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In the meantime, Childs is gearing up the business operations and sampling ingredients. Not a bad job, except when the future of your business is hanging on your taste buds. Childs is like a sommelier of confections. In fact, his passion for wine predated his fascination with chocolate and directly inspired how he and Rossetto think about TCHO’s product. “Timothy developed a new taxonomy for chocolate,” Rossetto says.

and texture enhancement systems.” Today, most premium chocolate is classified by Childs’ idea was to launch a line of premium choc- region or by percentage, referring to the mass of olate to complement Cabaret’s confections. When cacao bean (cocoa) in the bar compared to flavor-he realized the company wasn’t moving in that ings like sugar or vanilla. The problem, Childs direction, he set out alone. For months he immersed explains, is that percentages aren’t a true gauge himself in chocolate, eventually finding himself at of flavor. Different beans can be coaxed to yield Interpak, the process and packaging machine fair in various flavors by adding more or less sugar or Germany where the candy industry converges every tweaking the manufacturing process, so two bars three years. There he met a “grizzled old chocolate may have similar percentages of cocoa mass in expert,” as he describes his adviser and eventual them, but taste quite different. Classifying by origin business partner (who prefers not to be named). is equally problematic because most regions offer Shortly thereafter, this expert called Childs with many different flavors of beans. news of a bargain. He was appraising a decommis- “Wine has similar descriptors as chocolate,” sioned East German chocolate factory that was Childs says. “So I decided to use six base-level, selling off its top-notch but dated gear. Childs had building-block flavors to classify our chocolate, like to act quickly. He rang his old friend Louis Rossetto, fruity, nutty, and, of course, chocolatey.” The TCHO the founder of Wired magazine and a Cabaret fan, and Flavor Profile acts as a road map to define the types asked for a loan. Oddly enough, it was a perfect fit. of beans he seeks in South America and elsewhere. “Chocolate is a traditional food, but it’s also Once Childs connects with a farmer, he heads back very modern,” says Rossetto, now the company’s to the lab to put some of their beans through their CEO and creative director. “TCHO isn’t just selling paces (see “From Pod to Palette,” page 32). chocolate but rather the whole chocolate experi- TCHO is slowly outfitting the chocolate lab with ence. People want their products to tell stories and industry-standard equipment, but the company chocolate is the media for this story.” was launched with scavenged gear hacked together

Once Heckert’s team completes some repairs with duct tape and glue. It wasn’t pretty, but it on the equipment, the line will be outfitted with the worked. And it served as a prototype. TCHO’s plan latest in digital sensors and video cameras. The is to help farmers build their own similar labs. sensors measure temperatures, monitor valves, and “Most independent farmers have never tasted check for blockages while the cameras allow fewer chocolate from their own beans,” Childs says. Pro-people to operate the factory. The factory’s original viding farmers with tools to improve their product, bureau-sized control panel, something that might he explains, will help them shift from producers of belong on the Starship Enterprise’s bridge, is now commodity beans to premium growers. And that a conversation piece in TCHO’s reception area. can only lead to better chocolate for everyone.

“We’re virtualizing the whole control system so it “TCHO,” he says, “is really a tool to reshape how can be operated from a single touchscreen,” Childs premium chocolate is made and experienced.” says. “Eventually, I’ll be able to run the factory from my iPhone.” David Pescovitz is editor at large of MAKE.

“We’re virtualizing the whole control system so it can be operated from a single touchscreen. Eventually,

I’ll be able to run the factory from my iPhone.”

30 Make: Volume 14