We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Ricardo Trillos. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Ricardo below.
Ricardo, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you recount a story of an unexpected problem you’ve faced along the way?
It is not surprise that every business owner was affected during covid-19 pandemic. Unfortunately Cao Chocolates was not exception. We quicky realized our retail location was going to be affected for stay home mandates and one of the ways we found to make it work was creating “quarantine boxes” we either deliver or ship surprise chocolate boxes to our clients that could not visit us. We had schedule two large 3 day events the weekend when the pandemic started and both were cancelled. We had lots of merchandise and no walking traffic so we decided to package those items into quarantine boxes and promote them online and started selling as much we could. It was the first success!
Then our shop lease was coming to an end and we decided not to renew due to the uncertainty and find a factory place with no retail but lower overhead and transform the business into 100% online based.
One more pivot we made was on site events such as chocolate tastings. One of our clients who had to reschedule her corporate tasting asked us if we could host it online. After putting together a package and online version of the event we decided to move forward and event went incredibly well.
That was our Aha! moment! I quickly realized there was an opportunity for corporate clients to connect with their employees, prospects and clients and I combined my chocolate expertise with my previous Human Resources background to start offering virtual team building activities through chocolate tastings.
Since April 2020 we’ve had over 15.000 attendees in our virtual tastings working with fortune 500 companies offering our events worldwide turning 2020 and 2021 into the best two years in business so far. We are now continue booking succesfully for 2022.
Ricardo, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I have a business background and started making chocolates about 15 years ago as hobby. In 2009 after being laid off from my corporate job I decided to turn my hobby into a business with lots of faith, chocolate education and perseverance. We are bean to bar chocolate makers (the first bean to bar in Miami) which means we source cacao beans ethically stablishing direct connections with farmers and importing the raw cacao beans and doing the whole process to turn them into chocolate and confections (not every chocolate business make their own chocolate they mostly use pre-made chocolate and turn it into confections) this makes us different than others locally.
Also with reliable partners we are able to offer all kinds of packaging customization for our corporate clients.
Our goal is to offer the best quality chocolates made with sustainable sources while we share stories about how we can improve farmer’s lives.
Throughout these years we’ve been able to work with major brands and corporations for their gift needs.
Also I am a food network chef participan t in Guy’s Grocery Games – Chocolate episode competition.
Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?
Always remember the employees are the most important asset of a business. Since we started I always thought the employee is a family member and Cao Chocolates is a big family combining our team and clientele. Feeling respected and appreciated are the best ways to keep team members morale high and inspired.
Sometimes is not only about how much money they make. It’s about the environment and fun at work.
What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?
Being an honest person is key when running a business. Never promise something you can’t deliver. Your word will speak for you.
When you do the right things never compromising quality and always exceeding expectation your customers will be back and they will be happy to refer you to others.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.caochocolates.com
- Instagram: @Caochocolates
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/caochocolates
- Linkedin: http://linkedin.com/in/ricardo-trillos-93814013
- Twitter: @caochocolates
- Yelp: https://m.yelp.com/biz/cao-chocolates-miami?utm_source=ishare
Image Credits
Anelith Ortega