For father-daughter team Steven and Ella Schneider of Gansett Craft Chocolate, making chocolate is a bit like making wine.
The bars are meant to be enjoyed at a slower pace than mass-produced chocolate, with an emphasis on bringing out the nuances of cocoa beans, Steven Schneider said.
“A lot of companies, especially if you look at Hershey’s, the first ingredient on their milk chocolate is sugar, and that’s not ours,” he said. “We want to highlight the flavor.”
The Schneiders make all their chocolate from scratch, or “bean to bar,” using a rare variety of cocoa beans sourced from Peru. By controlling how the beans are roasted, they can bring out different flavor profiles, such as nutty or fruity tastes.
Steven Schneider, an OB-GYN, and Ella Schneider, a freshman business student at the University of Rhode Island, launched Gansett Craft Chocolate in June 2022.
Earlier attempts at chocolate making were a hit among family and friends, and they’ve now scaled up from making around 30 bars at a time to 300.
The Schneiders work out of the Town Made commercial kitchen in South Kingstown and sell through their website and several Rhode Island wholesalers, but they hope to someday open their own factory and store location.