By Maria Gallagher
Knight Ridder Newspapers
(KRT)
The romantic backstory to Jubilee Chocolates makes a fine yarn for Valentine's Day.
It begins nearly three years ago, after a restless investment banker leaves Manhattan to take an administrative job at the White Dog Cafe in Philadelphia. John Doyle is intrigued by the restaurant's harmonic convergence of fine food, profitability and social activism.
Meanwhile, University of Pennsylvania graduate student Kira Baker is working on a gardening and nutrition project with two inner-city schools as she prepares for a career as a public-school teacher.
Doyle and Baker meet at the White Dog. They discover they share similar ideals. They fall in love.
Soon they write a mission statement - "to show the world that business can be a powerful, positive and progressive voice in society" - and start laying the groundwork for Jubilee Chocolates, a company that aspires to do well so it can do good.
Jubilee makes and sells fine handmade, preservative-free chocolates in a variety of intriguing flavor combinations, including bergamot-orange, lavender-honey, pistachio-cinnamon, saffron-rosewater, star anise, fresh raspberry, and an assertive mint that goes by the variety name Kentucky Colonel.
The chocolates are packaged in boxes of 4, 12, 30 or 50 pieces and priced from $6 to $43, including shipping.
The company markets the candies at tasting parties and on its Web site, www.jubileechocolates.com.
The site details Jubilee's philosophy, its use of organic ingredients when possible, its opposition to slave labor in the chocolate industry, and its first goodwill gesture, which involved underwriting a class trip for first graders and kindergarten students in the Philadelphia area.
The company, headquartered in the couple's apartment, recorded $10,000 in sales last year. This year, Doyle and Baker are projecting gross sales of more than $20,000, if discussions with several caterers, coffee bars and corporations prove fruitful.
Ultimately, the couple hopes to use 7 percent of their profits for community-service projects.
"The good thing about this is you only make as many (candies) as you think you're going to sell," said Doyle, 33, after a recent work session in the commercial kitchen the couple rents.
"It's a less risky business than the restaurant business," he said. "If you can get this right, the (profit) margins are good. We have to keep costs in line, do significant marketing, and make a high-end product to be profitable."
From the start, the roles of the two business partners were clearly drawn.
Baker, 25, scouts schools and nonprofit groups for potential partnerships.
She buys organically grown mint from student gardeners at a local elementary school. She is also exploring the possibility of hiring formerly homeless men and women to help with packaging.
Doyle resolved to master the art of making fine chocolates. He delved into books on the subject and spent five Saturdays as an observer at Philadelphia's Le Bec-Fin restaurant, watching pastry chef Robert Bennett make chocolates.
He also went to other chocolatiers for advice about ingredients, equipment, humidity control and shelf life.
"He was asking all the right questions," said Bennett, who left Le Bec-Fin last year to start a retail pastry business.
White Dog Cafe executive chef Kevin von Klause referred Doyle and Baker to confectionery professionals who could critique their products.
For inspiration, he gave them a box of candies from La Maison du Chocolat, the Parisian chocolatier, which pairs chocolate with untraditional fillings such as lemon and fennel, and urged them to experiment with unorthodox flavors.
The couple continue to make all the chocolates themselves during two extended sessions each month, producing as many as 1,300 pieces at a time.
Their equipment, all bought secondhand, includes a small tempering machine, a sturdy "guitar" of fine wires that cuts flavored ganache (the filling for truffles) into perfect squares, and a decades-old "enrober," which applies the exterior chocolate coating.
With the business still so new, both Doyle and Baker have kept their day jobs. He works in the MBA Career Management office at Penn's Wharton School, assisting companies in recruiting Penn students.
She's with Penn's Graduate School of Education, involved in a project that helps teachers through the transition period when they enter a new school.
You can buy something sweet for your valentine from Jubilee Chocolates, but you'll have to do without a heart-shaped box.
"We tested one and thought it looked cheesy," Doyle said.
© 2002, The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
