Enna Chocolate is moving to Exeter and needs your support!

Our dream of having a large production space that is part bean-to-bar chocolate factory and part cafe with retail space is within reach!  We have found the perfect space in Exeter (hello neighborhood!) and our build-out has begun. The Covid-19 pandemic has slowed us down a bit but it won't stop us. Your help in this final push is needed more than ever so we can scale up production and say a big hello to all our new visitors in Exeter.

Some Background

In 2015 while working as a food photographer I learned that I could make chocolate at home. With a small investment of about $300 I bought a tabletop grinder, ordered a few pounds of fermented dried cocoa beans and started teaching myself the process. After months of trial and error I finally started getting the results I wanted and I started sharing my chocolate with the chefs I was doing food photography for. The chefs wanted to buy some. So I got a license to make chocolate for sale from our home kitchen. Chocolate requires a LOT more space than what's available in the typical home kitchen, so after I started receiving more orders than I could fulfill in that tiny space, my husband Matt and I built a production kitchen in Epping in 2017. Epping has provided a wonderful startup home for our business, and we will forever be grateful to the Epping community for their support and enthusiasm. However, Enna Chocolate is now bursting at the seams at the current location and we need room to grow!

Building the Dream

We love sharing our adventure that is chocolate, and we want to offer a broader chocolate experience to our customers than what is possible in our current space. So we have leased a new space in Exeter NH and we'll be able to expand our customer experience in the following ways:

• EXPANDED chocolate tasting and retail area with a coffee bar.
• A 6x6 foot glass viewing window so that visitors can watch the chocolate production process from the retail space.
• BEVERAGES! We are SO excited to add coffee, espresso, and DRINKING CHOCOLATE to our offerings, plus a few other cacao related refreshments. Have you ever tried fresh cacao juice? Yum! 
• A COMMUNITY SPACE ~ before there were coffee houses, did you know that the world's great cities had chocolate houses? Our 'chocolateria' will be a welcoming and inspiring place for all to gather. We LOVE the conversations and connections that are inspired by our chocolate craft, and we are very excited to offer a bigger and better space for these special interactions to happen.

We love sharing our chocolate journey with others, and hope you'll join us on this latest phase of our adventure!

What We Need & What You Get

We are seeking to raise at least $25,000. This will help us outfit the cafe with an espresso machine and all the accoutrements necessary to serve our favorite cacao, coffee, and tea beverages.  If we surpass our initial funding goal, we have a really special "stretch goal" in mind. 

In our previous Indiegogo campaign we learned that the most desired perk was CHOCOLATE. So this time around we're again offering our most popular chocolate perks, but we're also offering some fun cafe perks, and of course some very nifty swag.

What if we don't meet our funding goal? We are moving to Exeter no matter what. If we don't meet the initial funding goal, we will build the cafe service portion of our move in a later phase.

What if we surpass our funding goal? We have a couple of "stretch" goals for our fundraising campaign.

• $25,000 = Rock & Roll Goal ~ Our initial goal will help us crank out our buildout, including coffee & espresso & drinking chocolate equipment
• $30,000 = Nest Egg Goal ~ this will give us just a little bit of cushion so we can breath easier during the uncertainty brought to the months ahead of us by the Covid-19 pandemic.
• $40,000 = Gussy Up Goal ~ If we surpass our initial goal by a LOT, we're excited to finally design custom moulds for our chocolate bars (we've been anxious to upgrade from the generic grid-bar design). 

Matt has lovingly restored the antique tin ceiling... the paint in this picture is primer ~ we can't wait for you to see the actual paint color that we chose!

Small Business, Worth Supporting

Fine chocolate made from heirloom cacao saves rainforest, supports farmers, and tastes amazing! Each cacao variety that we source is entirely traceable, fair and ethically produced, organic, and packed with fine flavor.

Enna Chocolate is a bootstrap startup. We will be doing most of the construction ourselves - which is quite in line with Enna's self-taught chocolate-making background, and her husband /business-partner Matt's custom woodworking and fine art skills.

We successfully met our goal in our previous (2016) Indiegogo fundraiser, thanks to the generous support of family, friends, neighbors, and fellow chocolate lovers. 

Risks & Challenges

We have doubled our production & revenues every year since starting in our home kitchen. We are confident that with our continued dedication to quality and fine flavor, there's no place to go but up.

Before COVID-19 the biggest challenge we faced was lack of a space to showcase our chocolate product and create the kind of experience that we wish for our customers to have. We are confident that we'll get through the COVID-19 pandemic, along with our fellow small business owners, and that we'll be able to continue to focus on our mission to make and share fine chocolate with our community and with the world. 

If we don't meet our funding goal, we are still moving forward with our move. If we don't meet our funding goal our plan is to roll out cafe service within a year. 

The impact of COVID-19 on our business and on this fundraiser

It has never been more important to support local businesses. In recent weeks we've had to shift the focus of our product sales from mostly direct in-store sales and wholesale to mostly online orders. We are grateful for the customers who until how have shopped for our chocolate at farmers markets and in other small stores (many of which are closed or only doing limited hours and operations) are continuing to support our business by shopping from us online. In addition, our partnership with Three Rivers Farm Alliance has introduced our chocolate to a whole new market. 

Online orders prepared for shipment. Online sales are an area of our business we've been wanting to invest more time and energy in, so the irony of this moment is not lost on us! 

The COVID-19 pandemic threw a big curveball at our buildout, as we carefully planned this project for the months of March and April.... and then the virus happened. We must limit the number of contractors who are working in the space at one time, and we've had to decline all of the generous offers of help from family and friends who were going to help us with different elements of the construction and the move: maintaining social distance is of utmost importance. Despite this, Matt has accomplished a TON of the construction by himself, and we have some really wonderful contractors who are able to continue working on a one-at-a-time schedule. While Matt works on the new space, Enna continues to manufacture and deliver her chocolate orders.

Chocolate manufacturing will continue, and when we finally CAN open the doors to welcome customers into our new space in Exeter, our business can only expand. After all, the world needs chocolate!

Other Ways You Can Help

We understand that some people just can't contribute, but that doesn't mean you can't help:

• Please share our campaign with your family and friends. 
• You may use the Indiegogo share tools to post on facebook or by email. 
• Shop for our chocolate! Visit our website ennachocolate.com to shop for chocolate.