It’s graduation season! Summer is quickly approaching and nothing marks the transition in seasons like the end of the school year. Whether it’s someone in your family graduating from high school or a friend finishing up college, it’s a good bet you know someone graduating from school. This brings us to the ingredient of the week, our graduation plaques.

If you’re searching for the perfect graduation gift, look no more. Our personalized chocolate bars make the perfect gift. Send the right message with our ‘Congratulations Grad’ plaque. We actually had a lot of corny messages that we decided not to use such as ‘Congrats on your sweet success’… Our custom chocolate bars are really popular not just for graduation gifts, but also for graduations parties of which we offer great discounts and the ability to customize your own message.

My brother is graduating from college soon and is going to get a milk chocolate bar with a ‘Congratulations Grad’ plaque, sour patch kids, chocolate candy pieces, and gummi bears. I would say sorry for ruining the surprise, but my family is pretty used to getting Chocomize chocolate bars for gifts (I still haven’t heard anyone protesting.) What kind of chocolate bar would you want for your graduation?

Nick

Yesterday I had one of those moments that are just too unlikely to be true. My parents are currently on a trip through Asia and they told me a story last night that I thought you would like to hear about. They were taking a train tour through North Vietnam and happened to be sitting next to two young guys from the UK who were taking a gap year before university to discover the world. The guys were chatting with my parents and asked if they had kids and what they were doing. The first thing my dad told them was that one of his sons started a chocolate company in the United States and told them the whole nine yards about Chocomize.

Ok, a quick rhetorical question in case you have fallen asleep already:

What are the odds that two 19 year old guys from the UK, went to a party in Los Angeles that had Chocomize party favors, only to meet my German parents on a train in Northern Vietnam? Impossible? Well, once my dad said the word Chocomize, the guys smiled and knew exactly what was going on. How could he forget the delicious custom chocolate bars at the Academy Awards party in L.A? Well, I guess the world really is small sometimes.

Ever had a moment like this? Share it with us!

Fabian

We did some research and we decided that it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to make the t-shirts ourselves, we want to focus on making those delicious personalized chocolate bars. What we did instead was to set up a t-shirt shop at another company. All you have to do to get an awesome Chocomize t-shirt is visit www.Chocomize.spreadshirt.com. We have men’s and women’s shirts and will be adding more designs pretty soon. In the meantime, show everyone how big of a fan you are by getting a Chocomize t-shirt!

What the heck was going on yesterday?  I’m guessing a lot of people were asking themselves this when they tried to get onto our website. Instead of the usual delicious looking chocolate bars on the homepage, most visitors got to see this awesome error message: This Account Has Been Suspended.

What happened?

If you were on our website like we were, you would have noticed that suddenly everything got really slow, and then all of sudden stopped working! Well Urban Daddy, a free daily e-mail that writes about cool new products, sent an e-mail about how ridiculously awesome we are =)   So many people wanted to check us out that our servers were shut down because of all the traffic. So how much is too much? We got approximately 3500 visits in just 20 minutes.

We feel pretty embarrassed about what happened, but we are a young company and don’t admit to knowing everything about everything. We ended up upgrading our hosting service to a dedicated account. This means no more server crashes when lots of people surf on the site at the same time, and, most importantly, lower loading times (even less time before you get your personalized chocolate bars.)

So if you’re saying to yourself, who cares I just wanted to order my chocolate, we have something that might cheer you up a bit. For today only we’re creating a gift code so you can get 10% off your custom chocolate bar. Just type ‘we are back’ into the coupon section of the checkout to redeem your discount.

Have you ever been caught with your pants down? Help cheer us up by telling about your most embarrassing stories. We’d love to read about them in the comments section!

Nick, Eric, and Fabian

On April 23^rd Fabian and I attended the Team Fox MVP dinner in New York City. The event recognized some of the most creative and successful fundraising efforts of Team Fox Members in the last year. As you know, Team Fox is one of the three charities Chocomize customers can choose to donate to as part of their order.

Team Fox is part of the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research. Team Fox is for fundraisers who raise awareness and funds for research through creative activities that range from running marathons, climbing mountains and making chocolate! At the event Fabian and I met a number of tremendously generous people who gave their time, energy and resources to support this worthy cause. One member raised nearly $90,000 running a marathon!

The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research has raised over $179 million since its inception in 2000. Parkinson’s Disease is a degenerative disorder which damages the central nervous system. While there are many symptoms associated with Parkinson’s Disease, it is the tremors and slowing of movement that are the most recognizable characteristics of the illness. Parkinson’s is mainly caused by insufficient dopamine in the brain which functions as the motor oil which allows the brains messages to be transferred to the body’s muscles. When there is a lack of dopamine the body reacts as a car would without motor oil, sputtering and seizing.

