We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Liane Pensack-Rinehart. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Liane below.

Liane, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today How did you scale up? What were the strategies, tactics, meaningful moments, twists/turns, obstacles, mistakes along the way? The world needs to hear more realistic, actionable stories about this critical part of the business building journey. Tell us your scaling up story – bring us along so we can understand what it was like making the decisions you had, implementing the strategies/tactics etc.

I, Liane PR am the Chocolatier and Owner of Colorado Cocoa Pod. I started Colorado Cocoa Pod in March of 2019 and had just been let go from a small chocolate shop I had interned and worked at, due to being unable to continue operating and paying staff. But it was a blessing in disguise because I wanted to make chocolate bonbons, and they had me doing customer service & social media after my internship had ended. Also my mom had just been diagnosed with cancer, so having the flexibility to travel to see her was priceless.

So armed with knowledge that I learned about making chocolate bonbons from pastry school and my internship, I started my own business, focusing on making Asian inspired bonbons with well balanced flavors, quality chocolate, that were beautiful, delicious, but never too pretty to eat!

Starting in my kitchen with about 10 polycarbonate moulds that I spent a fortunate on through Amazon, a few bottles of colored cocoa butter and 2 bags of chocolate (white & dark), I spent a few months creating designs, developing & testing recipes. I made a 6 different flavors and had my first pop-up at a local coffee shop for Mother’s Day selling 6 and 12 pc boxes. After that I was hooked, developing more bonbons inspired by Asian desserts I grew up with,

I eventually created my Signature 12pc Zodiac Bonbon Collection based of the 12 Chinese Zodiac Animals. This collection consisted of Asian flavors such as black sesame, passion fruit, lychee, and matcha, as well as more traditional flavors such as sea salt caramel, coconut, and peanut butter banana. During this time, I was enrolled in an online chocolate forum/class and they had a contest for the Best Chocolate Creation. I submitted my collection and ended up winning the contest! They sent me $500 worth of chocolate, including the newest “4th chocolate – Ruby Chocolate”. This helped expand my chocolate palette, allowing me to try more single origin chocolates and white chocolate. The rest of 2019, I continued to develop recipes, designs, and navigating all of the legal struggles in starting a new small business.

In 2020, I felt like that was going to be my first full year of being a chocolatier, but of course the world had other plans. By March I had done a few more pop-up markets at local breweries and cafes, and was feeling pretty confident, but once the pandemic hit, I temporarily halted production. With all of the uncertainty, I decided to spend more time helping other small businesses that had brick & mortar shops, as well as focus on connecting with other chocolatiers around the world. This ended up helping my business Instagram grow significantly, as well as other small chocolate businesses because we were doing live chats, talking about all things chocolate. The pandemic’s silver lining for my business was that more professional chocolatiers who had been in the industry way longer than I had, opened up their platforms and shared chocolate tips, classes, and techniques that I hadn’t learned in school or at my internship.

This helped me further learn better techniques for prolonging the shelf-life of my chocolates, since I realized my current recipes had a super short shelf life, which wasn’t ideal for large holidays or future markets. They also taught me industry tips and tricks for properly storing bonbons and stocking up for holidays. I was also slowly getting more equipment for my business, such as finding chocolate distributors, researching packaging distributors, and working on expanding my polycarbonate mould collection. I ended up working part-time at a local bakery during the pandemic, putting my chocolate production business on the back burner, but towards the end of the year, my Mom’s health took a turn for the worse, and I ended up quitting to be with her, until she passed away in November of 2020. My Dad told me to return back home (to Colorado) a few weeks after to make bonbons and process through my grief, so I came back home for a week, made as many bonbons as I could, shipped them out, did one holiday pop-up, and headed back to my parent’s house. It was a whirlwind, but in 2021, I decided I was ready to jump-start Colorado Cocoa Pod full time, so with the support of my husband, I was back in business.

In 2020, my husband and I had decided I probably out-grew our kitchen space, so we ended up having people come and dig out the crawl spaces in our basement, creating a full-sized basement, and my husband ended up finishing the basement by himself. I was working in our kitchen until May of 2021, then I moved into my new Chocolate Lab, furnished with everything commercial, I had a sink, a fridge, freezer, some tables, and racks. It was and still is amazing. Over 2021-2022, I grew significantly, growing my online presence, and doing tons of pop-ups and events around Colorado, including a few large chocolate festivals, pairings, and markets.

At the end of 2022, I finally was able to purchase an automatic tempering machine, which was a huge game changer for my business. Having this machine has allowed me to condense 4 days of production into 3, as well as helped me scale up my production. In the past 4 years, I’ve been able to grow from 1 freezer to 6, 1 tempering to 2, and from 10 moulds to over 300. It hasn’t been easy, being a one-woman show, I do everything from production, cleaning, packing everything, creating & printing labels, as well as setting up and selling at every pop-up. I never thought I’d have a tempering machine, much less 2 of them, or my own space to create all the chocolate treats I could imagine. My bonbon flavors have grown from 6 to over 100 flavor combinations, and I also offer more than just bonbons, but everything is still made with quality chocolate & ingredients, hand painted to make the very best, beautiful, delicious, but never too pretty to eat bonbons!

Liane, 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?

Before becoming the Chocolatier and Owner of Colorado Cocoa Pod, I (Liane PR) was a software engineer. Born and raised in Southern California, I moved out to Colorado right after college working as a software contractor. After working in the industry for about 4 years, getting married, I asked my husband if I could go back to school, specifically Pastry School. With his fully support, I took weekend classes, and eventually started working part-time as a contractor, part-time in a bakery frosting cakes, and working towards my Associate Degree in Baking and Pastry from Johnson & Wales in Denver.

