Peter Jorgensen and Katey Wright are no strangers to the spotlight.
As founders and co-artistic producers of the New Westminster-based Patrick Street Productions, they’ve made a name for themselves in the world of musical theatre. Now the couple is adding chocolate connoisseurs to their list of accomplishments.
They’ve recently opened Origins Chocolate Bar, a shop that sells bean-to-bar craft chocolate bars. The Record caught up with Jorgensen recently to talk about the new venture.
Record: Tell me about Origins Chocolate Bar. What is it?
Jorgensen: Origins Chocolate Bar, what this is is what’s called bean-to-bar chocolate or sometimes referred to craft chocolate. So what we’re doing is we’re bringing in the fine wine of chocolate. So we have craft chocolate makers from around the world who have mostly direct-trade relationships with cocoa farmers from around the world and like with grapes for wine or beans for coffee, when you get different cocoa beans from different regions, they have different flavours different tastes.
What is your role in this?
We’re basically curating the shop. We’re importing the bars and hanging out and chatting about chocolate with people and helping them understand the product and what it is. And it’s been great so far. Most people come in and as soon as they try a sample they’re like ‘Woah.’ It’s a whole other level of chocolate.
How did you and Katey get started in this business?
Friends of ours have been hosting these chocolate tasting parties for about three or four years, and we started going to them and just kind of slowly … started to get to know the products really well, just started to love the chocolate and … we got to know more about the industry.
Where are you getting your chocolate from?
Right now, probably half of our bars are from the states. … In America, the craft chocolate business is really taking off. There’s a number of incredible craft chocolate makers down there. We have three brands from Canada that we’re really happy to present – two are from Ontario and one is from Montreal. We have a chocolate from France, we have one from Austria and we have one from Finland as well.
How does this new chocolate business fit with your production company? (Jorgensen and Wright run Patrick Street Productions) It seems like a lot?
It does seem like it’s a lot. That’s one of the things we’re going to discover over the next year is how it fits in with everything else. I mean I’m heading out of town to direct a show in November, so we’re going to be hiring some part-time staff to help run the shop. Right now Katey and I are happily kind of just trading shifts, and actually it’s really quite lovely. We’re meeting all sorts of people – chocolate lovers and foodies that come in are really excited about this new, premium, high-end chocolate that’s available now.
What does success look like to you?
I think success, really for us in this business, is that people understand chocolate better. That’s what’s been our joy in getting to know this product is that people start to understand that that candy bar that they get off the shelves at the grocery store, as yummy as it is – I love a good Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup as much as the next guy - but it’s not really chocolate. The chocolate that they do use is mass produced cocoa usually from West Africa where the cocoa farmers are treated terribly, they’re getting paid slave wages, basically less than $1 a day to harvest their product and that’s not cool. We were just reading a blog of (one of makers) the other day, and he was saying: ‘The question isn’t why is this chocolate so expensive? The question is why is that other chocolate so cheap?’ In the craft chocolate industry, what you pay for the bars you get this amazing, amazing delectable treat and you also get the satisfaction in knowing that it’s good for the planet.
What’s your future plans for Origins?
We’re here for at least a year. We’ve signed a one-year lease for the spot we’re in, and all going well we’ll continue on well past that. … We’d just love to have more bars, we’d love to get into some of our own chocolate tasting parties and special events so that people can come and enjoy and get to know our products as well as we’ve gotten to know it over the years.
Origins Chocolate Bar is located under the escalator at River Market, 810 Quayside Dr. It’s open Monday to Friday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and on weekends until October from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.