Chocomize has had a great relationship with Team Fox, they really like our concept and product, they have blogged about us and even requested to make a Team Fox favorites bar. We were honored to be invited to the event and had a great time meeting donors and staff as well as enjoying great food and drinks. Chocomize donated chocolate bars as part of the place settings for the more than 250 guests of the event. The Chocomize bars were a big hit and hopefully expressed in some small way our gratitude for the tremendous efforts of Team Fox and it’s members.

We encourage you to check out the Team Fox website to learn more about Parkinson’s Disease and how you can do your part to help. As always you can select Michael J. Fox as your charity when you buy from Chocomize and also give an additional donation that goes 100% towards this the Team Fox organization. It’s a great cause that we are thrilled to be a part of and hope you will join us.

Eric

Photos by 1923 Studio

Have you ever wondered which combinations are the most popular? Check out our ‘favorites’ page where if you can’t decide what to design, you can pick from some of our previous favorites (hence the name.) So which one of our favorites is the most popular? The following is the top five most popular custom chocolate bars:

5. I Feel Lucky Chocolate Bar: This candy chocolate bar is for the adventurous. If you’re looking for a pleasant surprise (we like to think we can put together a mean chocolate bar) then this is the bar for you. It looks like we have a lot of daredevil customers, because this is a very popular chocolate bar.

4. Spicy Special Chocolate Bar: So here’s some inside information that I bet very few people know: the spicy special ‘favorites’ bar is actually named in honor of a sandwich that Eric, Fabian, and I would eat while we studied together at Columbia University. Our favorite deli had a great spicy sandwich which they called ‘the spicy special’. We loved the name and the sandwich even more, so when we designed the first spicy chocolate bar, it was a unanimous decision to name it in honor of our favorite sandwich. We go back there from time to time, and there’s no better combination than a spicy special sandwich and a spicy special personalized chocolate bar.

3. Happy Birthday Chocolate Bar: People love giving our chocolate bars for birthdays. Can you blame them? This bar is especially awesome because in addition to tasting amazing, it comes with a candle and candle holder. How many people have blown out a chocolate bar with a candle? Not very many until Chocomize came around!

2. Summer Chocolate: This bar might come as a surprise to people, but white chocolate is actually very popular. With its incredibly smooth taste, white chocolate goes great with toffee and chocolate candy pieces. Even though it’s called the summer chocolate, be careful about leaving it out in the sun, it will melt. And speaking of melting and summer, you don’t ever have to worry about your order not making it in the heat; we ship all our boxes with ice. Yeah we’re awesome.

1. Smores Bar: This bar is far and away our most popular. And for good reason, it’s absolutely delicious. The history and origin of the bar is a bit of a controversy around the office. Fabian swears that his girlfriend came up with the idea, while Eric swears that it was his. It’s funny because they’re both wrong, only I could come up with such a great tasting creation! Whatever the history, one this is for sure, this personalized chocolate is amazing.

-Nick

A couple weeks ago we sent out a survey to all our fans. We had a lot of great responses and some really helpful advice. Here are some of the responses we got from you guys:

-Great idea custom chocolate at a good price!

-I was very happy with the quality of the chocolate and the ingredients. We loved the candy bar! We will be ordering more soon.

-Tried y'all out and loved my chocolate. Will be ordering some for my sis for her birthday :-)

-Loved the website, easy to order. Family loved it and it was gone in a few days. I will definately order from you again.

-LOVED the new process on gift certificates -- just ordered two the other day. What a great idea -- I wish you tons of success! I'm a fan!

-I think you guys are a great company! My first batch of bars i ordered came and were cracked. I wasn't angry, it happens. But sent an email, just to let you know so it could be prevented in the future(because someone would get angry!) I got a quick response, and a gift certificate for additional bars! I was so very surprised by the customer service and generosity! And when i ordered additional bars, they were sent in a different package and were all in perfect condition. Thanks for all your great work!

-Glad I found this site, I am hoping that none of my other friends find it before Xmas because I am thinking of giving them all a Chocomize G.C.!

Thanks guys for all the great comments and the advice. We are constantly updating our website and adding ingredients based on what you guys want. So if there is something that you don’t see, and you want, we’ll make sure to get them to you! Just let us know.

