Choco le`a - 10 Things We Did In 2023
Cheers as we wrap up 2023!
Do you ever look back on your work in the past year with your boss, coworkers, team, or even just yourself?
It is an exercise I love to do to see where we spent our time, energy, and money and to celebrate our accomplishments and the things we had set out to do for the year and also reassess if we want to do things differently in the new year.
Looking back at Choco le`a in 2023, our word for the year was “family.” It was our theme from the big boss, God, and you can read more about how that guides our business decisions on the previous blog HERE.
As I prep for our team’s annual meeting where we celebrate all that we’ve done in the past year and plan for the next year, I thought maybe you’d like to hear 10 highlights as our chocolate friend. After all, we did these for and with you!
Grew Our Chocolate Family
We expanded our chocolate fam with the addition of 3 very talented full-timers, investing in training and bonding to set us up for growth next year.
Renovations
We invested in a major renovation to give TLC to our old building, accommodate a few extra square feet of space which can make a huge difference for efficiency in a small business like ours, and gave it a bright, clean coat of paint to reassure our chocolate friends that we are here to stay.Charitable Donations
We were blessed to be a blessing donating to over 17 non-profit organizations and schools this year. We are committed to our mission of “Bringing peace to our world,” giving thousands of dollars from sales and thousands of dollars in in-kind donations locally.Corporate/Wholesale Partners
This year, we not only continued our partnership with The Four Seasons Resort, Dean & Deluca, Logo’s, and a few others, but also expanded to work with The Sheraton Waikiki, The Refinery, Ritz Carlton, and more slowly working our way back to pre-pandemic days!Packaging Design
We took a stab at learning to draw on Procreate and edit on Adobe Illustrator so we could create and tweak our own designs. This felt like taking on a whole different profession, but we are so thankful we challenged ourselves so we are not afraid to try more new things in the future.Delivery
We tested out Door Dash to offer delivery services for the first time and it went really well! Now, we want to team up with Uber Eats and others who can expand our reach radius to friends further away on the island!Holiday Prep - Help - Colors
We were prepped and ready early this holiday season and had an incredible team of 9 volunteers who helped us this year while having a lot of fun! They brought a lot of life to quarter #4 and carefully packed the new, beautiful, colorfully painted truffles we learned at the Chocolate Academy in Chicago for Christmas.Taste Talk Tour
During the summer, we launched very successful private tours with tastes and talk story time sharing information behind the business. It was a very fun pilot program with a demand for more, getting us thinking on how we can do this while the shop is now open 5 days a week.Iced Chocolate Drink
We created our first ever iced chocolate drink that was a huge success and so we will continue to offer it year-round! It even got us thinking about other refreshing treats we can offer for friends to enjoy in our upgraded outdoor seating area!Dairy Free & Shelf Stable
We expanded our truffle product line to offer new dairy free options for our chocolate friends as well as shelf stable truffles that do not need to be refrigerated for special events and shipping… ;)
These are some of the highlights and there were many small moments we celebrated along the way too like tweaks to better our website, internal systems, positive feedback received from you, etc. There were also some things that didn’t go well, but we tried and sometimes getting over the comfort or fear to try, is a win in itself.
Phew! If that was just 10 of the things we did this past year, I wonder what we’ll be doing in our 10th year of business next year! :p
finding peace by piece
Take some time to look back at your past year and reflect. Celebrate all that you did with your work family and pick what you want to start, build on, or let go.
