We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Erika Jensen. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Erika below.

Hi Erika , thanks for joining us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

A lot of people think I came up with the idea for my business through months of planning and research, and really diving into a skill that I was already very good at. That’s not true at all. I was in a job that I was “supposed to be in”. I went to school, got a degree, went to work in marketing at a very popular company. I hated it.
I was young, newly married and depressed. After eating my weight through pints of Ben&Jerry’s, my husband asked “Is it me?” :). No, I just thought after college you would get the chance to impact the world around you, and honestly, back in the 2000s, nobody cared about the voices of 20-yr-olds and there weren’t as many platforms as there are now to make yourself “seen and heard”.
So, my husband Brad asked me what I really liked to do. I love to eat. Like I truly have an emotional connection to food. It started with my Grandma Hesvik, she was a farmer’s wife that made meatloaf, tuna casserole (with peas of course), banana bread and always had a margarine tub full of chocolate chip cookies waiting in the freezer for me. I knew she didn’t need to make a pie when I came to visit on the farm, but she did, because she was showing me I was worth her time and effort, and that was why I felt all the warm and squishy feelings when I ate what she made me. Was it 5-star cuisine? No. But knowing she took the time to prepare something for me made it taste all the more sweeter.
I thought….what if I could provide a service that allowed others to taste homemade love, and be able to ship that foodie feeling all around the nation? What if my business helped spread gratitude and goodwill….all through chocolate and dessert gifting? What life calling could be more impactful than spreading love to others, and showing that YOU took the time to think of them, to see them, to really want to connect with another person. I never knew how important this would become, as smart phones, texts and social media apps started to take over real phone calls, in-person meetings, and sending a birthday card in the mail. The need for “real” connection would become even more present as the years went by.
Granted, when I tell my employees this, its hard for them to think of a time when you DIDN’T order and ship food online. But in 2006…you didn’t. There weren’t even adequate sites and shopping carts made to really tailor the service to be streamlined with multiple products and delivery options. My husband made my website himself, and our first shopping cart was through PayPal.
As for it being a chocolate-based business…no, I hadn’t gone to culinary school, and no, I had never worked with chocolate. Cupcakes had already hit a crest in the trending business category, and I knew by the time I actually got really good at this, they’d be done and over, and yesterday’s news.
So I thought…what else can I create multiple products out of…that I can ship? I love to eat chocolate, and it looks really pretty….how hard can it be?
Ha ha ha.
Hard.

Erika , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Well, I touched on our origin story in the last question, if you have the need for more information or follow up on a thought, please reach out. But the long and the short of it, is it started because I felt worthless in my job. I wanted to capture a memory when I felt worthwhile. And that revolved around the gift of food from my Grandma. So then I needed to find a way to replicate the experience, and share it with others.
My first stab at chocolate was painful…I was trying to figure out tempering from YouTube videos, didn’t know anything about the chocolate industry, and trying to price out products and find appropriate packaging on the budget of a newlywed-marketing department drop out, who just bought a house she couldn’t afford to start an online business with no customer base and no clue how to let the country know they could buy brownies from me now. Luckily, as a 23-yr-old, I was so blind to the world of real adult problems, that I thought all I needed was my overly optimistic husband, a dash of naivety, and a back alley credit card that I NEVER should have been approved for, to help me get through it ;0)

But one thing I did know…was that I was passionate about connecting people. About giving people a sense of joy, and wonder, and awe. The more I dove into chocolate, the deeper my drive went. I couldn’t believe all the science and art and creativity that went into crafting chocolate. I was self-taught through lots of trial and ERROR!! :0) as well as literally eating my way across the United States (on that darn credit card! ha!) as well as doing continuing education at workshops in Nevada, Canada, Maryland, New Hampshire, Missouri and eventually a self-led tour of chocolate and dessert shops in France, Switzerland and Italy. Here I capture the essence of what would become my first brick and mortar shop. Even though chocolate was sexy and exciting and challenging…I didn’t foresee the heartbreak, imposter syndrome and mental collapse that would come when you got a bad customer comment or your favorite employee quits, or when your mom sends you continual job openings for a “real job”, even after you’ve owned your business for 10+years.

