Saturday, September 6, 2008

Eclipse Chocolat Travels to the Bay Area!

Zach, my professional God-Send, newly acquired General Manager, and all around fun-lovin Wing-Man has been doing great things around the cafe since he started his career with Eclipse back in June. Can you tell I'm pretty fond of him? He's a pretty awesome guy... and he's single, ladies! That's Zach Negin, GS, GM, WM. Find him here during most business days and Saturday afternoons.

Seriously though, I've kept him quite busy with some exciting business growth & development tasks and so far he's performing quite nicely. On the top of his agenda is a business trip that he and I are taking next weekend to the Bay Area. We will be doing some sales approaches to some of SF's finest foodie shops, boutiques, and cafes hoping to draw up new accounts for the upcoming winter holidays. We've also managed to find a day to ourselves (sans Eclipse) to explore the area at large. Personally, I've only been there once, so I'm quite excited to get out and about.

So we're packing suitcases of chocolate bars, caramels, and truffles in hopes to spread the good cocoa-word. And while we're gone (Thursday through Sunday) we're entrusting the cafe to our finest. All cupcakes and brownies will be baked courtesy of the amazing Autumn, and all customer service has been entrusted to the lovely Jen and Nicole. Don't forget to say your thanks... they're each picking up my slack quite nicely.

And how does this effect me?, you ask? Well I suppose this post is more of a Call-To-Arms than anything else. I'd love to hear from you all with recommendations. We will be wandering about the streets of SF, Berkley, and Oakland and we'd love to hear where you think Eclipse should make a stand. Have a favorite shop? Tell us! With a little luck, you may find our line there before Xmas. We're also excited to hear of all the can't-be-missed foodie haunts. After all, we will need to eat at least 11 meals while we're there, plus snacks!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

hey Will! I posted your inquiries to one of the forums I frequent where I know more than a few bay area folks live and hang. Here are a few of their recommendations:

Snowflake says:
Well, the foodie-grocery are Whole Foods, SF Real Foods and Mollie Stone's. In the old days I would have recommended Confetti, but they are down to a small single shop, that sells more coffee than chocolate these days.

Andrews idea:
http://www.urbanvillageonline.com/markets/california.php

still more from Snowflake:
http://www.ferryplazafarmersmarket.com/

from Marla and Snowy:
There was also this really yummy coffee place that sold chocolate in I think Little Italy. It was by an Italian restaurant that had white xmas lights on the outside of it. All I remember is that we found it when we were making our way to Coit Tower and there was a mailbox and metered parking outside. And the street wasn't to hilly.
-----to which Snowy replied:
Could be Trieste, Stella Pastry (YUM gimme sacripantina, NOW) any number of coffee spot in North Beach. Good idea!


ok, so...theres a few. more as the ideas keep rolling in.

Bob
(my buds know food! :) )

A Certain Lady said...

Hayes Valley!!!