Big Bertha Doesn’t Care What They Told Me in 2006.

There is a machine inside our chocolate factory named Big Bertha.

She is not elegant.

She is not quiet.

She has never cared about trends, Instagram, awards, résumés, business plans, or whether somebody thinks what I am doing is a particularly good idea.

Feed her cacao nibs and she goes to work.

Two hundred pounds of freshly winnowed cacao nibs.

Friction.

Heat.

Time.

And patience.

A ridiculous amount of patience.

Eventually, what went in looking like broken pieces of roasted cacao begins turning into chocolate.

Real chocolate.

There is something wonderfully honest about that.

Big Bertha cannot be impressed.

You cannot talk your way into better chocolate.

You cannot slap a beautiful label on bad cacao and convince her to fix it.

And you cannot rush her because you have somewhere else to be.

She simply keeps moving.

Maybe that is why I love her.

Because Big Bertha represents a journey that started almost twenty years ago, when somebody told me I probably shouldn't be doing this at all.

It Started With a Very Short Conversation

In 2006, I was attending a chocolate school and asked a well-known chef what I thought was a pretty reasonable question.

Why couldn't I make my own chocolate?

Not bonbons.

Not truffles.

Not taking somebody else's finished chocolate, melting it, tempering it and making something pretty from it.

I wanted to make the actual chocolate.

From the cacao bean forward.

His answer was basically no.

I should concentrate on becoming a better chocolatier.

Fair enough.

He was the expert.

I was the student asking the question, even though by that point I was already twelve years into my career working with chocolate.

Maybe that was why the answer stayed with me.

After the course was over, we said our goodbyes to the other students and instructors, packed everything up, and I got on an airplane back to Southern California.

I couldn't stop thinking about it.

Not because I was angry.

Not because I wanted to prove him wrong.

And certainly not because I had some grand vision of becoming a chocolate revolutionary.

I just wanted to know.

That may be one of my bigger character flaws.

Tell me there is a locked door and eventually I am going to start wondering what is on the other side.

Then I'm probably going to start looking for the key.

Chocolate Had Started Asking Me Questions

By then, I had already spent years working with chocolate made by other people.

Good chocolate.

Expensive chocolate.

Chocolate with familiar names printed on the box.

Years before Marsatta existed, with an earlier company of mine, I had even managed to get one of our products into Walmart.

In the pharmacy section, of all places.

Why?

Because we had created something intended to help people, and seeing something you helped create reach that many people felt pretty damn good.

But there was a very big but.

It still wasn't my chocolate.

We were using chocolate made by somebody else, and at the time it was sweetened with maltitol.

Maltitol was not perfect. Far from it.

But back then, when you were trying to create something without conventional table sugar, it was one of the options available.

That experience taught me something I didn't fully appreciate at the time.

I could create the product.

I could build the idea.

I could even get something onto the shelves of one of the largest retailers in America.

But I still didn't control the chocolate.

And that bothered me.

I kept turning chocolate packages over and reading the ingredients.

Some made sense.

Some made me scratch my head.

And I kept coming back to the same question:

Why is that in there?

Why was it there?

What was it doing?

Did the chocolate actually need it?

And if I didn't want it, why couldn't I make something different?

Then there were the percentages.

You could buy this percentage.

Or that percentage.

Maybe another one if you were lucky.

Those were apparently your choices.

But why?

What if I wanted 71%?

Or 74%?

Or 89%?

What if I wanted 98%?

What if I wanted a 100% chocolate that didn't taste like punishment?

What if I wanted a plant-based chocolate?

I was still dependent on somebody else deciding what chocolate existed for me to buy.

I didn't want somebody else's short menu anymore.

I wanted the whole kitchen.

Before Big Bertha, There Was a Table Full of Santha's

Bean-to-bar chocolate can sound wonderfully romantic.

Beautiful cacao pods.

Faraway farms.

Polished equipment.

A chocolate maker thoughtfully examining roasted cacao as though he is contemplating the meaning of life.

Sure.

There is some of that.

There are also cacao nibs scattered around until somebody cleans them up.

Around here, that somebody is often me.

Back then, my chocolate operation looked a little different.

Picture a table with what I remember being around a dozen small Santha wet grinders lined up shoulder to shoulder.

All running.

For hours.

And hours.

Sometimes it felt like they never stopped.

These were wet grinders commonly used for things like rice and lentils.

I looked at them and apparently thought:

Chocolate.

So I bought one.

Then another.

And another.

Eventually I had a little army of Santha's lined up across a table, grinding cacao while I tried to make the chocolate I could already taste in my head.

Most of the time those machines weren't even making different chocolates.

They simply didn't hold very much.

If I was working toward a particular cacao percentage, several of them might all be running parts of the same batch.

Same cacao.

Same percentage.

Same goal.