Looking back, there are so many things I’m proud of with my journey with The Chocolate Season. Becoming a servant leader and manager while becoming a part of people’s lives has been such a gift. Hearing stories of customers building actual life moments around your products and becoming a family tradition for others is a humbling blessing. Learning about the dark side of the chocolate industry, and doing what you can to raise awareness and support companies that support families around the world is so important, to set your values and standards and not waiver just because something is expensive or not in line with old industry standards…it just means the industry needs to change.
Becoming passionate about your product was something I didn’t foresee. I’m truly proud of how transparently we present ourselves. We make homemade latte syrups because your body deserves to have real food from real ingredients…your lavender syrup should be made with organic lavender buds, not a fake extract engineered to fool your body into thinking it’s tasting lavender. A butterscotch syrup should NEVER be clear. It should be made on the stove, with sugar, and butter, and probably a bit of schnapps. Cuz, you know- who doesn’t love butterscotch schnapps? :)
Same thing with truffles flavors, no artificial extracts, only infusions, fruit puree, caramelized sugar bases, and single origin chocolates please! :)
I’m proud that we have the integrity to stick to set of principles that we developed for the sake of our consumer, because we really do care what you provide you, and yes, our COGS will be higher….but my customers trust me to take care of them and take care of the person they are sending a gift to, and I will always give them our most authentic selves with ingredients, sourcing, product imagery, and who we are as a company. Outside of that, I’m proud of all the random moments we got to be a part of….from being recognized by Google and Food Network, to teaching Newt Gingrich how to dip chocolates at the shop, to being a part of Goldman Sach’s first cohort of 10ksb in IA, we’ve had lots of moments where organic publicity found us, and for that, we are so thankful.

these answers are kind of all over the place….but again, if you want me to elaborate on a certain thought, just let me know! ha ha ha

Can you share one of your favorite marketing or sales stories?

Ok, this is NOT a success story…but want to share because people who think about starting a small business often think that once they get going… it’ll just be smooth sailing. I mean, why not? I’m really great at (insert hobby here- painting, taking photos, making social media reels etc)

So, in our school house outside of town, there was going to be a huge event, called The Street of Dreams. This is where thousands of people would go tour multi-million dollar homes for fun in the summer. It just so happened this event was being held a few miles from the school house, and people would be driving past our road all weekend. Could you think of a more perfect way to get the word out about this new online business, The Chocolate Season(TCS)? I’ll have a tent, selling some products, with signage promoting the business.
I took my credit card, and rented a huge tent, purchased REAL signs to put along the road talking about TCS, bought cases of pop and water, bought a cash box, got cash from the bank, spent a week prepping for this event making hundreds of cookies, caramel corn, truffles and brownies. I even “hired” a friend to help me man the booth, since I knew we’d be swamped. No food or drink for miles around…of course they’d want to stop here.

I set up all my goods early that weekend, and then sat, and waited for success to come my way. Cars drive by, hmmmm, they must not see my signs, that’s ok, I’ll go move them. Now. Now they’ll come. More cars drive by…wait! One is turning down my lane…here we go! And they want a bottle of water. Ok, no problem. More cars drive by….here come two more! They want directions to The Street of Dreams- yup- keep heading straight, then take a right you’ll be right there.
Ok…..hours pass….all day- I only sold a few bottles of water and 1 cookie. That’s ok….tomorrow is a new day. And yet…it was a repeat of the day before. A few drinks, a bag of caramel corn, and 1 person took a business card. It got to the point that I walked over to the stop sign by the intersection…and with a plate of cookies and a gloved hand, I’d make a motion like “roll down your window! hi! yes! roll it down! do you want a cookie?!” like one of those crazed islanders windexing your car windshield without your permission then asking for cash…..I was all but throwing cookies at people’s cars as they drove by. Cookies for $1! Buy 1 get 1 cookie deal! FREE cookies!!! Take a cookie, get a business card.
Ummmmm, looking back, probably not the best look for a home bakery to be peddling cookies by a stop sign, literally standing in the road and asking for cash.
Needless to say, I lost money, and most of my dignity, at that event. I now refer to that moment as The Street of Broken Dreams.
Threw away tons of product, in anger, I ripped up the TCS signs because I didn’t want them mocking me in my failure, and I lost a lot of money, and felt really pathetic about my life choices.
But. After many tears, and a belly ache from eating away my emotions….I tried again. I started working on more product development. I started blogging on my website so people could get to know me. I started sending free samples to people I knew and companies in my area. Orders came in, then repeat orders came in, and I realized….I guess I don’t suck after all. And finally, I got my big break when a local museum got a traveling chocolate exhibit in. I went in for an interview with product samples, and got the vendor position. I had to stand at a booth and talk about chocolate (luckily I had already been to Europe and a few continuing ed workshops…so I actually knew some things!) and I had to give away free samples (story of my life) but then, I saw my brand, on my products, in a REAL shop (kinda). It was the gift shop at the end of the exhibit, but the museum paid me for my products and real customers bought it, without knowing anything about me, or even being related to me. It was then I realized…hey….maybe I can actually do this.

