On Sunday, February 6th, Dave Lavender of the Herald Dispatch newspaper ran a story on Chiammaya Custom crafted chocolate. ( www.herald-dispatch.com/life/.../Almost-Heaven-Mountain-State-Chocolate and http://www.herald-dispatch.com/life/x1838467874/Food-Network-junkie-gives-up-home-brewing-for-chocolateering?i=0 )What followed was totally unexpected.

Knowing that Valentines day was nearly upon us, we had worked hard to build up stock in order to have enough stock for the season. Little did we know that the article combined with Valentines Day would explode in unexpected volume!

The story ran on Sunday and by lunch on Monday, our local distributor, Old Village Roaster, was calling asking for another delivery of chocolate. An hour and a half later they had chocolate. Two hours after that delivery they asked for more chocolate and again within an hour and a half, they had chocolate.

By the end of business Tuesday they were calling again! Wednesday the same thing. Their delivery volume was doubled and they were STILL running out and so was Chiammaya.

We fired up the molinos to grind more chocolate and quickly ran out of raw ingredients. Quickly we call out supplier who told us that beside being snowed in, the beans needed to roast for our order was still on the boat and would not arrive for another week!

I suppose selling so much that you run out is a good thing, but not knowing how many sales you've lost by not having enough inventory is really upsetting.

The story has generated more interest than any other article up to this point. A couple of potentially interesting project may be coming from this.

So go ahead and order more chocolate, just realize that the next available orders won't be shipping before March 15, 2010