We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Kala Maxym. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Kala below.
Kala, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to have you tell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.
In the summer of 2023, we were a couple of years into dating, a year into living together, and ready for the next obvious step: noodling business ideas. Kala has a varied background that ranges from professional opera performance to tech startups to her own successful decade-plus business that paired wine, cheese, chocolate and live musicians for private and corporate events. Dale’s background comes from producing and directing television and films (while flipping houses on the side) to running a political non-profit. It’s no surprise that the new business brainstorming ran the gamut (and seriously included buying and renovating an Italian castle into an artist salon/Airbnb until the numbers just didn’t work).
Inspired by the vibrant sidewalk vendor-scene of Los Angeles’ hot dog, elote, fruit, and ice cream carts, Dale wondered aloud why we couldn’t do that… but with chocolate. Insulated carts are cheap so how hard could it be? Maybe have 8 or 10 carts going around town. A few days later and we were on a walk down by the LA river when we spotted a 100 square foot space for rent: hardly bigger than a cart! A random date night soon after, we found ourselves at the legendary Thai restaurant, Jitlada, and over Pad Thai and green curry, The Chocolate Dispensary – name, tagline, mission statement, playing on cannabis language, tasting lounge, etc – downloaded to us both.
Two days later we toured a space for rent in the hipster neighborhood of Echo Park, fell in love with it, and were asked for a deck and business plan. We had neither.
Kala wrote pages and pages of notes and within a couple weeks, we had a deck and business plan, and were asking ourselves, “are we really going to do this?” The answer was a wholehearted, in unison, “yes!” We knew that finding, negotiating, leasing, and building out a space would take months so we decided to start with an online presence, events, partnerships, and so on. So, here we are!
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
Dale grew up moving between Oregon, Missouri, and Southern California. Fresh out of college, he went from delivery driver to warehouse manager to retail store manager at the iconic, still-beloved Santa Cruz Coffee Roasting Company. The SCCCR was a leader in Fair Trade coffee-sourcing for their trademarked blends, and introduced ‘pour-over coffee’ to their rabid customers as a thing before the term was even coined. In 1999 he bought a house across the street from his best friend in the hills of Echo Park and found home. He still lives there happily (as does his best friend), and his love of the neighborhood has only grown. His career has mostly been as a freelance producer and director for film, TV (both scripted and reality), music videos and commercials. He has owned his own TV production company and was a network executive at Travel Channel, HDTV, and DIY Network. For the past four years Dale has been the COO of Field Team 6, a wildly successful democratic voter registration organization (where Kala volunteers).
Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?
In May, 2020, after the murder of George Floyd, Kala was distraught and looking for an outlet for her anger, grief, and frustration. A friend mentioned an organization called Field Team 6, a democratic voter registration organization. With a background both in voter engagement and events, Kala immediately followed up and soon became part of the Events team, facilitating dozens upon dozens of events during the pandemic. Dale was at all of them as he was the COO of the organization. They were friendly enough, but didn’t think about one another from one day to the next. In October 2021, when there was a slight lull in the virus, Field Team 6 held an outdoor fundraiser at a private home in Los Angeles. Kala volunteered; Dale almost didn’t come. But he did, and they worked the bar together that night, sat under the stars and listened as Broadway stars sang their hearts out for democracy, and at the end of the night Dale asked Kala out. They had their first date two days later and have been together ever since.
Have you ever had to pivot?
Hell yeah! Both Dale and Kala have pivoted a number of times in their professional lives. Kala started out working for the federal government right out of college but soon realized that she needed to try her hand at opera singing before it got too late. So she did, and was a professional opera singer for many years. She then began working at a VC-backed tech company to help pay the bills and ended up staying for four and a half years. During this time, she still pursued singing but also launched her company, Five Senses Tastings, a live events company that produced musical wine, cheese, and chocolate tasting events. During the pandemic, she pivoted again, moving to fully virtual events and taking the company to almost a quarter of a million dollars in revenue. After shutting the company down in early 2023, she worked retail at the amazing Silverlake Wine (who knew that experience would be so completely life-changing) so yeah… pivots are fairly common over here.
Dale studied film at UC Santa Cruz and worked at the still-beloved Santa Cruz Coffee Roasting Company after college (he uses this experience a great deal with The Chocolate Dispensary!) but soon found his way to TV and movies. He spent 25 years as a TV producer, film and TV director, and network executive at DIY, HGTV, and Travel Channel. In 2020, he pivoted to non-profit work and is the COO of Field Team 6, a wildly successful voter registration organization.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://www.chocolatedispensary.com
- Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/chocolatedispensary
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chocolatedispensary
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kalamaxym/
Image Credits
First image: credit to Cathryn Farnsworth