Local Chattanooga Chocolate Shop Seeking Some Sweetness
Donation protected
Hello, my name is Brandon Buckner and I have co-owned The Hot Chocolatier with my wife, Wendy since 2008. We are hoping to keep our Chattanooga-grown business afloat.
After Valentine's Day, we closed our 1437 Market St location due to a change of building ownership (our rent basically doubled). We were lucky to be able to relocate into a space just down the sidewalk (1423 Market St - formerly Wildflower Tea shop) and planned to use our Valentine Day sales to fund some necessary electrical and plumbing adjustments.
We have been operating out of a building in St Elmo that we had purchased just before Covid-19 locked everything down. (We continue to make mortgage payments towards the hope of owning it one day). It is located within a residential area and so it doesn't see the type of foot traffic from tourists anywhere near the volume that our shop on Market Street would typically serve throughout the year.
We have now hit two and a half months since we closed our Market St doors and we're still not out of the City of Chattanooga's permitting mess for a few electrical and plumbing adjustments that will probably take all of one to two weeks to complete.
We've exhausted our build-out funding and the permitting delay is now negatively affecting our operations at our St Elmo location. We're currently reaching out to anyone and everyone we know within Chattanooga's financial sector to see what our options are. Last summer was a brutal season for us and we had to secure a loan and line of credit to keep afloat with the cost of raw materials going up and up.
On another note, we've recently learned that cacao crops have been affected by tropical storms and even the major mass market chocolate producers (i.e. Hershey's, etc.) have talked about increasing prices of products across the board. We've been postponing the import of the chocolate we use since it has seen an incredible mark-up since news of these storms broke a few months ago. What's the old saying, "Adding salt to the wound?" or "Kicking a person while they're down?"
Long story short, we would hope to have both shops operating at this point, but don't see a clear future. We could use any financial assistance anyone is willing to offer while we weigh our options for keeping our locally grown brand alive.
Rather than posting all of this on this platform, we would prefer that we could sell enough product to keep our employees and bills paid and stay afloat, but without an operational storefront downtown, we're basically gasping for air. We've been blessed by Chattanooga's supportive community throughout the years and wish that this message did not have to be typed out. Thank you for taking the time to consider a donation of any amount.
We will use any funds accrued to assess what our options are for potentially keeping the business afloat or helping it transform into whatever the future brings for The Hot Chocolatier.
Organizer
Brandon Buckner
Organizer
Chattanooga, TN