During the filming of the Brighthouse Financial commercial Dylan mentioned that working with a chocolate maker in a chocolate factory, whether you’re being paid or not, would be one of the best things someone like me (Romy) can do to learn more about the craft as well as the business side of chocolate making. I did not hesitate one bit to tell him that I would like to work for him at Manoa as an apprentice. The rest, as they say, is history. I spent the whole month of November 2020 working side by side with Dylan and his team at the Manoa Chocolate factory in Kailua. It was a priceless learning experience and a reality check on the complexities of managing a chocolate making business. I’m truly thankful to Dylan and his team at Manoa for having been given an opportunity to experience the life of a real chocolate maker at a world-class craft chocolate company.
What I’ve learned at Manoa Chocolates
Dylan has a YouTube channel, Craft Chocolate TV, where he shares almost everything he knows about cacao and chocolate making, but here’s a few that stuck with me during my one month apprenticeship at Manoa.
Expect your equipment to malfunction or break at some point in time and you should be ready, with tons of determination and patience, to fix it yourself or have someone in your team to do it. Otherwise your production schedule is screwed while waiting for a technician to fix it.
Chocolate is food and as such keeping your factory clean and sanitized should be a primary concern for everyone involved. It is very easy to get messy fast when working with chocolate so constantly maintaining a clean work place is important.
Chocolate will clog your drain pipes if you wash your tools and equipment and simply run the water with chocolate down the sink.
Having a retail space where customers can see how the chocolate is made is a big advantage for a small craft chocolate maker. It gives you an opportunity to educate your customers on the entire “bean-to-bar”/”tree-to-bar” process, be able to tell your story and hopefully make a meaningful connection with them.
Watch Dylan's story and how Manoa Chocolate started ...
Watch the Brighthouse Financial commercial and how Romy met Dylan via Zoom ...
Manoa Chocolate Factory and Retail Store's colorful facade.
With Marceau, production manager, at the chocolate bar tempering/molding line, seen thru the retail store window. He's showing here how to clean and setup the tempering machine.
Marceau showing how to add inclusions on the back of chocolate bars.
Roer handling the controls of the flow wrapping machine. This machine needs a lot of TLC to get the wrapping to go smoothly.
Mateo adding honey to chocolate liquor. If not handled properly during the process, honey can introduce tempering problems.
Marceau showing how to load pre-refined nibs into the ball machine.
Expect machines to breakdown at some point so trouble shooting mechanical problems is part of a chocolate maker's job unless you have somebody like Bob (on the left), a retired engineer and now Dylan's business partner.
Dylan was showing me how to clean the pre-refiner when Carson, Dylan's younger brother and social media specialist, thought of recording it and posting it in Instagram. Click the image to see the post.
I was able to visit Manoa's just-over-a-year-old cacao farm in Waialua, O'ahu with Greg D'Alesandre of Dandelion Chocolate who was Dylan's guest at that time.
The Manoa Chocolate factory tour is a popular activity for tourists and locals alike. It brings in lots of customers into Manoa's retail store.
Manoa Chocolate's Flavors of Hawaii with their distinctive and award-winning packaging are one of the bestsellers.
I brought a small sample of Banahaw Mountain Cacao from the 2020 harvest for Dylan to try. We ended up shipping 20 kg of those beans to Kailua so Dylan can teach me how to roast them myself.
With the Manoa team from left, Romy, Mateo, Tiffany, Dylan and Marceau. After work champagne for Tiffany's birthday.
@manoachocolate Instagram post. Click on image to see rest of the post.