. They were supposed to be a one-off for a sex educator’s book launch, but she couldn’t resist making a few more of them for Valentine’s Day, and now the $30 boxes sell out as soon as she puts them on the website. But it’s impossible to keep up with the demand, and now she’s frustrated with herself that she ever offered them for sale at all. “We could have done it if we’d had them at the warehouse two months ago.
It’s taken Yearwood some time to come to terms with the idea that, as one of the owners of her company, she no longer makes chocolates all day long. At 44, she’s happy not to be standing up for eight-hour shifts every day, as she did when she founded the business in 2003. And she finds a lot of satisfaction in being involved in every aspect of the business, from fixing sinks and toilets to shipping out Valentine’s Day packages, which was what she’d been doing right before we talked.
Finding the balance between fiddly perfectionism and smooth production is one of Yearwood’s struggles. Part of the problem is that she just doesn’t like selling anything that she personally thinks is subpar, no matter how popular it is. The other part is that she’s been in the business long enough to know a fleeting moment of popularity doesn’t always translate into cash — at least not enough to counterbalance the headaches that ensue.
Yearwood allows that she has a couple of superpowers. She has a knack, she says, for reengineering a recipe that’s somehow fallen out of alignment. “There’s this weird thing where you’ll make a recipe for forever and then it just will not work. No one knows why.” Yearwood compares confectionery work to alchemy — “Everything’s so dependent on the air quality and the humidity.
When she feels regretful about how little she has in savings, Yearwood says, she reminds herself that for the business’s first 20 years, she was spending valuable time teaching herself how to run it. Now, her goal is increasing profits without abandoning what she calls her “ridiculous old-school punk-DIY aesthetic.
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