toffies, you do truffles. I'd kind of like to ask you a little bit about kind of each of those products, and if you could just give us a little bit of overview about like what, you know, everybody's had those products, except maybe the truffles. That seems like a weird thing. A lot of people, I think, still think of uh uh mushrooms and pigs hunting for them. But your bars are amazing. You know, it's it's a chocolate bar, but it's much more, and you have a variety of different flavors. And how what makes your chocolate bar different than you know, something you find for a dollar at the checkout at whatever you know big box store? How does your process or your ingredients differ from something you know that's just mass market? What makes yours, that handcrafted artisan uh unique, delicious product?

SPEAKER_01 7:35

Oh, I'm glad you asked that because you know this this is kind of the education side of what we do, and it's hugely important because it goes so beyond just, oh, this is a delicious chocolate bar. Um, there are a few factors that go into our chocolate that make it unique. One is we really try to source the the highest quality ingredients, all natural if not organic ingredients. Um when you look at the ingredients in our chocolate bar, you know exactly what's in it, and it's not very complicated whatsoever. Um, you know, it's cocoa, it's um cocoa butter and sugar, and then you know, whatever we're using as a flavor, like maybe a little bit of sea salt or some cinnamon and cayenne pepper if we're doing our Mayan spice bar, but it's really just simple and quality ingredients at its core. Um so that's part of it. And the other part of it is especially as we've grown as a company, we've tried to be really thoughtful about our impact in the world and whether that is trying to have socially responsible chocolate. So, you know, there are uh fair wages for everybody along the chain that is participating in the chocolate process, to just even making sure that the farming practices are sustainable and not having a harmful impact on the earth. Um so you bite into this chocolate bar, we're hoping you think it's delicious, but there's a lot of thought um that goes into this chocolate beyond just the flavors and and that delicious chocolate experience. We're hoping that we can, you know, kind of have a better impact on um the industry that we participate in.

SPEAKER_00 9:15

Yeah, that's awesome. That's one of the things I like. So do you get to like travel to these places and see like where they're growing the cacao beans and things like that?

SPEAKER_01 9:24

Oh, um not not yet. Um, it is definitely in my plan to start um going to visit some of these farms. Um we've had communication with a couple of them. Um, but yeah, that's kind of in our um next boots on the ground, getting involved in this process to really have a good handle on well, what is the farmer's life like and how does our purchasing impact that and what can we do to better be a better partner?

SPEAKER_00 9:50

I think that's so awesome because it's super easy to feel like, eh, they show up here, you know, they come from wherever, but to actually care and to want to make sure that you're sourcing a great product not only for the good of your customers, the good of yourself, but the good of your suppliers, I think that's so awesome. And that's one of the things that I really like about your your stuff. Um so okay, so my favorite flavor is the cream city crunch. Um, but you have a whole bunch. And I'm just like curious. My other favorite is the IPA bar. So, like, how do you come up with like the idea of I want to put an IPA beer in a chocolate bar? And like, how do you like develop that flavor?

SPEAKER_01 10:30

Oh, sure. So some of these are things that we just see flavor trends happening and we try to adapt them to chocolate. And other things we'll have people who come up with the request for us. So um the I full disclosure, the IPA importer bar, our beer interpretation or chocolate interpretations of those beers, um, were requested by a customer who said, Hey, I think this would be fantastic. And they were very flattering, of course, which gets them a long way, and said, if anybody can do it, you guys can. Um so we went for it. And really what we did with this IPA bar is we thought about the components of an IPA beer. You usually have that kind of bright citrus from the hops. Um, you've got this kind of bitter quality, and you've got um uh you know some malted barley in there. We took all these flavors and we incorporated them into the chocolate without actually pouring the beer into the chocolate. Yeah, because that would be gross. We found this right. Well, yeah, it wouldn't um it wouldn't work the greatest. Um so we found this chocolate from the Dominican Republic, and it already had a lot of great intense citrus flavor to it. And we just gave that a little more oomph by adding some um orange and lemon zest to that. Um and then we had a hint, we add a hint of coriander to there, a spice that's found in a lot of IPAs, and then um use some malted barley, so you're actually getting one of those components of the beer in the bar. Um, and when you bite in, it's just like all those flavors you would get from an IPA, only it's in our chocolate bar.

