Been wondering where you can find your LoveBar chocolates around the City? Well, not to worry – we’ve got you covered!
Check out our new PicTour to find out exactly where LoveBars are sold! Download the PicTour app with your iPhone or Android and hop from store to store – make a whole choclate-filled day out of it. We promise we won’t tell your parents!
I think it’s safe to say that we at PhillyLoveBar have a pretty intimate relationship with chocolate. That’s why we weren’t surprised by this Jezebel piece detailing all the insect parts you swallow eating chocolate made by the large industrial chocolate companies:
“According to ABC News, the average chocolate bar contains eight insect parts. Anything less than 60 insect pieces per 100 grams of chocolate (two chocolate bars’ worth) is deemed safe for consumption by the Food and Drug Administration.”
Pretty unappetizing, right? And, unlike what the author states, unnecessary.
At PhillyLoveBar, we hand sort all of our beans before roasting them. It’s a long and dusty process that ensures only the very best cacao beans make it into your chocolate. And, you guessed it, that means no insect parts in your chocolate – just a whole lot of love.
Making chocolate from bean to bar is a three day hands on process, one that allows us to know that ONLY cacao nibs and organic sugar are in your bars. This means that our prices are higher than those that you’ll find in supermarkets or from other chocolatiers. But we think the quality of our chocolate is worth it, and are sure you will too.
LoveBar is truly a team effort, and this past year would not have been nearly as successful for us without the help of our wonderful interns straight from Frankford High. Being involved in our community is a critical part of our mission and culture here at LoveBar, and our partnership with Frankford High is just the first example we plan to highlight here. But, for right now, we’d like to take the time and recognize one of our tremendous interns, Shyeida Duncan.
Shyeida is a senior at Frankford who plans to study the culinary arts at Monroe College in the fall. We introduced her to the entire chocolate making process, from tempering to cracking beans to wrapping finished bars. Her cooking experience comes primarily from helping her mother, but she walked in to our kitchen with dedication, talent and enthusiasm – which we hope we helped cultivate throughout her time with LoveBar!
Shyeida’s looking forward to her classes in the fall, and she even wants to take business classes and one day start her own micro-food venture. Like the rest of us at LoveBar, she likes doing things her way! (But remember Shyeida, don’t take out a business loan unless you absolutely have to!)
We want to wish Shyeida lots of luck and chocolate as she gets ready to start the next phase of her life, and we hope we’ve taught her a few things along the way about the culinary arts, business, and using what you love to do to give back to others.
Stay in touch, Shyeida, and we’re sure that you’ll be teaching us plenty in the years to come.
And friends of LoveBar, keep reading for more profiles of our wonderful interns!
LoveBar Chocolates aims to bring you purest quality, best tasting chocolate around. But we also work from a deep love of all things Philly, and especially try to expose more Philadelphians to the incredible local artists we have here. That’s why all of our chocolate wrappers are designed by Philadelphia-based artists, and hand screen printed by Pete Whitney of Outlaw Print Co (www.outlawprintco.com). After a number of months, Pete approached us about designing a wrapper and we couldn’t be happier that he did!
Pete and his business partner Joel Peterson spend their days as screen printers, but design the night away for their own line, Magick Outlaw. You can check out some of their work here (www.outlawprintco.com/index.php?/shop/shirt-tomorow) and here (www.outlawprintco.com/index.php?/posters/art-prints).
And take a minute to learn a little bit more about what Pete and Joel are all about in their own words from this 2007 interview (www.uwishunu.com/2007/10/philly-profile-outlaw-print-company-2). The way Joel speaks about his love of Philadelphia demonstrates one of the many reasons we’re so excited to work with Outlaw:
“I’m inspired by the people and especially by the neighborhoods. The neighborhoods change so drastically, from block to block. And there is so much history, you can walk down a block, see a house built in 1897 with people living and hanging out on the porch.. it’s inspiring.”
So get inspired too. We find that eating and making chocolate helps.
Farmers market season is upon us, and LoveBar is pleased to announce that starting this Sunday May 13th for the 3rd season you can find us at The Food Trust’s Headhouse Market (thefoodtrust.org/php/headhouse), from 10:00am to 2:00pm. We’re excited to be back at Headhouse, and to see many of our farmers market friends like Philly Fair Trade Roasters (phillyfairtrade.com), Market Day Canale (marketdaycanale.com), and Three Springs Fruit Farm (threespringsfruitfarm.com). The market is the best way to taste new products and most affordable way to try our bars!
Headhouse Market started in 1745, though it was known then as New Market. “Headhouse” stands at one end of the “Shambles”, which houses the open air market. Headhouse was built in 1804, and was the nation’s oldest firehouse. Though LoveBar Chocolate is the only bean-to-bar chocolatier in the Market – and the City! – we are not the first to sell at Headhouse Square! We love carrying on this tradition, and the tradition of supplying Philadelphians with handmade chocolate.
If you can’t make it out to Headhouse Square, remember that you can always find our product at Capo Giro Gelato and Shane’s Confectionary. Or you can place an order by calling 215.870.5522 or email us at phillylovebar@gmail.com. We’d love to tell you more about our product.
