On the Road with Chef Dennis - Peterbrooke Chocolatier

Hi everyone, I'm Chef Dennis and we're On the Road with Chef Dennis and we're in Winter Park, which is not that far from me in Florida, and it's a beautiful area if you've never been here. And what makes this area even more special is it has Peter Brook Chocolatier. So here's Kevin. How you doing? Very nice to have you here today.

See you again.

Yeah, very good to see you again. And this is like chocolate heaven.

Absolutely is.

It's just an amazing store. You have some great employees. Everyone's enthusiastic and friendly, and the chocolates around here are just to die for. I keep looking at different things going, and your gelato.

Oh my God, absolutely.

You know, so if you can't find something to eat in here and you leave unsatisfied, if you let your sugar high go unattained and you don't have your blood nice and flowing with the sugar in it, you know, it's your own problem. It's your fault. You know, you can really feast in here and you get a lot of nice stuff to take home. I was looking behind me, we had the rabbits for Easter. And then if you see this, it's a chocolate wheel. That is chocolate just turning. You've heard like Big Wheels keep on turning. Well, this ain't Tina Turner doing it, but it's a chocolate wheel for sure. And we have a light milk chocolate one over here as well. So there's chocolate turning everywhere we look. But you know, this is kind of an interesting store. And how did you get started? How did you decide that you wanted to be a chocolatier?

You know, it is a great story. My wife and I were with, uh, Darden Restaurants for years, like 27 years between us, and we decided when we got married we wanted to try something different. So we actually moved to Costa Rica for about 14 months. We thought about opening a business out there, and while we loved it, we just didn't find what we were looking for to start a business and started to miss some of the creature comforts from home and of course family. So we decided to come back. We came back in 2008. Everybody knows the job markets in 2008 were really tight. It was, it was tough out there, and we didn't want to give up and kind of go back to corporate life. So we're looking around and kind of searching out some friends to see what they might know is going on. I got invited to an interview in Jacksonville, and I didn't even know what for. And the day before the interview, he's like, oh, I look forward to meeting you and your wife. My wife Jamie was just like, why do I have to go to your job interview? I don't want to go to this. I didn't blame her, but I was like, I don't know, I don't know what I'm interviewing for. We have no idea what this is, but come on down. So we ended up going down, and the gentleman wanted to get us involved in a burger restaurant franchise. It's just not what we wanted do at all. We weren't interested. Um, but then he's like, well, you know, I'm just starting to get involved with a company called Peter Brook. And Jamie knew Jacksonville and absolutely loved the branch, the chocolate, what they did. I had heard about it in his car, from one of those stores, which are the chocolate-covered Pop Oreos, all the different great things that they did. And it was just like, wow, this is fantastic. Uh, turns out the founder, Phyllis, who named it after her daughter and son of Peter Brook, and vice versa, was getting ready to retire, and this was her last store. I talked to her and her husband about it, and we negotiated for almost 6 months to really get everything kind of start to finish, and we were able to take home— take over one of their flagship stores here in beautiful Winter Park. It's been almost 6 years now, and we've just loved every day of it. It's been fantastic.

How long has this store been here?

This store's been here since 2001.

Okay, so it's been here for a while, but you've had it for, for almost half of that time? Yeah, close to it.

Yeah. About 6 years now.

Did you want to be a chocolatier?

You know, uh, I'm flexible. I love chocolate, I love candies, uh, it's, it's a great environment. You know, we come from a food background, so it's kind of mixing food and retail, and, and we can just spend a lot of time with great people, right? You know, be it our crew, be it our guests, that's what we really enjoy the most. And, you know, people come into a chocolate shop, they're happy when they come in. It's cool, it smells like chocolate. When they leave, they're leaving with chocolates. It's just a happy environment. You know, you don't deal with some of the same kind of rough things you can deal with in a restaurant environment from time to time.

So yeah, how could it not be happy? I mean, if you're not happy in here, there's something— there's really something wrong. Or you're like me who started a diet foolishly days before I came here to do this show. So I want everybody to know I'm suffering right along with you against all these wonderful chocolates. Let me pull up a few comments real quick from some of our viewers. And Ray Miller's in the house. How you doing, Ray? Good to have you here. Candy Javier Sakai is coming to us from Tokyo. Hi!

I like the first name there, Candy.