SPEAKER_00 12:06

Well, I mean, plus it's a chocolate bar, so there's chocolate. So it's I mean, I like IPA. I in fact I love IPA, but I think the chocolate bar might be better. So that is really cool. That's a you know, I just thank you. I I think that's so smart to to you know, you find those flavors, you figure out how to incorporate them in. I just I love it. And how many different flavors of bars are you guys doing now?

SPEAKER_01 12:31

Oh my gosh, I think we regularly have about 18 to 20 flavors of chocolate bars. Wow. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:40

Wow, really? That's a lot.

SPEAKER_01 12:42

Yeah. Which we started with six, and then I think each one we added, uh originally somewhere along the line there was the intent of it being seasonal. And then if we ever tried to discontinue something, people were like, you can't stop making that. So we keep expanding.

SPEAKER_00 12:59

I mean, it's a good problem, right? But it's still right.

SPEAKER_01 13:02

I'll take it.

SPEAKER_00 13:04

So you do toffee, you do truffles. Um truffles. What is a truffle? It's an I mean there they are a mushroom, but like what what is a truffle? Because every truffle I've ever had from you is unique. It's uh totally, you know, I've had like the sampler flights, and you're like, I don't know how to do if these three things are all a truffle, they're so different. I don't know what to say a truffle is. So what is a truffle?

SPEAKER_01 13:32

Sure. So a chocolate truffle, by definition, has what's called a ganache inside. And ganache is that soft chocolate-based center that is at its core chocolate with cream and or butter. And from there, you can have other things in there that add flavor. You can infuse things, you can add a flavor to it, um, but that's what a truffle is. It's got that ganache center and then um a harder chocolate shell that kind of holds that filling in there. Um, and what's confusing is a lot of places call anything with a soft center a truffle, even if it's like a fondant center or something that's um another sort of confection, but it's got to have that like chocolate ganache center to be a true truffle. We make truffles in milk, white, and dark chocolate. Um, and we make everything from classic flavors um to some more adventurous flavors um that go way out there, like a copio truffle. Right, but I think what's fun is that um we can be really adventurous and creative with flavors um in the truffles, but w we try to be really thoughtful about striking a bound. Never weird for the sake of weird, but incorporating something interesting that actually works and it's a really fun and thoughtful experience.

SPEAKER_00 14:54

Yeah, that's you know, you said you're always looking to mirror trends. It seems like your almost easier time of doing that is with a truffle because are are they more time consuming than a bar, but you can do fewer of them type of deal where you're not, you know, like doing as many. What's that process like compared to doing a bar?

SPEAKER_01 15:14

Sure. So like a chocolate bar, really you um you need to melt your chocolate and do something called tempering it to give it that shine and snap. So you melt your chocolate to about 108 degrees, you cool it down by adding more chocolate, which we call seed, and agitating it, which is basically stirring it, until it comes to about 88 degrees. And then um it's just below your body temperature, but it's still in liquid form, so you can work with it. And from there we can add what ingredients we need to that to give it, you know, a little bit of sea salt for our dark chocolate sea salt bar, or maybe some dried cherries and almonds for our um cherry almond bar. And then we pour it into a bar mold and pop it in the fridge just for a minute to kind of uh shock it and have it set up, but then your chocolate bar is done. Um with the truffles, they are a much more um labor-intensive process. Um, like our molded truffles, you would pour chocolate into these molds that usually hold about 25 to 30 cavities, so it would make 25 to 30 truffles. You shake out the excess, and then you have to chill that because what you've just done is you've made your shell. And then you've assuming you've already made your ganache, which is your cream and or butter with chocolate mixture, then you would pipe it into the center of each individual cavity, you wait for that to set up, and then you cap it, which is pouring more solid melted well, melted chocolate, and then um making sure it's nice and even on the bottom and waiting for it to solidify. And the hope is that when you um everything's cool and solid, um you flip it upside the mold upside down and all the pieces fall out, that they all look as beautiful as they should taste. Um and so from start to finish with a truffle, if you were just to do like one single one, be about a a day and a half, two-day process.

