Exotic Artisan Truffle- More Cacao for Your Cash

This week the cafe is nine months old. Nine months! Where did the time go?

For those of you who are new here, Eclipse was actually launched back in the Spring of 2004, when I had but a cocoa-glimmer in my eye. At the time, I was fresh out of graduate school, having recently finished my MFA in sculpture. I had been fooling around with chocolate for the last year or so of my program and when Xmas of 2003 approached, I was surprised to recieve requests from my friends and family who were interested in truffles for holiday gifts. Shortly after, I opted to shelve my interest in academia and instead transform my casual chocolate-making hobby into a fledging business.

And three years after, I took the leap and opened the cafe. Voila!

Now while the business is drastically different from wholesale to retail cafe, its not too difficult for me to track basic volumes and be more or less shocked at the numbers. Don't get me wrong, they are pretty small when compared to other, more nationally recognized chocolatiers, but considering that everything literally passes through my hands... well I don't quite know where I found the time to hand-mold and hand-wrap 30,000 chocolate bars.

And truffles! It's about the same number of those, too. Thankfully, I've found a new method with which to pipe out the ganache centers. The result is a much more regular and round center, which after hand-dipping, is much cleaner, prettier, and actually fits in my custom packaging (previously, truffles like the Caramel Pecan were too tall to even fit in the box after the pecan half with applied). Oddly enough, there's even a little room to spare.

So what does one do with just a little too much room in a Box of Eight? Make it a Box of Ten, of course. And for the same price! While the Box of Two and Box of Four are remaining the same, our Box of Eight Artisan Truffles is now a Box of Ten, still for $20. That's just $2 a truffle, instead of $2.50. Horray for price breaks!

Check it! Now isn't that a tidy little package?
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