Charlotte Kryska, owner of HAPA Chocolat, makes some bars in the kitchen of Voyager Craft Coffee in San Jose. Kryska recently launched her online retail business and currently has four varieties of chocolate bars on offer. “At first Spice Cake was the most popular, and now the toasted almond praline bar is going really well,” says Kryska, who also bakes croissants for Voyager. Charlotte Kryska, owner of HAPA Chocolat, sees the world through the eyes of cacao farmers.
Returning home, she took a job at Alexander’s Patisserie in Mountain View, where she was the assistant chocolatier in a two-person department. After two years, the head chocolatier left for another job, and Kryska stayed on another two years. The idea of having her own bean-to-bar chocolate business began to ferment.
She’s even prouder of her chocolate bars, which are all made in the kitchen at Voyager, located in San Pedro Square. She felt last year was a good time to revisit her chocolate business idea, and Voyager was happy to let her use the space, as long as she kept baking those croissants. Her other supplier is Raaka in Brooklyn, a craft chocolate supplier she met while taking a bean-to-bar class in New York City last year. Raaka pride themselves on making their unroasted dark chocolate from scratch, using traceable, high-quality and transparently traded single-origin cacao.
For those who want a learning experience with their sweets, HAPA Chocolat offers a sampler pack for $40 that includes a bar of each flavor and a little board game to take people on a tasting adventure.“I want people to learn how to taste chocolate, and they can take it seriously or just have fun,” Kryska says.