Pashmina De Shon calls her shop a “Sephora for chocolate.”
“You can do a lot of your shopping online on Sephora,” she said, comparing it to the popular beauty product chain. “But it’s also nice to walk into a Sephora, and people are just passionate about a specific brand or specific type of product. And you can try and test things, and it’s fun, you know?”
On the corner of South Holden and Immanuel Roads in Greensboro, De Shon’s Bar & Cocoa offers a kind of kid-in-a-candy-shop magical experience for those who walk through its doors. Every corner and shelf in the bright store is filled with bars, truffles, and powders of dark, milk, and white chocolate. There are varieties from Norway, Thailand, and Jamaica. One bar has espresso; another has caramelized bacon. It’s a chocolate lover’s dream come true.
The storefront has been open since October of last year. But De Shon, who moved to Greensboro from Denver, has been sourcing and curating chocolate from all over the world for sale online since 2015.
While customers can find craft chocolate from around the globe at Bar & Cocoa, Greensboro residents don’t have to look far to find handcrafted bars and truffles made by their own neighbors.
In the last few years, two other chocolate makers—Eigen Chocolate and Rhyme and Reason Chocolate Company—have also come to call Greensboro home.
“Greensboro has been very, very good to us,” said Elizabeth Tully, owner and operator of Rhyme and Reason. “And we’re still growing, which is always good.”
Those who grew up eating chocolate likely think of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Hershey bars, or the occasional upgrade to a Dove or Lindt truffle. In this economy, it can feel absurd to pay $10 for a single bar or even $3 for one piece of chocolate. But those with a passion for craft chocolate say customers aren’t just paying for a better quality product when they choose the handmade sweets. It’s about ethical practices and supporting local.
“I feel like a lot of people don’t know what craft chocolate is,” said Kevin Drummey, one-half of Eigen Chocolate. “A lot of people idealize chocolate as a cheap thing you get in a bar in a store. But with other shops around, people are understanding what craft chocolate is slowly.”
Honing Their Craft
As soon as the doors of Rhyme and Reason open, a strong scent of chocolate hits the senses. It’s toasty, slightly sweet, and decadent.
That’s the melanger, a machine that uses big wheels to crush cacao nibs until they’re a smooth paste.
“I really love starting up the refiners,” Tully said. “It smells like brownies in the whole shop.”
Her least favorite part?
“Getting the process right,” she said. “Especially the tempering aspect.”
Tully started making chocolate in 2018, first in Greensboro, then in a warm apartment in Singapore, where she and her husband moved the following year. One day, as she was working on tempering—the process by which chocolate is heated and cooled repeatedly to stabilize the fat crystals in the cocoa butter—she threw up her hands in frustration.
“I shouted at my husband and said, ‘There’s no rhyme or reason to this chocolate tempering!’” she said.
When Tully opened her shop on State Street in 2022, the name stuck.
Inside the corner store, giant bags of cacao beans lay near the window. A large glass case displays more than a dozen types of bonbons. On the counter, a row of bars with small samples entices customers. Each costs $10 while the bonbons run $2-3 per piece. Those used to picking up chocolate at a grocery store may balk at the cost, but Tully and other chocolatiers say the price reflects the attention and care that goes into the final product as well as the ethics of how it’s produced.
“People are getting a proper price for their products when you pay that much through the entire stream,” said Stephen Knoop, the other half of Eigen Chocolate, which began in 2021.
Like many commodities, chocolate is an industry in which growers—often in countries across South America, Africa, and Asia—are mistreated. Unfair wages, unsafe conditions, and even child labor are not uncommon to this day.
But makers like Eigen and Rhyme and Reason work hard to source from growers and producers who are paid fairly for their beans. Like with wine and coffee, craft chocolate is seeing a shift in the way its workers are being treated, and that results in a higher price.
Still, De Shon knows it can be a hard sell.
“We form our memories of chocolate as a child,” she said. “As you grow up, you’re eating Oreo cookies, you’re eating Hershey’s. So you’re attached to that memory, so it’s harder for you to upgrade that versus something like coffee or beer or wine, which you’re drinking as adults. That’s why the leap to expensive chocolate is that much harder.”
But for those that can afford it, she said, the price is worth it for all of those involved, from the growers and exporters to the chocolate makers.
Plus, it’s nice to invest in local businesses, Knoop said.
“I would say anytime you can buy something made by somebody in your community, you should do that regardless of what the product is,” he said. “Trying to localize economies is helpful for everybody living in a community.”
Eigen is currently offering palm-sized chocolate-filled hearts as well as their bars and truffles ahead of the Valentine’s Day weekend. They’ll be at the Corner Farmers Market in Greensboro and Cobblestone Farmers Market in Winston-Salem on Saturday.
Beyond local appeal, Eigen and Rhyme and Reason have won multiple awards on both the national and international stage.
In 2024, both makers submitted their chocolate into the International Chocolate Awards’ Americas division in the flavored combination chocolate category. Eigen won bronze for its triple berry vegan swirl bar, while Rhyme and Reason won gold for its passion fruit bar.
Part of the fun of chocolate making is coming up with new flavors, Tully said—like the passion fruit bar she made for Colombian friends. That’s something that sets craft chocolatiers apart from name-brand products, too.
De Shon points out a Norwegian brown cheese milk chocolate bar by Fjåk on one of the shelves. Nutty, creamy with a slight tang from the cheese, the bar is what De Shon calls “moreish.”
“It’s like, ‘Why do I like this so much?’” De Shon said. “And then you’re just like, ah, but I want more.”
Each maker brings something new and different to the craft chocolate scene, Drummey said. Beans themselves taste different based on where they’re grown, too. And the more people branch out and try the good stuff, the more they’ll be able to tell the difference.
“It helps the general consumer understand what we’re talking about when we say the Colombia has a winey flavor or that Vietnam tastes like dried fruit and honey,” he said, referring to the origin sources for the chocolates.
De Shon agreed. When people try craft chocolate for the first time, it opens up a whole new realm of understanding.“Imagine your whole life you’ve been drinking malbecs,” she said. “And then somebody comes and hands you a pinot noir, and you’re like, ‘What?’”
“You know it’s wine,” she said. “But you’ve never tasted anything like it. Your whole life, you’ve had this singular understanding of what chocolate tastes like and what that flavor is to you. And then I hand you something else that is also chocolate, but it doesn’t taste anything like anything you’ve ever had.”
Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated when De Shon’s Bar & Cocoa opened and has been updated.