Have you ever had to pivot?

My entire life has been a pivot. :)
I started in marketing/journalism….and ended up in food sales and business management. But really, I’d say the reason the business has grown the way it has is because I never became complacent, and I never ever think “wow, I finally made it”
So I started online, doing deliveries with MapQuest print outs (too poor for a GPS back then, and I was probably the last person on the planet to get rid of her clamshell phone for a smart phone) and I shipped nationwide. Then, we had people starting to come to the school house, on a weekend, when I was in PJs, looking to have coffee and cheesecake with their grandma. Well, we didn’t have a retail space…but maybe we should?
That early 2000s recession had hit, so we couldn’t budget out a lease in the city, so we packed up and moved to my small hometown. Opened up a brick and mortar on a shoestring budget, and started offering coffee to go with our chocolates and desserts. Can’t eat chocolate every day (well, I can) but you can get a coffee every day. From there, we outgrew it in a year, so, we had to find a sublease tenant and move out to a bigger space. Bought a building. A really big, really old, building. Renovated that. Tried to replicate the first store, but this store was so big the atmosphere wasn’t right w/the old motif. Repainted the whole thing. Again. Re-branded, and launched an expanded coffee menu, hired more staff, added to our chocolate product collection.
Needed more cash flow for such a big store…so needed more to sell.
Started offering lunch because the community desperately needed it. What was supposed to just be quiche and salad, quickly morphed into a rotating seasonal menu with sandwiches, salads, quiche, soups, and then later, our waffle brunch menu on the weekend. From there we launched a more streamlined website, was expanding our wholesale reach, and offered more coffee products and homemade smoothies. Then, to be closer to family, we decided to relocate to Lincoln, Ne and sell our building, some recipes, and offer business consulting the owner who would take over our old location, all while scouting spaces to build a new space in a different state. We moved, and launched a slightly revamped location including toasts, grilled cheeses, salads, housemade syrups, a new roaster, partnering with Valrhona for ethical industry issues, patio seating, added a drive-thru, started a coffee and treats truck to get TCS mobile, and added longer hours at the shop with a larger staff (we are currently up to 25-30 depending on the season). Then, covid struck a few months after opening. Created curbside menu and pickup, the whole store got shut down from the city, could only ship online or sell through the DT menu, and we were determined to keep the whole staff on payroll. Rolled what little money we had left into a new website to put more products online, offer shipping or pickup on the same site, and create an easier more streamlined experience, as well as started a more proficient email system with flows, segmentation and metrics to have more communication with the customer when we were not allowed to actually see them face to face for quite a long time. After a very slow reopening due to city regulations, we couldn’t cashflow the lunch program due to low traffic, so we got rid of that and moved to a takeaway case idea, where there was grab n go food vs made to order food, but still kept quiche and waffles in-house. Started investing more into social media, and community organizations like the chamber and LIBA and ember society and BNI to gain more visibility, since we had long been forgotten due to the covid shut downs. We were not established enough as a business in Lincoln for people to remember we had even opened, before being shut down, so gaining momentum in different forms of advertising or news worthy product and service offerings was needed to get back in the line of sight for our consumers. We sought out local wineries, breweries and cideries to start offering custom chocolate pairings for their bar and hosted a variety of tasting and pairing classes to give Lincoln experiences that highlighted our passion, and the passions of other artisans. From there, we continue to ebb and flow in different areas based on listening to our customers, trying to understand what’s important to them, what’s important to our industry, and what is inline with our brand. We keep learning and changing all the time, but that’s why we haven’t died yet i suppose ;0)

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.thechocolateseason.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thechocolateseason
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thechocolateseason
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-chocolate-season
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/the-chocolate-season-lincoln?osq=the+chocolate+season

Image Credits

Bradley Jensen Photography