-Nick

Some of the people who come across our website aren’t looking specifically for chocolate bars, but for something called chocolate bark. Now Eric and I have been enjoying chocolate bark all our lives. My family always has a couple tins of chocolate bark lying around, especially around Christmas time, and Eric claims that his family gets some from his cousins every year as a present. We didn’t realize right away that people who like to eat chocolate bark would also love our personalized chocolate bars, but the two are actually quite similar.

So what is chocolate bark? It is usually some sort of homemade chocolate with different types of ingredients sprinkled on top. Because chocolate bark is typically made from home, it tends to be a bit misshapen and resembles something like fallen tree bark (hence the name.) The ingredients vary (I always had something like peanuts or walnuts) but usually they are something that would be found in anyone’s pantry.

There are a lot of similarities between our custom chocolate bars and chocolate bark. Perhaps the most obvious one is that both have the ingredients on top of the chocolate rather than mixed throughout. We have our ingredients on top because we think it tastes and looks better that way. Another similarity is the variety of ingredients that you find in chocolate bark. We boast over 90 different ingredients ranging from the usual nuts and fruits to the unusual like 23 karat gold flakes, happy birthday plaques, candied rose petals, etc. (for a full list check out our CREATION STATION.)

So for those chocolate bark fans out there, design your own personalized chocolate bar instead of eating the same old boring chocolate. I know that this Christmas season we won’t be eating chocolate bark anymore but some custom chocolate bars from Chocomize!

Nick

I bet not a lot of people knew that April 22^nd was national jelly bean day. Here are a couple other interesting (and random) facts that people might now know:

-Jelly beans originate from a popular Turkish candy called ‘Turkish Delight’ and they are hundreds of years old.

-The modern jelly bean didn’t originate until around the civil war when a Boston candy company started sending them to Union soldiers to bolster moral.

-Jelly beans didn’t become associated with Easter until around 1930 (they original connection was due to their resemblance to Easter eggs.)

-Nowadays almost 15 billion jelly beans are sold around Easter alone!

Enjoy your free jelly beans, April 22^nd only!

-Nick

We’ve created a new way for you to personalize your chocolate bar, just in time for Mother’s Day! Over the past couple of weeks we have created a bunch of new additions to our website, all of which aim towards you creating the perfect custom chocolate bar. We revamped our entire checkout system and created a ‘name your bar feature’ (check out the previous post to read about the top five names of the past couple of weeks.) We weren’t satisfied with just adding that, however.

Chocomize is extremely popular for birthday chocolate bars and other chocolate gifts. We had gotten a lot of requests from you guys to create an option where you could write a personalized message. We always try to respond as quickly as possible to feedback we get from customers, and we’ve now added the ‘personalized greeting card’ option that is available at checkout.

Once you pick and design your perfect custom candy bar, there is an option in our checkout to create you very own greeting card. Write your very own message and send it to the person receiving your personalized chocolate bar!

If you are giving a gift for Mother’s Day, make sure you get credit (my mom will probably get a hand written note…sorry to ruin the surprise mom) and design yourself a personalized greeting card.

Nick

Hey guys, we’ve had some great names for chocolate bars these past couple of weeks. Here are my top five favorite, let me know what you think:

1.) For Mom, so she won't steal dads

Dark Chocolate

Nuts & Seeds: Whole Almonds

Nuts & Seeds: Pecan Halves

2.) To The Sweetest

Dark Chocolate

Other: Graham Teddies

Decorations: Happy Birthday Plaque

Decorations: Sprinkles

Candy: Mini Marshmallows

(I really like the pun here…)

3.) Smart Mouth Bar

Dark Chocolate

Candy: Pop Rocks

Fruits: Sour Cherries

Herbs & Spices: Cayenne Pepper

4.) Nueces y Dulces en Blanca

White Chocolate

Nuts & Seeds: Hazelnuts

Nuts & Seeds: Macadamia Nuts

Candy: Butterscotch

Candy: Caramel Pieces

5.)PB&J

Dark Chocolate

Candy: Peanut Chocolate Candy

Fruits: Dried Strawberries

We look forward to tweeting with you!

Fabian

Fill out our customer survey and get 10% off your order!

From time to time we like to get feedback on how you guys think we are doing. The last survey we sent out prompted us to completely change our checkout. We threw out those annoying username and passwords and made everything clearer and easier to use. We also added some great new ingredients as a response to your feedback. Check out our lavender, dried raspberries, and even beef jerky!

We need your help again! Fill out the following survey and get a 10% coupon code:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/HTC6TJX

We appreciate your support and input!

