Are your chocolates organic and sustainable?

Organic nectarines from the Ferry Building farmers market.

We work with chocolate from Guittard Chocolate Company, which is has some really great practices like sourcing fairly traded beans from farms with a commitment to sustainability and prohibiting slavery and other awful stuff in their operations. 

We incorporate organic ingredients into our ganaches (peanut butter, nectarines, strawberries, and black sesame tahini, to name a few), but we do not produce a wholly organic product. As a small company, we try to walk the line between doing right and staying in business, and our goal is to continually increase the organic products in our ingredient list.

Some of our ingredients, such as lavender and rosemary, are locally foraged. We recognize that foraging can be harmful and unsustainable if not done mindfully, which is why we only collect from sites that are plentiful and allow them to recover between visits.

One of our favorite sustainable practices is biking deliveries around San Francisco whenever possible.

Big Decisions: Why We Don't Have a Storefront

We don't have a storefront and don't intend on having one. We want to make chocolates in San Francisco and get them to you rather than have a storefront and have you come to us. Since we don't have to spend our time and energy on everything that goes into a physical retail location, we can stay focused on the important things, namely our chocolates and you.

Do you ship? 

Yes in the US! But only when it's safe to do so. This means summer is off limits and any other part of the year when your chocolates might spend time in a hot delivery truck. If you're planning on visiting San Francisco and would like to place an order, please do and we'd be happy to deliver them to your accommodations. If you want to fly us to you to guarantee safe passage for your chocolates, we're all ears and love to travel.

So Shiny, Narcissus Might Fall In

Turkish tea and cookies bonbons, with Turkish tea milk chocolate ganache and a shortbread cookie inside.

People often ask us how we get our chocolates so shiny.

Step one: Cut a hole in the box. Step two: We’re just joking with you. Really, step one is polishing the polycarbonate (hard plastic) molds with microfiber polishing cloths. This is the first thing you do to get chocolate super shiny. Next, we melt and keep colored cocoa butter at the right working temperature and paint the molds. Lost of folks use airbrushes, and we’re not poo-pooing that technique, but we prefer to work without them. We fingerpaint, use brushes, and blow cocoa butter off of spatulas or around in the molds using a handheld air pump. Sometimes we use a little luster dust, with or without alcohol, to make designs. Then we temper chocolate and line the molds with it, creating a thin chocolate shell.

How to Get Cadence Chocolates at Your Soirée

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Our chocolates are made and sold as special orders, which means we consult with you on quantity, flavor, and packaging, to make sure your personal needs are met. As such, every order is different and priced accordingly. Think of us like wedding cake makers, but for chocolate.

Our minimum order starts at twenty-four pieces of chocolate per flavor, and we're happy to work with you on customizing packaging, colors, and flavors. You can even commission a flavor if it's not in our library.

We don't regularly sell individual boxes. Occasionally, we have special events where we put a limited number of boxes up for sale to celebrate holidays or new flavors. If you don't have a specific event that would allow you to meet the minimum order requirements, send us an order inquiry anyway and we can slate you to tag onto another production run.

If you want chocolates, let us know what you're thinking about here. If you need some food for thought, read stories from people who have had our chocolates.

Why Cadence Chocolates?

Why should I eat yours instead of picking up a rock, throwing it, and eating some other chocolate company it hits in San Francisco?

We would advise against throwing rocks and proximity as a way of discerning which chocolate to eat in the Bay Area. While you are spoiled for choice, we encourage you to choose our chocolates because we’re awesome (the humble brag is lost on us). We are awesome because we strive to make chocolates to order, which means fresh, handcrafted chocolates made specifically for you. Our chocolates are made by hand, from painting with colored cocoa butter to packaging and delivering. Plus, they’re awfully pretty and tasty. Why, some say they’re too pretty to eat, but that’s ridiculous. Trust us when we quote Pee-Wee, “Why don’t you take a picture? It’ll last longer!”