SPEAKER_00 17:09

Wow. A day and a half, two days.

SPEAKER_01 17:12

Right. That's crazy. Right. Wow. So we try to make a bunch at a time. They're like always a bunch in different parts of the process.

SPEAKER_00 17:21

Well, I like how you put like, and you hope it all turns out right. So I'm assuming sometimes they don't turn out right. I mean, hopefully rarely, but that's right.

SPEAKER_01 17:28

Right. We do have in the kitchen this thing we call the oops pile, which is they taste delicious, but they're just ugly. And so we can't sell them. And luckily, the oops pile is like super minimal. There's not a ton in it. But um, yeah, there's no issue with that being taken care of on a daily basis, though.

SPEAKER_00 17:47

You know, there's like ugly vegetables now that people are buying for like the good of the world or something. Maybe you should have ugly chocolates and that could be your next thing.

SPEAKER_01 17:58

Oh no, we should. Um, right now we just kind of look at it as like it fuels the chocolate fuels us to make more chocolate.

SPEAKER_00 18:06

I mean I think that's I think that's a good a good thing. So you're doing all these cool flavors. Like do you view chocolate as something that's just like a snack or like a oh I'm you know gonna have a bar and it's a little kind of sort of dessert, or is it something that you think should be paired with things that you should be thoughtful about? And you know, like you know, our number one selling bar that you have is the dark chocolate seasonal. People love it. How do you view that bar? Is that just something you want people to be, I don't know, thoughtless about is, but you know, just something you can snack on, or is it something you'd be like consciously enjoying?

SPEAKER_01 18:42

I I mean I hope people are consciously enjoying it with our chocolate, as I hope they consciously enjoy most of their food. Um, but I think that like something like our dark chocolate sea salt bar is more of what I would call your daily chocolate. You can still consciously enjoy it and maybe have a square or two and you know really that.

SPEAKER_00 19:02

Do you mean a bar or two?

SPEAKER_01 19:03

Because like that's what I'm thinking of people who maybe have a little more self-control than myself. Um but you know, so maybe you have your little allotment for the day and you really enjoy it, but that's kind of like your daily flavor because you know what you're getting and it's good no matter what. But then we make some more uh adventurous and other flavors that they're really delicious on their own, but they are also designed to pair with different things, and that can be take your experience to a whole nother level.

SPEAKER_00 19:36

So how do you recommend pairing chocolate? Because I've heard you know, there's a school of thought that there's a few things in the world that contain tannin, chocolate is one of them, red wine's one of them, and you should put in tan you should not put tannin on tannin. And then there's a school of thought that chocolate and red wine's amazing. How do you recommend pairing like chocolate and wine, chocolate and food?

SPEAKER_01 19:59

Oh, that's a great question. So um when from our perspective, when we're pairing, we always try to understand the non-chocalate item first. So whether it's the wine or a beer or cheese that we're pairing with, we want to get a good handle on what that is and what it tastes like first because we can make a chocolate to go to that. Um basically, what you're looking for is balance in flavors, maybe you're mirroring some flavors, or maybe you're trying to have something that um is completely opposite of a flavor that's going on. And we think about a lot of um regional flavors and how they work together, and then kind of take all those concepts and try to interpret that again into chocolate. Um I'm of the school of thought of that you can find the right chocolate to pair with almost anything, like wines, for example. It doesn't just have to be sweet wines. You just have to be really thoughtful about it and um apply a few rules and tricks to get your chocolate to work with it.

SPEAKER_00 21:03

So well, and you have a pairing bar that people can come and have some beverages, have some chocolates, learn more about this, and decide for themselves what they like, right?