Yeah, isn't that— that fits right in. Dave Pipe is coming to us from Sussex, England, and he said, he said it was, um, Algero's birthday today, so he's just taking five. So we have, we have some people, they're leaving. Elena Bellamonte is coming. She's an Italian who lives in England. She's saying hi. Bruno is here. So we have a bunch of people. Carmen from Spain, how you doing, Carmen? And Anne Brock says, chocolate, healthy, good for me, right? Absolutely, it's got to be good for you. So thanks for being here today. If you have any questions of our chocolatier, please feel free to leave them in the comments section and we will do our best to answer them. And we're going to go through some things here. We're going to talk about, we're going to do some demos. Demo a couple items, and we're going to talk about, you know, what it takes to be— tell us a little bit about how you start with— how do you start your chocolate process? Like, do you temper it? What do you do? How do you get it?

Absolutely. We have the chocolate, you know, made for us by our specifications, and it's our own proprietary blend. We bring that in and we use our, our tempering wheels here. This just basically keeps the chocolate at a constant temperature and keeps it stirring throughout the day. And the way we temper with these is by seeding. So you take bits of tempered chocolate, you're throwing it in this all day long, and it's replicating that crystal pattern. There's actually 7 crystal patterns that cocoa butter can form into depending on how you heat and cool and manipulate it. There's only one that actually works well. So you want a nice shiny chocolate, you want a nice snap to it when you break it, and you want to set up firm. That's the right crystal structure. If you ever get chocolate that's kind of like a little cloudy, it's just not very shiny, or it's kind of mushy Those are those different crystal patterns that you want to make sure you avoid. Granular, granular. Absolutely. The sugar's not really incorporating well. You have a sugar bloom or a fat bloom where it's just destabilizing that crystal structure, kind of falls apart.

So how do you know?

You know, it's as much of an art as it is a science. We set these up, you know, we go through a set kind of temperature range throughout the day. We're adding seeded chocolate through it all the time, but you can just kind of look at it. You can tell by the shine of it You can tell by the temperature of it. You know, when you— chocolatiers, you'll see them dribble chocolate on their arm to check if it's ready. It should be slightly cool to the touch because it's really just below skin temperature is in the right, the right range. So our standard dark chocolate is a 65% cacao. We have a fantastic milk chocolate, incredible milk chocolate recipe. We keep those wheels going all the time. But we have a 72% dark chocolate, so a bittersweet versus a semi-sweet, and we hand temper that. And that's the The same process as this, but we're doing it on a marble surface with paddles. We're moving it around, we're cooling it down to the right temperature. We're going to demonstrate that here with Cade.

That sounds really complicated and like you really need to know what you're doing for that.

You do, you do, because you can dip and dunk and mold a whole bunch of different things and have them all go bad. And they'll still taste good, but the texture will be a little different, it won't look right, and that's how we end up with imperfect indulgences, which luckily we don't have many of, which is a great thing.

That is good. You know, that's the one thing, that's the lucky side of it. Like, I do some chocolate things, but I don't do them really well. Okay. But the good thing is they will still taste pretty good. They may not be as pretty as they came out of the store, but they still eat pretty good. Once it's in your mouth, it's just the chocolate takes over. But, you know, it's interesting too, since you said about the different structures, that's something I had no idea of, never being trained in this area at all.

You know, it's a complex, simple thing. It's really kind of the way it comes down to, and it's just The art of it, you really just get a feel for it. You can kind of look at it and say, I'll work with it, and you'll know if it's going to work right for you.

Is that the temperature on it, 89, or no?

Yeah, that is. Yeah, that's the set point, the actual point.

Wow.

You know, we start in the morning with the virgin chocolate, which is 115 degrees, and that's where all those crystal structures are just blown apart. And then we bring that down to a lower temperature and then bring it back up to the 88, 89, 90, depending on the day. You know, how it's— how much humidity there is in the air, how cool it is back here, can all affect it. So we'll adjust it a little bit here and there throughout the day, but for the most part we can work with a pretty set temperature ranges.

Does the weather make it very temperamental?

Absolutely. When it's really humid outside, that makes a big difference. We have 2 dehumidifiers here in the store as well as the air conditioning system, but when it's, you know, 95 degrees and 98% humidity, the chocolate will start to gum up. It won't want to flow very well. You gotta turn the temperature up, kind of keep stirring it. You really have to work with it to get it to play nice. It can be a little temperamental.

