Sweet Pivot
The next time you’re about to enjoy a piece of chocolate, take a moment to observe it. Is its surface shiny or dull? Does it melt quickly in your hand? When you take a bite, does it break with a satisfying snap? Chocolatier Adam Kaiser thinks about these things every day. He started Adam Brian Chocolat to create and sell gourmet chocolate bonbons. It began as a hobby. Then he left a job as an environmental consultant to pursue it full-time.
Kaiser embarked on a career in science because he was fascinated by space as a kid. “The idea of space was super exciting to me,” he says. “Still, even to this day, I am constantly in awe of the universe and the way that the world works. That’s kind of what brought me into geology—more than the rocks.”
After earning a degree in geology, Kaiser worked at an environmental consulting firm. The work was meaningful, but it didn’t excite him. Looking back, he feels grateful for it. The job was a great learning experience, and gave him the financial stability to explore a new direction.
The turning point for Kaiser came when he got married. “Everything about my life just felt like it was coming together,” he says. “I’d recently bought a house, I had a car that was my own. I had a wife and a family. I was so excited and felt so good.” With encouragement from his wife, Kaiser took a class on chocolate: how to make it and how to sell it. He listened to entrepreneurial podcasts. Then he left his job in consulting and went to work at a restaurant, to get experience in a commercial kitchen. Kaiser spent a year selling his chocolates at events and through local markets, and then he was able to get his own production space. “It was definitely scary," he says. “Now I’m so excited to tell people what I’m doing, because it is objectively a cool thing.”
Kaiser says his scientific expertise helped him in chocolate making. “I consider this an incredible overlap of science and food,” he says. “All of chocolate really is scientific. I think of the chocolate like a magma [that’s] crystallizing into solid rock. It’s the same properties that an actual magma would have. The geology connection of that just is so exciting to me.” He explains: “Cocoa butter is such an interesting material. It’s polymorphic, which is something that we talk about a lot in geology.”
Mastering chocolate making was just the beginning. Kaiser also has to manage pricing, inventory, packaging, and logistics. He spends a lot of time responding to emails, coordinating with vendors and clients, and promoting his business. Being the boss is a challenge. “Putting in the time and energy, especially on those hard days, when you don’t know that things are going to turn out,” he says. “Just being able to show up every day is the biggest thing.”
The recipe for Kaiser’s success: supportive friends and family, a dedication to his craft, and a passion for cooking. As a business owner, his goals are to make the best product he can and to run his business in an ethical way. “Taking care of your employees is not only good for them,” he says, “but will work out better for your business overall in the long run.”
Kaiser encourages kids to seek out their interests and try new things: “I was following so many passions outside of my career that helped build the foundation for this stuff that I had no idea I was building. And then when you find that moment, everything clicks.”
