We recently connected with Vicdaly Williams and have shared our conversation below.

Vicdaly, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s start with a story that highlights an important way in which your brand diverges from the industry standard.

Chocolates Dalila is a craft chocolate making company where the end to end process is monitored and controlled for quality, offering a variety of high cacao content chocolates; sourcing fine flavored cacao beans that have been grown for quality instead of quantity, so the flavor is so much better compared to chocolate that uses commodity beans where the focus is low price and high quantity resulting in very poor quality beans. The company focuses on providing the purist product when it comes to chocolate bars and we showcase the unique flavor notes from the cacao origin. Cacao is loaded with healthy nutrients; it is higher in calcium than milk, has more antioxidants than blueberries, and also is high in magnesium. Cacao also has a natural stimulant called Theobromine; which is a natural mood enhancer.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My story starts back in 2002 when my husband and I moved to the US from Venezuela with our newborn son. At the time, I was 21 and didn’t speak English, but was full of energy and determined to succeed in this country and break through any barriers in my way. After my husband left the military in 2007, I started going to college while raising our son and daughter. I graduated in 2012 with a degree in Chemical Engineering and began my first career in the Oil and Gas Industry for a large corporation. As we built our life here in the US, the situation was not so great back in my home country and the economic situation continued to deteriorate year after year; which lead to the latest chapter in my story as a Chemical Engineer turned Chocolate Maker. My business, Chocolates Dalila, was born in late 2018 and we started operation in January of 2019. The inspiration for the business came about after my husband and I traveled to Venezuela the summer of 2018 to visit family and friends. For my husband, it was his first time traveling to the country in six years and he hadn’t witnessed first hand the challenges the country was experiencing. The trip was so impactful that we started contemplating various business ideas that would include Venezuela as the focus and the goal being how we could create a positive economic impact and fund outreach programs. We started brainstorming the products that Venezuela is best known for and ultimately decided that we would make craft chocolate, from bean to bar, using cacao we would import from Venezuela and in that moment Chocolates Dalila was born! Venezuela is known around the world for its fine cacao. We purchase raw cacao from Venezuela at a fair price, roast our own beans, and stone grind our cacao for a smooth, high quality chocolate bar. Our company motto is “Let’s make the world a little better one bar at a time”. Since starting the business we have funded several outreach projects like donating school supplies for children, athletic equipment, foods, and medicines.
Our chocolate is very different from the large chocolate makers in that our bars are not candy, we don’t use added ingredients like lecithin, paraffin wax, emulsifiers, artificial flavoring and a very large amount of sugar. For example most of industry milk chocolate bar only has around 11% cacao content and our milk chocolate has 50% of the contents from cacao (25% cacao and 25% cacao butter). Our best selling dark chocolate is our 70% dark; for our bar that means 60% cacao, 10% cacao butter, and 30% cane sugar. The higher the percentage of cacao the more healthy the product; we make up to 100% cacao bars. Cacao is loaded with healthy nutrients; it is higher in calcium than milk, has more antioxidants than blueberries, and also is high in magnesium. Cacao also has a natural stimulant called Theobromine which is a natural mood enhancer.
At the time we started the business, I was still working a full time job in the oil and gas industry. It wasn’t until the third quarter of 2021 that I decided to take a leap of faith and make Chocolates Dalila my full time job, after 10+ years of working in corporate America. I am now pursuing my purpose of growing the business so we can impact more people and continue to have a direct positive impact in the cacao community in the area we source our cacao from. We have been very fortunate in that we have developed a great relationship with our Cacao Producer in Venezuela, Cacao Marquez, and have a fantastic community that supports our business, especially in Tomball, TX where we really got our start at the local farmers market. I am passionate about the craft chocolate business and every day I am turning the wheels in my brain thinking of new ways I can make the business grow; every day I try to be better than the day before and continuously strive to better myself and the business.

Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?

We started the business with very little capital investment. Our product is non-perishable so under Texas cottage food law, we were able to produce our product at home instead of having to jump right into a brick and mortar store. We only purchased what was absolutely necessary to make finished chocolate which was extremely inefficient but in the beginning it was ok until we acquired a larger customer base. As the business grew we reinvested the earnings to purchase ore chocolate refiners and even a commercial size refiner and a machine that cracks and separates the cacao husk from the bean without any manual work. Re-investing the earnings to scale us production has been the best options for us since we worked full time jobs too.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

I built the social media audience by pushing my social media at every opportunity and being consistent with publishing content as often as possible which is at least daily. Examples of how I grew my social media presence is having an easy way for customers to follow me when they make a purchase at a market such as showing a QR code, going to business networking meetings and connecting with other entrepreneurs in my area, working with influencers and trying to be as authentic as possible in the content, showing how we make our product during the week and posting pictures and video of my team.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.chocolatesdalila.com
• Instagram: @chocolates.dalila
• Facebook: @chocolates.dalilaofficial