Written by Megan Cooper
The rich scent of chocolate clings to the walls and the couple inside the Hot Chocolatier store in the early fall morning. Workers begin baking and cleaning the cases filled with chocolate treats from sweet moist flaky cake to dense rich truffles.
Bradon Buckner and his wife Wendy Buckner spend almost every morning at their Market Street or St. Elmo store. Brandon never could have imagined where he and his wife would have ended up.
The dream would become the Hot Chocolatier that Chattanooga has today started as a hobby.
“She was working in a hospital and started playing around with chocolate and started doing little bonbon truffle things and selling them to doctors and making plates of desserts,” Buckner said. “She was like this is kinda cool and got into the chemistry of it.”
Realizing she was interested in learning to make more things, she attended a French pastry school in Chicago, Illinois about three hours from their home in Iowa City.
“It was almost like boot camp every day,” Brandon said. “You spend hours a day starting with pastries and working your way to chocolate. She really fell in love again with chocolate there.”
After discovering her love of making chocolate treats professionally, Wendy and Brandon moved to North Carolina for a job at a chocolate store.
“Out of school, she got a job as a manager in a chocolate shop in Asheville, North Carolina,” Brandon said. “So we ended up moving from Chicago to Asheville. She was managing a kitchen there and got to see how things worked there on that scale.”
After Brandon got a job teaching at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, they moved back home to Chattanooga. Wendy decorated cakes and Brandon taught art until they got a new opportunity to sell their treats.
“We were going to the Chattanooga Market and telling people to go to the business development center on North Shore where we built a kitchen there to do chocolate work, and it was weird we were in the manufacturing end of the building. People would find us in the labyrinth of welders and manufacturers,” Brandon said.
The Hot Chocolatier moved around different spaces due to rent issues and selling buildings while they figured out what Chattanooga would support.
Eventually, they found their stride and found a variety of treats that people love and they love to make.
“We started on bonbons and enrobed bonbons and treats in chocolate shells,” Brandon said. “We thought about how Wendy went to school and learned about all kinds of other stuff so when we got our first storefront with cases, she developed different pastries and cakes.”
After their first store opening, they applied to a grant program where they learned all about how to run a business and more.
“We did go on a grant through CreateHere where they helped us make our business plan,” Brandon said. “We wrote in a travel grant just to see what happens, and someone on that board said if they want to open a European chocolate shop they need to see what these shops look like first hand, so we got to go to Paris, Belgium and back to Paris. We visited their version of Hershey.”
In Belgium, a chocolatier invited them to work for him for a day where they took notes on displays and processes.
“We went in, took pictures and notes, and worked with him in his shop,” Brandon said.
After gaining the world’s education on chocolate, they infused the Southern and Chattanooga inspiration to their chocolate.
“We are constantly looking at social media stuff and group pages on Facebook where people are sharing ideas, but a lot of it comes from what we’ve experienced like in the south people love comfort food,” Brandon said. “You may want something fru fru now and then, but a lot of times you want that carrot cake.”
Not all the treats available at the Hot Chocolatier are inspired by social media, Europe, or comfort food sometimes they are inspired by pure accident.
“We have a product called burnt toffee where we just left it in too long but people loved it so now we have chocolate-covered burnt toffee,” Brandon said.
They have also expanded to diet-friendly treats to expand their customer base to those with dietary restrictions.
“We’ve gotten a little creative, we’ve started doing gluten-free stuff at our St Elmo store,” Brandon said.
During the last year or two, the Hot Chocolatier has had financial difficulties after their move to their recent Market Street store. However, as they get through the difficult times the Hot Chocolatier has a lot of plans for the future of their business.
“We do have a small set up where we will do a bean to bar, where some of our products will be made in-house,” Brandon said.
Brandon never saw this journey coming but he looks forward to seeing where it takes them even if he smells like chocolate every day.
Meet the Storyteller
Megan Cooper is a senior Communication student at University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC). Cooper currently works as UTC’s student-run radio station, the Perch, station manager and promotions director, and she has done work in journalism courses where she learned to be a storyteller with nothing except the tone of a voice. She can be found meeting with on air student-hosts about their shows, planning events to represent the Perch to Chattanooga and UTC, or jamming to music on her own radio show. Cooper’s passion lies in listening to music, radio, and using stories to bring people together. Cooper’s love of radio began as she listened to conversational radio shows like Knoxville’s Marc and Kim Show every morning on her drive to school. To connect with Megan you can reach her at mpq877@ mocs.utc.edu.