After falling on hard times, a family recipe uplifts Warwick entrepreneur
Ed Patterson lives and breathes chocolate. Whenever and wherever he traveled for work at Merrill Lynch, he would stop in at chocolatiers, taking note of the design, presentation and the different tastes. He researched the industry, the history of chocolate and the chocolate dynasties of today, but it was two years before his interest in the business came to fruition – when everything else in his life fell apart.
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At 34, he went from having his life in perfect order – a wife and two young children living in the Mystic, Conn. area, a home and a good job – to having nothing within the span of seven days. He and his wife split up and his employer gave him the pink slip.
“I got religious real quick and prayed for something good to happen,” Patterson said.
With nothing left to lose, he decided to make a business from the confection that seems to give everyone solace.
Patterson paid a visit to his grandfather in upstate New York to share his business idea and found out his passion for chocolate is part of his DNA.
“When I told my grandfather I wanted to maybe start a chocolate business, he mentioned a family recipe for chocolate we have dating back to the 18th century,” Patterson said. “I was dumbfounded. All this time I had been researching this business and I never knew we had this recipe.”
So the story goes, a Patterson descendant was a captain in the cocoa trade from Scotland throughout Europe, and the Patterson women created a recipe for dark chocolate. It was passed through the generations, cooked up in family kitchens on occasion, but never sold.
With this discovery, he was off and running.
With just $303 to spend, he asked four chocolate manufacturers to send him samples. He mixed ingredients from his family recipe with the manufactures until reaching a combination he wanted to put his family name on. In July 2003, the perfect batch became “Patterson Family Chocolates.”
He packaged the truffles in little baggies and wrapped fliers around them, handing them out to people here and there until his first real order came in October 2003. He made $18,000 in the following six weeks – which still left him in the red, but fueled his fire for the business. Companies like GEM Plumbing and Cox Cable bought his chocolates, and he even landed a contract with the Los Angeles Lakers, beating out Godiva Chocolates.
The chocolates are only sold through special order, and each box is disguised by a corporate logo. They aren’t found in stores (yet), but are bought by organizations that want to give gifts at special events, like Chamber of commerce dinners, (Patterson belongs to seven Chambers throughout the state).
The name, Patterson Family Chocolates, is found only inside the box.
“I like letting a company put their logo on the front, and when people taste them, they wonder where they can get these chocolates. It adds to the mystique,” Patterson said.
He gives discounts and donations to the Salvation Army and United Way. Giving his high-end truffles away while working on a shoestring budget is tough, but he considers it part of starting out.
“I was tired of the financial games (at Merrill Lynch) with people who have millions of dollars, and wanted to be in a business where I could give something back to people. Give someone a box of chocolate, and they are happy,” he said.
Like many entrepreneurs, finance is still Patterson’s Achilles’ heel; it’s the only thing slowing the growth of his business – but it isn’t stopping him.
In March, Patterson took a “day job” with National Employee Benefit Companies in Warwick to help finance his business and pay the mounting bills.
At this point, the operation still runs out of his home, which has changed five times in less than a year. Patterson has moved from Portsmouth to Middletown to Bristol to Westerly and now Warwick, each time in an effort to save money on rent to put toward his business.
Within the next year, Patterson plans on expanding his Web page into a site that corporations can view and purchase products from.
He packages the small orders himself with the help of his 4- and 6-year-old kids, who he hopes will one day take over the business. He also works with a confections consultant who handles marketing and distribution of large orders.
Though the business is still in its infancy, his passion for chocolate is evident in every sentence and his vision for Patterson Chocolates spans far beyond Rhode Island borders.
In the future, he wants Patterson Family Chocolates to be on the lips of people throughout the globe.
“I want to be the exclusive chocolatier for the state of Rhode Island and I eventually want to go international,” he said, sipping a Starbucks liquid chocolate Chantico beverage. “All of these big corporations started out in the dirt. It’s my turn.”
