Theresa Rogers is the owner of the Choc O’ Lat Shoppe at 5041 San Jose Blvd.
HOW LONG HAS SHE
BEEN OPEN?
Rogers has been in business for a year and a half, but recently moved from a location on St. Augustine Road. “I’ve been open at the new shop for about six weeks. It’s been great. The visibility is wonderful here.”
HOW DID SHE DECIDE TO OPEN HER OWN CHOCOLATE SHOP?
A couple of years ago, Rogers was at Jacksonville University, finishing her bachelor’s degree in management and marketing that she had started years earlier. “I had signed up for a strategic marketing class and 75 percent of our grade was based on one project that required us to come up with a way to market a business idea. I decided on a gourmet chocolate because I knew it would be easy to get people to sit down for taste tests. I made the chocolate, started conducting taste tests, visual appeal tests and comparative tests.” Four days after the project ended, with a fair amount of chocolate left over, and at her mother’s urging, Rogers opened a booth at the Fair to sell her chocolate. And when she later found a retail space at the exact price she knew she could afford, she signed the lease that day. “I’ve had a lot of fun this past year and a half. I cannot tell you a single day that hasn’t been an absolute joy to see some of the things God does.”
BACKGROUND
Rogers is a Jacksonville native who attended St. John’s Country Day School. Before opening the Choc O’ Lat Shoppe, she served a three-year tour in the Army. “I served in Bosnia and on a United Nations Tour, which is a peacekeeping mission involving multiple countries, so you could be serving side-by-side with the Swiss or the English. It was great exposure to a lot of different cultures and places. I was stationed in southern Germany by request, which was wonderful because we were an hour and a half from the French border. It was easy to go to Paris for the day. I traveled to Belgium and Denmark when I was there, too.” Rogers also operated a small gourmet, produce and bakery shop on the Westside several years ago.
WHAT’S IN A NAME?
One of Rogers’ four daughters, Lovey, is a “junk food queen,” who had a habit of saying to Rogers, “Mommy, I need a choc-o-lat.”
“That was how she pronounced it. I thought it was a perfect name because it is instantly recognizable and self descriptive, and it’s very European, which is a lot of what we do.” Rogers has three other daughters, Eva, Cece and Grace.
WHERE DID SHE LEARN TO MAKE CHOCOLATE?
“I taught myself how to make chocolate in September 2001.” She has read dozens of books on the subject and spent many hours in trial and error processes. “I would go home and read 55 caramel recipes, and cook until I found a perfect one, adjusting or changing something when I needed to. My neighbors loved me because I was constantly taking trays of chocolates over and asking, ‘Would you try this? What do you think about this?’ Though I’ve had no instruction in it, I’ve been baking and cooking since I was a kid. It’s always been something I enjoyed and have been good at. Everybody has a gift and this was God’s gift, that I can cook.”
WHAT WILL SOMEONE FIND AT YOUR STORE?
She has 17 varieties of truffles, chocolate covered fruit slices, pralines, chocolate covered pretzels and popcorn. “I want a person to walk in here and get the feeling that they’ve stepped into a little European chocolate shop. I want someone to know right away that this isn’t mass produced chocolate.”
WHERE DOES SHE GET HER INSPIRATION?
“If I want to do something new I might wander through the gourmet section of the grocery store, looking at different ingredients, or I might wander around the produce section. This morning when I was picking up strawberries, I noticed a half-opened case of pears. They were beautiful and I decided I would blanch them in a sugar syrup and then dip them in fondant and then in chocolate.” Rogers spent three years in Europe and drew much inspiration from the chocolate shops there. “Until I did my tour in Germany, I would have told you that I didn’t like chocolate. I didn’t care for what I’d eaten there. But the shops there are gorgeous. I remember walking into one chocolate shop in Germany and being completely awed. There were two-foot tall chocolate dolls lining the walls and baskets overflowing with chocolate on every counter top and table. There are a lot of little shops that make their own chocolate and seeing all of those beautiful pieces and combinations that I’d never dreamed of. I realized, ‘Wow, I do like chocolate.’ ”
WHAT KIND OF WORK GOES INTO MAKING CHOCOLATE?
“There are a lot of processes to making really good chocolate, a lot of pieces that go into it.” A Redmond, a chocolate-covered nougat with fruits and nuts, for instance, takes many steps. “The nuts have to be toasted, the fruits are candied or brandied, and making nougat involves several pots cooking simultaneously that must be kept at controlled temperatures. Then those ingredients are combined and beaten, the nuts and fruits are folded in, the nougat is spread, cooled and cut into squares. Finally, it’s coated in chocolate. A lot of work goes into truly making all of the product. Another part of the candy making is wondering what shape to make it, what size it should be, making sure it will fit in the box, and planning the presentation.”
DOES SHE CONSIDER WHAT SHE DOES AN ART?
“It’s a lot of fun and a very creative process, especially because 90 percent of recipes don’t come out of a book. They come from trying different combinations.”
ASPIRATIONS
“I would love to go back and take a few classes in France. There’s an abundance of exciting classes available in Europe, but not a lot of instruction over here in chocolate. There is something new coming out every day. I still do a lot of reading, and keep a good ear out.”
— by Bailey White