Chok. Fine Chocolates gets goodies into the hands of more customers with Digital Main Street grant
In a small studio off Highway 7 in the hamlet of Shakespeare, Stephen Beaumont’s Chok. Fine Chocolates blurs the line between art and chocolate. From his commercial kitchen, Beaumont carefully combines Swiss, Fair Trade Chocolate with hand-made fillings – sourced locally when possible – into small batches of unique bonbons and other chocolate creations.
It’s unique and special, a side passion project turned into a brick-and-mortar store while Beaumont still holds down a teaching job at Conestoga College. But it’s gaining popularity.
“There are plenty of chocolatiers but there’s nobody doing this kind of bonbon – the edible art, I like to call it – in the whole area,” says Beaumont.
The Chok. owner has spent the majority of his life in luxury hospitality management around the world. While living in Windsor and managing a private family estate, he got the kitchen in his house certified and began producing bonbons under the Chok. moniker, selling them on Etsy.
“I did okay, but it’s a nightmare, honestly,” says Beaumont. Customers were placing orders from all over Canada and the U.S. and shipping logistics proved challenging. After all, the product is highly sensitive to heat. “Stuff that was being shipped to the States sometimes didn't arrive at all or would arrive six weeks later and by then it was useless.”
When he returned to Stratford and opened up his studio in nearby Shakespeare, he knew he wanted to do it differently. Having a retail space meant people could come in off the street and buy his edible art, helping reduce losses from his larger wholesale orders. “What I’m doing now is a pre-order pick-up system at a certain time from my studio,” he says. “Or if you aren’t in Stratford – I haven’t done it yet – but I'll start doing deliveries around the area.”
In the busier seasons, he still plans to introduce some shipping but he’s locally focused at the moment – dividing his time between wholesale, retail, and chocolate-making workshops.
However, as a relatively new chocolatier in the area, Beaumont knows the best way to reach potential clients is through building out his digital presence.
To do so, he’s tapped into Digital Main Street, a program combining grants and one-to-one support from the Province of Ontario alongside partners to help main street businesses strengthen their online capabilities and plan for the digital future. He applied for the $2,500 Digital Transformation Grant.
“I wanted to be able to have an order system that works well, that I can track and customers can track and know when it’s ready to pick up,” says Beaumont. “Because of my background in hospitality, I'm very much against all these delivery services (that) take so much of a cut of a business that’s already working on slim margins.”
The integration between Beaumont’s Square system and e-commerce is key. A large chunk of the funding has been devoted to building a better website. “It has to be very much more aesthetically pleasing than it is right now,” he says.
“It has to look beautiful because the chocolates have to look beautiful, right? So there's a lot of visual in that.”
He’s also using part of the funding to invest in Buffer, a social media management system to make managing his digital presence more efficient. It’s still early days, says Beaumont, and having yet to experience a full holiday season, the chocolatier isn’t sure what his workflow will look like in the months ahead. But he’s happy to get the digital side of his business in order.
“So much of it right now is in the experimental phase,” says Beaumont. “But I feel very good about this.”
If you are in the Stratford area, make sure to get your delicious chocolate art sur ce site.
To learn more about Digital Main Street's programs and how we can help your business visit sur ce site.
Digital Main Street a été créé par la Toronto Association of Business Improvement Areas (TABIA) avec le soutien direct de la Ville de Toronto. DMS est également soutenu par un groupe de partenaires commerciaux stratégiques, dont Google, Mastercard, Shopify, Meta, Intuit QuickBooks, Square, Lightspeed, Ebay et Postes Canada.
L'investissement continu de la province de l'Ontario, par l'intermédiaire du Ministère du Développement économique, de la Création d’emplois et du Commerce (MEDJCT), a permis l'expansion continue de la plateforme numérique de la rue principale afin de soutenir davantage d'entreprises qui passent au numérique dans tout l'Ontario.