LoveBar is delighted that you decided to collaborate with us! We like that our kitchen and your Part Time Studios are neighborhood neighbors, we’re into that you are a native pennsylvanian who after crafting your skills decided to come back and share your gifts locally, and we LOVE that you were inspired to create a wrapper just for LoveBar!!
We aren’t going to try to describe your awesome work, but we hope you don’t mind that we share a bit of your inspiration- from your dearadamsmith.com site.
My goal as an artist is to interpret, record, and honor all things human. Joy, pain, love, death, faith, humor, history…these are all things that we as humans have in common and they are all things that can and do bring us together as well as push us apart. I don’t attempt to find clarity in the confusion and chaos of the world, for now I’m just exploring.
We are very excited that your new show a PARADIGM GALLERY is TONIGHT!!
We can’t believe you are giving away 10 FREE LOVEBARS tonight.
What a guy!!
Good luck tonight, and here’s to crushing the artisan food & visual art games!
Much Love,
LoveBar
Seasons change and so do we!
LoveBar went through a real period of growth and transition in 2011 and we thank you from the bottom of our hearts for supporting through our chocolate journey.
We dream of spending the Summer on amazing cacao sourcing adventures but this year we were stuck in our workboots, and up to our elbows in paint on another much more local adventure- building the LoveBar kitchen!
For 2 YEARS we have been working, out of small coffeeshops and other commercial kitchen spaces after business hours. While we are so very grateful for all of the businesses that welcomed us into their spaces during that time (biiig shout out to Betty’s Speakeasy! ) – our elbows were bowed extra low for lugging all the equipment in and out- adding hours and hours onto our production time-and bags under our eyes! The need for a more permanent space was urgent!
As any local food entrepreneur will tell you- finding kitchen space in Philadelphia is as easy as locating that fountain of youth! It was a long 10 month process- but when we finally met our incredible landlords and signed the lease on the amazing Globe Dye Works– the long wait was worth it all.
We couldn't be happier in Frankford!!
The Globe Dye Works tag line is “where arts meet industry”- which we feel compliments our business very well. We feel so lucky to have such a talented creative community working all around us- and with us.
LoveBar shares our production space with the Cupcake Queen of Philadelphia -Mz. Lily Fischer of A Cupcake Wonderland. Check out her award winning cupcakes by clicking here!
Check back soon for more updates, including new products, new additions to the LoveBar family and a wonderful new artist…. to be continued!
Many of you may already know That Tegan spent a significant amount of 2010 in the Tobasco region of Mexico undertaking epic chocolate adventures. She visited plantations, met with local farmers, researched cacao production processes…and tasted a lot of chocolate!! We are very excited to share the fruits of her labor, and are confident that you will be quite pleased.
The famous stone heads of the Olmecs(who were often referred to as the first to use cacao), now reside in the State of Tobasco, an area steeped in rich cacao history and tradition. Our current variety of cocoa bean comes from Comalcalco, the hub of the Tobasco region’s cacao production.
A slow roast of our Comalacalco beans yields a robust full bodied chocolate. After 25 hours of stone grinding it’s rich flavor is chased with delicate berry notes. This batch is definitely a testament to the layers and phases of flavor that a piece of good chocolate can take you through!
As if you needed another reason to try it, rest assured that these beans were produced on a small, fair trade, organic farm by a small group of people with very big hearts.
Come see us at Head House Market this Sunday for a sample of our 79% and 72%!
Chocolate Nations: Living and Dying for Cocoa, a new book authored by Orla Ryan, is a well researched reminder of the many lives that can be affected by everyday chocolate purchases. The Ivory Coast, the world’s top exporter of cocoa beans, neighboring Ghana and many other Cocoa exporting Nations have complex political, legal and human rights issues attached to their chocolate exports. Empower yourself and learn more about the book below.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jan/29/chocolate-nations-cocoa-west-africa-review
…And for information on the current power struggle for Ivory Coast Cocoa exports here:
http://www.npr.org/2011/02/10/133625656/in-ivory-coast-power-struggle-halts-cocoa-exports
Though it is still winter our excitement about 2011 and the new products that we will be able to offer has reached a fever pitch! As our outdoor markets have been closed we have had a bit more time to focus on sourcing and experimenting with some new, naturally distinct flavor varieties of cacao beans. To wet your appetite here is a bit of information on some of the new varieties of cacao that we will be experimenting with:
Fair Trade organic beans from the Upala region of Costa Rica
The teroir, or geographic characteristics of the soil a crop is produced in, of the Upala region yields fruity hints of fig and tamarind. When moderately roasted these Costa Rican Beans make an elegant chocolate with a smoothness that resembles milk chocolate (without any added dairy!).
Dominican Republic Sanchez Beans
Akin to the Dominican Republic Hispanola beans that yielded the majority of the chocolate we sold and produced in the fall, this bean carries notes of raspberry of green tea. Intensely aromatic, the Sanchez beans also has a Deep earthy flavor with tobacco and delicate spice notes.
Many more to come!
LoveBar 