Even though we already have over 90 ingredients to create the perfect personalized chocolate bar, we are constantly looking for ways to improve. Beef jerky is a very popular snack here at the Chocomize office. It’s extremely high in protein and tastes great. One day we were snacking on our favorite jerky when Eric came up with the amazing idea to add the jerky to our chocolate. We are pretty convinced that chocolate makes EVERYTHING better, and we were right! The combination of salty and sweet with the texture of the beef makes our beef jerky chocolate bar absolutely DELICIOUS!

There are a lot of things about beef jerky that people don’t know about. The word jerky actually comes from the Native American word “Charqui” which means to burn meat. Beef jerky was one of the first products that humans actually produced. It was so important because the invention of beef jerky allowed for meat to be preserved without refrigeration. It has subsequently been used by survivalists who carry beef jerky with them to keep themselves alive! Here are some more awesome facts about beef jerky:

- Since 1996 when NASA first took it into space, beef jerky has been a favorite food of astronauts!

- A typical 1oz serving of beef jerky contains around 15 grams of protein which is about 25% of the daily recommended serving size.

- Jerky is not just made from beef. Some other animals that jerky is made from includes elk, caribou, moose, kangaroo, and bison. If anyone knows how we can get some kangaroo jerky, please let us know immediately.

- Jerky was a favorite food for the Egyptians thousands of years ago.

I’m interested to hear about what you guys think of our beef jerky. We’ve spent weeks sampling and tasting different types of jerky, and we think we’ve found the best kind. Do you have a favorite jerky? Let us know and maybe we’ll change our minds and use it for beef jerky chocolate bar!

Nick

The process in which our chocolate bars are made is pretty complicated. We’ve written about how exactly the cocoa bean is turned into delicious chocolate (check out our archives if you’re interested) but did you know that cocoa beans are traded like stocks?

The cocoa bean is traded on something called the futures market. The futures market is an exchange where people trade something called futures contracts. A futures contract is an agreement to buy something at a certain quantity and price at some date in the future. For example, say I own an airplane company and I know I have to buy oil in one year. If I am worried that the price of oil is going to rise, I can buy a futures contract that says in one year I will buy 1000 barrels of oil at a certain price. If a year from now the price of oil has risen, I will have made a wise choice buying a contract! The person who sold me the futures contract a year ago will have to sell me the oil at the lower price. If, however, the price of oil has fallen, then I will have to buy oil at a higher price and I will lose money.

Chocolate (the cocoa bean) is traded in the same way as oil. Some other commodities that are traded on the futures market are gold, gas, coffee, and pork bellies (yup that wasn’t a typo, pork bellies are traded on the futures market.) Check out the graph of the price of cocoa beans over the last year.

You’ll notice that the price is really expensive! That is because you can’t just agree to buy or sell a contract for one pound of cocoa beans, or even one hundred pounds. Cocoa bean contracts trade for 10 metric tons of cocoa (or 20,000 pounds!) That’s a lot of chocolate, so much so that we’re not sure if we could even eat all of that at Chocomize, and we’re obsessed with chocolate.

There’s more to your personalized chocolate candy bar than you think! If you have any more questions about your chocolate, just send an e-mail to info@chocomize.com.

Nick

Easter is just around the corner and we’ve sent out a lot of great Easter themed bars.  You guys completely cleared us out of our chocolate Easter bunnies and chocolate Easter eggs! I’m looking forward to bring home a box of Easter bars this Sunday, and we would love to hear any Easter stories you might have next week. Thanks for being fans.

Nick

We at Chocomize are all about giving people the ability to customize their own chocolate bar. We recently added a new way that people can personalize their own candy chocolate bar. In the brand new checkout system, people can create names for their chocolate that will appear on the back of the packaging! Oh and did I mention that this new feature is completely free? We didn’t think anyone could get more excited about this new addition than us, but we’ve had a lot of great response from our customers. We’ve also seen some great names. I don’t even know how many times we’ll be making chocolate when we will read one of the names of the bars and just burst into laughter. We’ve liked some of the names so much, that we decided that we would share them with you guys. The following are three of our favorite names so far. Let us know what you think.

Chocohalic
Milk Chocolate
Candy: Chocolate Candy
Decorations: Chocolate Butterfly
Candy: Hard Peppermint Candy
Candy: White Chocolate Chips
Candy: Dark Chocolate Chips

Easter over load
Milk Chocolate
Decorations: Easter Egg
Candy: Chocolate Candy
Candy: Peanut Chocolate Candy
Decorations: Sugar Easter Bunnies

Jamaica Me Crazy!
Dark Chocolate
Fruits: Banana Chips
Fruits: Pineapple Dices
Fruits: Coconut Flakes
Nuts & Seeds: Macadamia Nuts
Candy: Toffee

-Nick