Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Meggie Mobley. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Meggie, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Almost every entrepreneur we know has considered donating a portion of their sales to an organization or cause – how did you make the decision of whether to donate? We’d love to hear the backstory if you’re open to sharing the details.

Success is hard to quantify and it means so many different things to different people. To me, it has never meant being grossly rich nor being famous, neither of which I am, so it’s a good thing that I don’t weigh success on those terms. I wanted to learn, to grow as a professional, as a person, as a friend, boss, co-worker, business owner. I wanted to do what I love and spread that love to other people.

Sometimes spreading that love was as easy as bringing gifts of chocolate and candies to friends and family, sometimes it was donating to fundraising events, but in the back of my mind I wanted to find a way to make a more meaningful impact in my community, and support the causes that are important to me.

After settling into a little bit of a more stable place, financially, I decided to look into working with local St. Louis charities for month-long percentage of sales donations. I wanted to keep the charities local, putting back into the city that has supported my business and houses all of my best childhood memories. So far we have done two month long partnerships.

We first partnered with Rung for Women. Rung empowers women to grow and achieve sustained independence through co-located and coordinated educational, professional, and economic resources. The month of March is national Women’s month, and as a woman-owned small business, it felt like the perfect time. We teamed up with rung, make specialty chocolates, did a private tasting and some social media posts with members from their team and kept it running all month long. I plan to do exactly that again next March, and probably every March.

Our second partnership was with Promo. Promo confronts systemic inequities to liberate the full spectrum of the LGBTQ+ community from discrimination and oppression. While not a part of the LGBTQ+ community myself, I have friends, family members and loved ones who are, and this was very important to me. For the month of June we created inclusive Pride Flag chocolates celebrating love in all forms and kept it around all June and some of July.

With moving locations and expanding we were unable to do any more this year, but next year I have plans to also find somewhere that works with underfunded schools and teachers, in addition to continuing to donate to charitable fundraisers, and we are always open to looking into what else we can do to make St. Louis a little better.

Meggie, 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?

My name is Meggie Mobley, I am the owner of Bijoux Chocolates, a small batch hand crafted chocolates and confections shop. I graduated from MIZZOU with a Hospitality Management degree, Food and Beverage track, then went on to the French Pastry School in Chicago. From there I studied all disciplines of pastry, from breads to tarts to cakes and ice cream and everything in between and fell in love with chocolate. It is the perfect juxtaposition of science and artistry and it is where I have been for the last 7 years.

I started my own business in St. Louis MO in 2018, working from home and attending pop ups and farmers markets, until I outgrew my small workspace and started renovating a retail space and kitchen at the end of 2019. We moved into our finished kitchen in July of 2020 and fought through the pandemic and am now expanding into a larger facility set to open Dec 1st.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

My entire career is a pivot.

I dreamed of being a video game animator in high school, Working with computers, designing characters, back drops. I played video games constantly, loved the immersive story-telling and wanted to create that feeling for other people. I had no idea what that entailed, no idea where to start or if it would be anything like I dreamed. I’m sure it isn’t.

Nevertheless, 17 year old me was implacable and I found a close to home university with an amazing digital arts program and applied, got accepted and started hunting for a roommate.

However big my dream was, my anxiety was bigger, and the more I searched for a roommate, the more I lamented that I would be moving to a new city with no one and nothing familiar. The larger this loomed, the more I panicked, until a random visit to MIZZOU with my best friend.

I late applied to MIZZOU, got accepted and moved into the dorms with my best friend, majoring in Computer Science, the closest I could get to digital arts. They offered one animation class, as an elective, to seniors, and I fooled myself into thinking that I would make it that far, but Calculus 2 intervened. Sophomore year, drowning in math classes and C++ coding, I realized whatever my original dream was, I could no longer see it. I was so bored and disliked all of my classes, I was struggling to see this as a long term career.

I dropped my computer science classes. I tried to remember what else I liked to do, if there was a hobby I could turn into a career. A friend of mine was in Hospitality, working as a Sous Chef in a new restaurant in Columbia, he told me about his classes, about his job, creating menus and experimenting with flavors and I recalled how I loved to bake, how my aunt was a cake decorator and taught me how to pipe roses and borders with left over icing. I thought this would be a good business background and then I could open my own bakery. I started baking in my apartment for anyone who would eat it, cupcakes and cheesecakes, brownies and tarts.

I found a culinary school in Chicago that was strictly baking/pastry. There are plenty of culinary programs around the US, most are a dual track of savory and sweet, and many lump it together with a business background. I was uninterested in savory and having just graduated from MIZZOU with a Hospitality business degree, was not looking to take repeat classes.

In 2015 I moved to Chicago and started the Patisserie program at the French Pastry school, and after one month I started to stage at Veruca Chocolates in Logan Square. This was my first introduction to chocolates and I fell in love almost immediately. It’s such a perfect combination of chemistry and art.

I worked at Veruca throughout the entirety of the Pastry program and moved back to St Louis with the intention of staying in chocolate. I found a grand total of one business that was making the visually interesting chocolates I wanted to make: shiny and polished, colorful and interesting flavors.

I worked there for almost two years with the intention of soaking up as much as possible, hoping to grow with the business and maybe take some leadership/management roles. After almost 2 years working there, 7 years as a business, the owner came to me and told me it just wasn’t what he wanted anymore and I was faced with a decision : stay in chocolate but leave St. Louis, or stay in St. Louis and leave chocolate.

Ultimately I decided I wanted to have my cake and eat it too, and I chose to stay in St. Louis and make my own chocolate, and luckily, it has worked out for the best.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

Working pop ups and farmers markets. It was the perfect way to try and find new customers without committing to a rented space. It let me travel all over the city and spread the word, grow my brand recognition and meet other small business owners.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.bijouxchocolates.com
• Instagram: bijouxstl

Image Credits
Paige McDonald THE ONLY PODGE Brianna Williams LAST BITE PHOTOGRAPHY