 

One of the original little Santha wet grinders. Before Big Bertha, I had around a dozen of these running for hours at a time. They were built for things like rice and lentils. I had other plans.

When one finished, I poured the chocolate into a larger container.

Then came the important part.

I cleaned that machine out like somebody who hadn't eaten in three days and had just been handed their first plate of food.

Every last bit.

Scrape the sides.

Scrape the stones.

Scrape whatever chocolate was willing to come off.

If licking the machine clean had been a reasonable option, I probably would have considered it.

That chocolate was valuable.

The cacao was valuable.

The sugar was valuable.

The time was valuable.

I certainly wasn't going to wash good chocolate down a drain.

Not a chance.

So every bit I could recover went into the larger container with the rest of the batch.

Then I cleaned the machine, filled it again and started over.

Sometimes I was continuing the same cacao percentage.

Other times I moved on to something completely different.

A different cacao.

A different percentage.

A different idea.

Another question I wanted answered.

"You're Using It for Rice, Right?"

Of course, those Santhas weren't exactly designed for the life I was giving them.

Every once in a while, one would decide it had participated enough in my chocolate education.

Something would break.

So I would take it apart, figure out what went wrong and, if I needed a spare part, call the company.

Those phone calls became one of the funniest parts of the whole experiment.

I would explain which machine I had and which part I needed.

Then somewhere during the conversation would come some version of:

"You're using it for rice, right?"  Of course.

Sure.

Rice.

Let's call it rice.

Meanwhile, back in Southern California, there wasn't a grain of rice anywhere near the thing.

It was full of cacao.

After enough phone calls, I imagine they had some idea that this guy in California was doing something their instruction manual hadn't anticipated.

But they sent the parts. And I was happy those parts were on their way.

I'd hang up.

Fix the machine when the parts arrived.

Fill it with cacao again.

And back to work we went.

There was no grand research laboratory.

No multimillion-dollar R&D department.

No team of food scientists standing around in white coats carrying clipboards.

There was me.

A table. And always tools around after all the machine was built for rice!

A dozen little machines built for something else.

Cacao nibs.

And one stubborn question:

Can I make the chocolate I actually want to make?

Those Santha's became part of my education.

Batch after batch.

Hour after hour.

Texture.

Flavor.

Acidity.

Bitterness.

Sweetness.

Aroma.

Percentages.

What happens if I stop here?

What happens if I keep going?

What happens tomorrow that wasn't there today?

I wasn't trying to discover somebody else's definition of perfect chocolate.

I was trying to discover mine.

Chocolate doesn't surrender its secrets quickly.

You have to stay curious long enough to earn some of them.

Eventually I sold most of those little Santha's.

I even gave some away.

But I think there might still be one or two tucked away somewhere.

I'm going to look.

Maybe I shouldn't get rid of the last ones.

Who knows?

Perhaps one day they will sit behind glass in the Marsatta Chocolate Museum.

Ha.

You laugh.

I'm only half joking.

Because those machines are part of this story. I think I may even have my old Krankenstein. It was an old hand winnowing machine that did a primitive job of cracking the cacao beans to eventually separate the beans from the skin or chaff. 

Then Whole Foods Came Knocking

This was still during the Santha years.

Whole Foods came knocking. They knocked on MY door. 612 Meyer Lane in Redondo Beach. How could I ever forget.

Seriously.

And I told them I wasn't ready.

I know.

Somewhere, a business professor is probably clutching his chest.

Whole Foods was interested in Marsatta Chocolate. 

Not my previous company.

Not somebody else's chocolate.

Marsatta.

My chocolate.

And I said:

Not yet.

Because I knew the truth.

The chocolate might have been ready.

The company wasn't.

I still had a table full of little machines doing everything they could to produce a batch.

There is an enormous difference between making great chocolate and being ready to supply a major retailer.

Production.

Consistency.

Packaging.

Supply.

Cash flow.

All of it.

I wasn't willing to say yes simply because a famous name was standing at the door.

Sometimes the smartest answer you can give a very big opportunity is:

Not yet.

I have thought about that knock many times since.

Especially because what happened next had very little to do with retail expansion.

Life had other ideas.

Then Life Hit Our Family Hard

We eventually lost the manufacturing facility we had been using.

Equipment went into storage.

Marsatta kept going however we could.

Satellite kitchens.

Farmers markets.

Whatever was necessary.

At the same time, our family was trying to keep its head above water.

Then came a day I will never forget.

We were getting ready to go to hockey practice for our daughter Emma.

We never made it.

Naomi was pregnant with Dustin when she suddenly began bleeding.

Seriously bleeding.

Everything changed in an instant.

There are moments when everything you thought was important five minutes earlier disappears.

Orders.

Chocolate.

Bills.

Business.

None of it mattered.

Naomi and our baby needed help.

Dustin arrived roughly two months early.