I managed to graduate in 3 years and completed a chocolate internship which led to being hired. I worked for them for half a year before being let go due to them not being able to keep their business afloat with staff. In 2019, I created Colorado Cocoa Pod, specializing in Asian inspired chocolate bonbons and creations that are beautiful, delicious, but never too pretty to eat!

My business social media grew a ton during 2020 due to me connecting with other small business chocolatiers around the world while we were all isolated, wondering when the world would return to normal. I was able to establish my brand, create my Signature 12pc Zodiac Animal Bonbon Collection, create shelf-stable & delicious chocolate recipes, and build my own Chocolate Lab in my finished basement.

I started out with 6 different chocolate flavors, and have now created over 100 different combinations. I make and create everything, along with package all my products, create labels, do the dishes, and sell at almost all of my pop-up events (my husband has helped me with a few that overlap). As a one-woman-show, I love interacting with all of my customers, and pushing my creative limits in the world of chocolate. I’ve learned so much in the 4 years I’ve been doing what I love, and know that there is so much out there to learn, explore, and create! I hope to continue growing Colorado Cocoa Pod, and look forward to continue creating tasty chocolate treats for you!

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

For Colorado Cocoa Pod, there are two pretty effective strategies I have for growing my clientele. The first – having samples and being present at most / almost all of my pop-ups and events. I say most, because there are a few times my husband has helped run a pop-up for me on an overlapping market day, but most of my regular customers actually know him as well, because he has helped me set up, sell, and breakdown at a lot of my events. When I do new markets and events, I’ll usually have samples of my chocolate bonbons available for people to taste. Many of my products are usually purchased as gifts, especially during the holiday season, and aren’t the same as cheaper, sugar-filled grocery store ‘chocolate’, so new customers are usually hesitant to spend a lot on something they never tried. So, when people hear ‘free chocolate sample’, this tends to pique their interest in stopping by my booth when they otherwise would’ve walked by. After trying a piece and realizing that it actually tastes really good, most people end up purchasing, or taking my card and following me on social media so that they can purchase in the future for birthdays, anniversaries, and special occasions.

I’ve had repeat customers stop by my booth at different markets to tell me they came to the event just to get my chocolates and confections or that they found me at a market, tried a sample, bought a box, and now can’t get enough! I love connecting with my customers, talking to them about their favorite flavors or about flavors they never would’ve tried if I hadn’t had them together with ones they knew they liked. Having that face-to-face connection, where they know me – the one creating each and every chocolate confection, helps to create a bond with my customers, where they know exactly who they are supporting and understand the hard work and creativity that goes into everything I make and do.

The second effective strategy for growing my customer base, is by word-of-mouth. My repeat customers or my “Chocolate Lover Friends” have continued to support me by gifting my products to their friends. There have been numerous times I’ve received a message about ordering, or stopping by a pop-up from someone who was gifted my chocolates and fell in love with them. I’ve noticed that many people these days would rather pay for an experience or have something edible gifted to them, and since my chocolates are not only beautiful, delicious, and never too pretty to eat, they make the perfect gift, that also makes a visual impact that people remember.

I love the chocolate community and so many more people are learning about real chocolate who have tried my confections. Even if it may seem slow at times, I know my customer base is steadily growing, and learning to consume better chocolate, and I hope my small business continues to grow as well as the connection I have with those supporting me!

How’d you think through whether to sell directly on your own site or through a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc.

Colorado Cocoa Pod currently has its own website www.ColoradoCocoaPod.com that is hosted on the Shopify platform. When I first started out, my husband who is a software engineer helped me setup my website on the WooCommerce platform. I used that platform for about 3 years before switching to Shopify. They both have their own pros and cons, but the main reason I switched was because I outgrew WooCommerce.

WooCommerce was great for starting out. They offer a lot of free plugins and the interface was pretty straightforward to figure out, although it did help having a software engineer husband to set everything up for me. I was able to manage my online inventory and add new products with ease. The downside of WooCommerce was the lack of sales tax tracking and statistics of my sales. I also had to manually keep track of my orders to know how much of a certain item I sold and eventually I outgrew my website.

So in December of 2023, my husband Nathan helped me open up a Shopify shop, and they made it pretty easy to transition my existing website over. They had layouts that were similar to what I already had, and while the back-end user interface did take some getting used to to navigate, it was also pretty straightforward to learn. I really like Shopify’s analytics of my sales, the way it keeps track of inventory, how it syncs with my PayPal/Zettle payment processing, and the features it has for keeping track of orders.

I have had a few issues (or cons) with Shopify, such as some special taxes for Colorado that weren’t being collected properly, as well as when creating a manual order, it doesn’t offer all the options for pick-up, shipping, and delivery, as if you went through the website as a customer. A few of my customers have had issues trying to access my website, stating they get a security issue, which is due to Shopify, but it is usually fixed within a day. Also, a lot of the plugins aren’t free and do require a monthly fee. But I have been able to find decent free plugins that work for me, and the pros of using this to host my website, definitely outweigh the cons.

Having my own website has helped my business grow and it is really convenient to see my sales analytics each month and be able to compare it to the prior month. After this year, I will be able to compare monthly sales to the same month from the previous year, which will help me determine if I will need to make more product in the future. There is also the added benefit of letting you see who has visited your website, abandoned carts, and incorporates a few more features that I used to have to use plugins for – such as emailing. It is really nice having everything in one spot to keep track of orders, sales, and products.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://coloradococoapod.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/coloradococoapod/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ColoradoCocoaPod/
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/colorado-cocoa-pod-denver
• Other: https://goo.gl/maps/UsqUFyyBn4BC9LEP8

Image Credits
Headshot – by Kendra V. Photography https://www.instagram.com/kendravphoto/ Chocolate photos – by Liane Pensack-Rinehart