French Broad Chocolates: Family Résumé

family résumé | manifesto | our name

The Rattigans

Objective

To explore our perpetual lust for culinary creativity through the medium of chocolate. To create a beautiful space and a beautiful menu; to witness the emotional impact of our creations on our patrons; to further hone our place in the community and lighten our environmental impact, all the while living as decent human beings.

Experience

2003: Jael flirts with the cute bartender (Dan) at her brother’s wedding.

2004: Take a vacation together in Costa Rica. Decide to move there. Profess their love for one another. Dan drops out of law school. Jael drops out of business school. Buy an abandoned cacao farm. Drive back to Costa Rica in a vegetable oil-powered 40 foot long school bus-turned RV, pregnant and eager to make bread and chocolate for the good people of Costa Rica. Learn Spanish. Open Bread and Chocolate, a café and dessert shop in Puerto Viejo de Limon, on the Caribbean coast.

2005: Birth first baby (Sam) in the apartment above the restaurant. Realize they’re not beach people. Study the botany of theobroma cacao at the source. Start to play with chocolate recipes. Get hitched, legitimizing their bastard son.

2006: Sell Bread and Chocolate to a young buck from Baltimore. Repatriate, in same school bus, self-ordained missionaries of chocolate. Move to Asheville, NC, preggers once again. Establish French Broad Chocolates.

2007: Hone their chocolate repertoire. Birth Max at their house in West Asheville. Sell chocolates at tailgate markets, Earth Fare Grocery and on the interweb. Write a business plan at Mountain BizWorks for a retail location.

photo credit: Christopher Shane

2008: Open French Broad Chocolate Lounge. Fulfill desirable niche. Enjoy overwhelming community support.

2009: Repeatedly scolded by Fire Marshal for exceeding occupancy limit. Expand Chocolate Lounge to second and third floors of building to increase capacity of guest seating and chocolate making.

2011: Embark on path to bean-to-bar chocolate making. Venture to Peru on first farm-direct cacao sourcing mission. Begin construction on Chocolate Factory in downtown Asheville. Opening soon.....

Skills and Abilities

Jael and Dan: collaborative chocolate making and recipe development, vision realization, making babies (retired)

Sam, 6 years: creative story telling, voracious reading, delaying gratification, 2-wheeled bike riding

Max, 4 years: prevarication, argument, interpretive dance, defiance with a smile.

Education

Jael: University of Wisconsin – Madison
University of Minnesota School of Business

Dan: Oberlin College
University of Minnesota Law School


Together: Self-guided, never-ending chocolate education – from textbooks, cookbooks, chef friends, online classes, cacao farms of Costa Rica, culinary tours throughout United States and Central America, and of course, in the kitchen. (Nope, they didn’t attend culinary school.)

References

See press section on our website, or call our moms.