Our little boy spent about the first two months of his life in the hospital, dealing with a serious brain hemorrhage related to his premature birth along with heart problems.

Suddenly our world consisted of hospitals, doctors, monitors, hockey schedules for our other children and trying somehow to keep Marsatta alive.

It was terrifying.

It was exhausting.

Financially, we were hanging by a thread.

Then People Showed Up

Our community showed up.

Friends showed up.

Hockey families showed up.

People who didn't owe us anything decided our family was worth helping.

I will never forget that.

And I will never forget the Los Angeles Kings.

At one of the hardest moments of our lives, the hockey community reached back and grabbed us.

That stays with you.

People rallied around our family and around this little chocolate company.

They helped us rebuild.

They helped us believe there was another chapter.

And ultimately, that support helped Marsatta move forward into something much bigger than those little Santhas.

But it also left us with something else.

A responsibility.

When the Community Knocks, Marsatta Answers

We know what it feels like when somebody shows up for you.

So when the community knocks on our door, we try to answer.

If somebody asks Marsatta to attend an event, support a fundraiser, set up a booth, share chocolate or simply be there, we do what we can.

Sometimes helping means money.

Small businesses don't always have much of that.

Sometimes helping means time.

Sometimes it means loading up the car, hauling tables, setting up a booth and handing out good chocolate to hundreds of people without asking for anything in return.

Sometimes it means simply showing up.

That matters.

Chocolate is what we make.

Community is something bigger.

When your family has been on the receiving end of extraordinary kindness, you remember.

So if we can help, we help.

If we can show up, we show up.

If all we can do is hand somebody a piece of chocolate and make their day a little better, we'll do that too.

Because people once showed up for us.

You don't forget that.

Ever.

And Then Came Big Bertha

Now you understand why Big Bertha means more to me than stainless steel, stone and a motor.

She came after the Santha's.

After Whole Foods had knocked and I said we weren't ready.

After losing our manufacturing facility.

After Naomi's emergency.

After Dustin's frightening first months of life.

After a community, hockey families and the Los Angeles Kings stepped up when we needed them.

Big Bertha represents what came next.

The chance to think bigger.

Much bigger.

Instead of a dozen little machines grinding pieces of one batch, here was a machine capable of taking roughly 200 pounds of freshly winnowed cacao nibs and transforming them through friction, movement and heat into chocolate!

That felt like progress.

But more than anything, it felt like gratitude.

Because machines like Big Bertha do not simply appear.

People helped us get there.

So when I look at her today, I see more than equipment.

I see Naomi.

I see Dustin.

I see hockey families.

I see the Los Angeles Kings.

I see customers and friends who believed in us.

I see a family that got knocked down and kept moving.

And somewhere, I imagine all those little Santha's breathing a collective sigh of relief when the big girl finally showed up.

Meet Big Bertha

And here she is.

Big Bertha.

Watch the video.

Listen to her work.

This isn't a staged kitchen set.

Nobody rolled this machine into the background because it looked good for the camera.

This is how Marsatta chocolate is made.

Cacao nibs.

Friction.

Heat.

Time.

Patience.

Big Bertha at work inside Marsatta Chocolate. From freshly winnowed cacao nibs to chocolate, this is where friction, heat, time and patience do their work.

And even with a machine like this, there is no magic button.

You still have to know when to wait.

When to taste.

When to keep going.

When to stop.

How much acidity remains?

Which volatile compounds do you want to preserve?

What flavor disappears after another twelve hours?

What flavor suddenly appears?

At what point does bold become harsh?

At what point does bitterness become balance?

Those aren't always questions a recipe can answer.

Sometimes you need experience.

Sometimes you need your tongue.

Sometimes you need to shut up and listen to the machine.

Big Bertha and I have had a lot of conversations.

She does most of the talking.

She's bigger.

Twenty Years Later, I'm Still Asking Questions

I didn't figure chocolate out in 2006.

I haven't figured it all out in 2026 either.

Good.

The day I believe I know everything about cacao is probably the day somebody should politely take away my chef hat.

Chocolate is agriculture.

Chemistry.

Temperature.

Timing.

Instinct.

Memory.

Experience.

And occasionally complete chaos.

A few degrees in roasting can change the story.

More time in a machine can expose something that wasn't there yesterday.

That is what keeps me interested.

I'm still the student asking:

Why?

The difference is that today I have almost twenty more years of answers.

And probably twice as many questions.

Whole Foods, About That Knock...

There is one door in this story I haven't forgotten.

Whole Foods.

Nearly twenty years ago, Whole Foods came knocking on Marsatta's door.

And I said:

Not yet.

The chocolate was getting there.

I wasn't.

The company wasn't.

And as difficult as it was to say no to an opportunity like that, it was the right answer at the time.

Funny how life works.

Today, I actually work for Whole Foods.

