next year, McMeeken had 120 made up.
“And, I should have done double that,” he recalls, adding, “I could have sold 800 of them.”
Each chocolate bar was 1.2 kilograms in size. “It would last you about a month and a half if you just had a bit every day,” he says. Research (enjoyable research) led to the current source of cocoa beans, which includes none from Africa, where they tend to have a bitterness that can be unpleasant, he says. “This chocolate is better for you than most because less sugar needs to be added to it to overcome a bitter flavour and we don’t use sugar-infused cherries,” he explains.
Initially, House of Brussels was making the chocolate bars for McMeeken at their facility in Vancouver, but when it changed hands, he moved his business to English Bay Chocolate, which made the first bars for retail sales in 2000. Then, in 2011, he began making smaller bars and now there are three sizes of bar available at Save-On Foods' Urban Fare stores and at select retailers.
The first to carry Knight’s big bar was the B.C. Fruit Packers retail store in Kelowna, and it now carries all sizes. They’re also available at Quails' Gate Winery in West Kelowna and Intrigue Wines in Lake Country.
It was in 2011, with McMeeken’s first big sale to Save-On Foods, because of its Buy-Local program, that the cherry chocolate bars began to take off. “The manager (of the Okanagan Mission Urban Fare store) was shocked at how fast the first order sold out,” comments McMeeken with satisfaction.
He still delivers all products himself, which is time-consuming and expensive, and he’s hopeful as sales increase, that Save-On will stock them in their warehouse and deliver them to stores.
One of the biggest problems in processing cherries is that pit in the middle.
McMeeken says it’s the reason Sun- Rype eventually got out of the business of processing cherries, but now a very expensive piece of laser equipment is available to ensure no pits are left in the processed fruit.
Sun-Rype used to buy all the cherries grown on the orchard by a lessee, he notes, until an oversupply in Michigan led to a plunge in prices for cherries.
However, the markets have stabilized and prices have gone back up 28 cents to 35 cents a pound, which makes it more economical to think about returning to the business of growing sour cherries.
The chocolate side of things is a business he’d like to get going well, then turn it over to his son to run. He has a vision of getting into the processing side of cherries, but that would need a big capital outlay, so it’s still a dream for the future.
For now, he has to buy dried, pitted cherries from the U. S., because there’s none available that are made in Canada.
Even though this orchardist buys his chocolate by the ton — as well as using tons of cherries — he doesn’t plan to give up his career as an investment adviser, or as an orchardist, to make chocolate bars.
“It’s been an overnight success —but it’s taken 15 years,” he notes with a laugh.
18
British Columbia FRUIT GROWER • Summer 2015
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36