SPEAKER_01 21:17

Yes. Yes. So um we have this pairing bar and it's at our Walker's Point location in Milwaukee, which is where we make everything. We've got big viewing windows into our kitchen where we make everything. And at this pairing bar, we have a menu that rotates seasonally, and it has um flights of wine, beer, cheese, and whiskey. And for each of those items, we um then create a custom confection to go with it that will complement the specific wines that we put on the menu or the specific beers that are on there. And basically, people can come and order off the menu and we'll walk you through the pairings, how to properly taste your chocolate with your wine. Or your beer, whatever it is that you're enjoying for a pairing. And um and if they have questions about our process or what we do, we're happy to talk to them about that too.

SPEAKER_00 22:08

That's really awesome. So in addition to the pairing bar and the production kitchen, you have a couple other stores in Tosa and Sherwood, right?

SPEAKER_01 22:19

Correct, yes.

SPEAKER_00 22:20

Plus, you can buy the chocolate all over the place.

SPEAKER_01 22:25

Right, right. So we've got the three retail stores, and they're all classic chocolate boutiques. And then, like I said, our Walker's Point one also has this pairing bar. Um, but in addition to that, um, kind of the bread and butter of our business is our wholesale side, where we've partnered with everything from small wine stores and gift shops to grocery stores, you know, to like Geneva Country Meats. I mean, and everything in between. And we've got just shy of about 400 locations throughout the Midwest mostly that um carries our chocolate.

SPEAKER_00 22:58

That's so cool. So thank you. Yeah, it's I have a few rapid fire questions to wrap this up with your game. Okay. One weirdest chocolate or truffle you've made?

SPEAKER_01 23:13

A blue cheese and pear truffle.

SPEAKER_00 23:15

Oh, that's super weird, but that sounds good.

SPEAKER_01 23:18

What it actually worked, but there were a few bad ones.

SPEAKER_00 23:22

What did what did you pair that with?

SPEAKER_01 23:24

That's it was just wine on its own. I think I think it was on a wine flight. It was for a client and it was for a wine flight, and the final product was great, but there are a few misses before it was right.

SPEAKER_00 23:39

The more I think about that, the more I would love that with Sautern wine. That's like the greatest pairing I think I've ever heard of. Your clients would say. What is the favorite chocolate you make?

SPEAKER_01 23:53

Oh man. Hmm. Favorite chocolate we make. Um, okay. It's kind of a simple but classic and delicious. We make a gray salt caramel. So it's a vanilla bean caramel, and the key is it's got this mineral gray sea salt. And why that's significant is because the mineral content in the sea salt keeps that salt nice and crunchy in texture, even though it's in the caramel. So you get this soft, creamy vanilla caramel, and then you get this like little crunch from the sea salt when you bite into it, and this nice dark chocolate shell. It's just this classic salty caramection, and I love it.

SPEAKER_00 24:31

What is your favorite beverage to drink with a chocolate?

SPEAKER_01 24:37

Oh man, all of them. Um they're also good for different reasons. Okay, so while I tend to be more of a wine drinker in general, I actually, when I'm pairing with chocolate, I think beer is where it's at. Um, you know, you're not you don't have tannin in beer like you do in wine, so you're not fighting the sugar and chocolate. Um, they share so many similar flavor profiles. They're both this balance of bitter and sweet on beer. It's the hops and the malt, and the chocolate, it's the cocoa and the sugar. There are just so many levels on which they work together that I just think that they're a killer pairing all around.

SPEAKER_00 25:18

Like it. I like it. And then finally, are your shops like Willy Wonka's shops? And do you have a river of chocolate with a boat on it?

SPEAKER_01 25:29

Absolutely. I don't know how we function with that one.

SPEAKER_00 25:33

So there you go. If you want to, you know, recreate Willy Wonka and the chocolate factory, the classic one, not the creepy Johnny Depp one, go see Julie. Indulgence Chocolatiers. Walkers Point, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and you can ride on the boat where and where it goes, you never know. So, Julie, thank you so much. I really appreciate your time. The chocolate's great. Um, I really appreciate you sharing everything you know about chocolate with us and really encourage people to try the chocolate.

SPEAKER_01 26:00

Oh, thank you for having me, Nick. I appreciate it.