I walk those aisles.

I see those shelves.

I see those little LOCAL markers that tell customers:

This came from someone in your community.

And every time I see one, I think the same thing.

Marsatta belongs there.

Not because being local should earn us a free pass.

It shouldn't.

Marsatta belongs there because the chocolate is ready.

Because it is made here.

Because the ingredients matter.

Because the story is real.

Because there is a person behind the product.

There is a factory in Torrance.

There is a machine named Big Bertha.

There is a family behind this company.

And there are almost twenty years of learning behind the chocolate.

I also see firsthand what Whole Foods can do for a small producer when the right product finds the right buyer at the right time.

So every once in a while, I think back to that knock.

And today my answer would be very different.

Whole Foods, Marsatta is ready.

The chocolate is ready.

Big Bertha is ready.

And this chocolate maker is definitely ready.

We've moved a few times since that first knock, so maybe you've lost our address.

That's all right.

I'm already inside the building.

Now I just need to find the right door.

And Whole Foods Isn't the Only Door

There are other places where I believe Marsatta belongs.

Erewhon.

Bristol Farms.

Lazy Acres.

Mother's Market.

Head north and there is Mollie Stone's, Nugget Markets, Oliver's Market and Draeger's.

Across the country there are places like Citarella, Di Bruno Bros., Balducci's and other specialty markets where customers still care about what they're eating, who made it and where it came from.

Those are the kinds of shelves I want Marsatta sitting on.

The difference between the Chef Jeffray standing over twelve little Santhas twenty years ago and the one writing this today is simple:

The chocolate is ready.

Twenty years ago, my challenge was figuring out how to make the chocolate I imagined.

Today the challenge is finding the right person.

Making the introduction.

Putting Marsatta into their hands.

And then getting out of the way and letting the chocolate speak.

Maybe it's a buyer.

Maybe it's a category manager.

Maybe it's a store director.

Maybe it's somebody reading this who knows somebody who knows somebody.

That's how a lot of good things begin.

So if you know the person whose desk a Marsatta bar ought to land on, introduce us.

I'll bring the chocolate.

Twenty years ago, Whole Foods did the knocking.

Maybe this time it's my turn to find the door.

Come Find Me

And if you're not a grocery buyer?

You're even easier.

Just come say hello.

If you find yourself in Torrance, come see me at Marsatta.

You don't need to know what conching means.

You don't need to understand cacao percentages.

And please don't walk through the door announcing that you're detecting notes of sun-dried Peruvian elderberry with a whisper of Himalayan fog.

Please.

Just come in.

Taste something.

Ask questions.

Tell me what you like.

Tell me what you don't.

For now, I can't invite you through the production area the way I eventually want to.

Life, once again, has a sense of humor.

Years after our family fought its way through the chapter you just read, another business partnership went badly.

Today, part of our factory is doing double duty, holding personal belongings while our family works its way back.

Yes.

Again.

Sometimes I wonder whether somebody upstairs is running a particularly aggressive quality-control program on me.

But we're still here.

We're rebuilding.

One customer.

One order.

One batch.

One bar at a time.

And one day I want to open this whole place properly.

I want you to smell the cacao roasting.

I want you to hear the machines.

I want you to see what bean-to-bar really means.

Until then, Big Bertha will keep working behind the scenes.

And I'll be out front.

I'm usually easy to find.

Look for the guy in the chef hat with chocolate all over his shoes.

That's probably me.

And I'll always have a sample for you.

Come through the door and I'll welcome you with open arms.

Maybe even with a heart-shaped chocolate made especially for you.

Because after all these years, after everything this little chocolate company and my family have been through, I still believe something very simple:

Chocolate should make people feel something.

And If Torrance Is Too Far Away...

You can still be part of the story.

Visit MARSATTA.COM.

Order a few bars.

Try something you wouldn't normally choose.

Go dark.

Go really dark.

Try the 100%.

Try something plant-based.

Send chocolate to somebody you love.

And when that Marsatta package reaches your door, know that somewhere back here in Torrance there's a guy in a chef hat, probably with chocolate on his shoes, who is genuinely grateful you chose us.

Every order matters.

Right now, perhaps more than ever.

It keeps cacao moving.

It keeps Big Bertha turning.

It helps us rebuild.

And it lets me continue doing the thing somebody told me almost twenty years ago I probably shouldn't do.

Make my own chocolate.

I'm still doing it.

Still learning.

Still asking questions.

Still showing up when the community knocks.

And still grateful for every person who helped us get this far.

Nearly twenty years ago, Whole Foods knocked and I wasn't ready.

Today I am.

And to everyone else?

You don't have to knock.

The door is already open.

Chef Jeffray D. Gardner
Marsatta Chocolate
Torrance, California

Come visit us, or order online at MARSATTA.COM.

Let the chocolate speak for itself