So August must not be a good month for you.

It's difficult, but you know, we're experts, we can do it.

Well, you know, it is— once you work through it a few times and you understand what you need to work with, it's like anything else, you get over those humps. That might make some sense. Someone else's home crying.

Yeah, first couple years you start to run into some of these, like, what's going on? This one always works this way, and now all of a sudden nothing's changed that I can see. And it's just completely different. You've got to kind of work through those, and you learn through time. You get great advice from, you know, the chocolatiers, and, you know, we've worked through all those things, and it's been great for us.

Do you ever take this out on the road?

Yeah, we don't take the wheels necessarily out on the road, but we'll take the chocolate out and hand temper it. We definitely do different demos and shows. We've got some little news shows and things like that, and we can do chocolate fountains and big chocolate strawberry trees that we do. So we can do kind of a full-service catering. Uh, just about wherever we go.

So you offer a pretty good service then. Besides the store, you can do catering. Who wouldn't want a chocolate fountain? Or someone building a chocolate—

I hate to say there's certain buffet brands that have introduced the chocolate— oh, I know, quote, chocolate waterfall, which, you know, it's pretty and the idea is great, but it's not chocolate. It's, it's mixed with oils. It's something very different. Yeah. And the beauty of our fun is it's in with the same chocolate that we use in the store. We'll add a little cocoa butter, but it's— it flows real chocolate throughout.

But you got to understand, chocolate's not cheap. And if they're giving this stuff away on these pounds at these buffets, guess what? It's just like you think you're getting real ice cream out of that machine, you know, it's not. You know, you're getting what you paid for. And if you want something really good, you know, maybe that's fine for you some of the time, but when it's time to get something really good, you have to come to someone that knows their business.

Absolutely.

Very cool. So what are we going to do to demo?

We are going to bring Kay in over here, and she's got a tray of these pots set up here with some different items we're going to do. We're going to do our Nutty Bark, which is kind of, I think, one of our, our best items. It's a mixture of pistachios, pecans, and almonds, okay, with milk or dark chocolate and a little bit of sea salt sprinkled on top. You know, salt on chocolate acts just like anything else, it enhances the flavor if you do it in the right amount. So that really kind of kicks it up a notch. We're gonna do that with our 72% chocolate. So we're going to roll a little temple down here, she's going to show us how to hand temper that, we're going to mix up a tray, and that's where we're going to start today.

And then we're going to do a couple more kid-friendly things for Easter. Very good. So I, you know, I'm going to get out of your way so you can do that. I'm gonna slide over here.

Okay, this way then. So this is that, that chocolate we got at 115 degrees. So we're starting in that virgin state. We're going to be moving around our marble And the idea is to cool it, you know, in a good amount of time. Uh, so she's going to be working it around, she's going to move it from warmer spots of the marble to cooler, keep folding it over until it gets down to the temperature that she needs to work with it correctly. And the temperature for that is again right around the 88 to 89, 90 mark. It depends a little bit on each type of chocolate that you're using. Uh, typically the higher the cacao, a little bit warmer temperature to work with, but Either way, it's still kind of cool to touch once it hits your wrist.

So this would never really be a cold surface? No, but marble stays generally pretty cool, like room temperature, and then it stays cooler than normal because it's marble.

Absolutely. You can temper on, like I say, a still surface as well, but it absorbs so much of that heat from the chocolate that you can kind of do one spot for a little while and then it's really not going to work for you. This is where the really kind of the fun part comes in, motion with the chocolate. It's fun to do and it's kind of mesmerizing to watch.

Wow, it is hypnotic.

She'll spread it out, she's gonna kind of evenly cool, and then she's gonna do some pretty fancy maneuvers here with the bells. That's working the chocolate around the table and pulling it all evenly. So properly tempered chocolate, it's kind time, temperature, and agitation. So this is the temperature control. The agitation, pushing it in with our hands, keeping it nice and stirred and properly blended. And then time is just what it takes.

You can't rush perfection.

You can't.

Now let me ask you a question. Do you ever get the urge to just rub that all over your body?

No, because it would probably come out of my paycheck.

We have a lot of people ask if they can stick their head in the chocolate wheels, and the answer is if you You want to buy the 40 pounds of chocolate that are old, you can do that. We'll sell you that 40 pounds of chocolate and let you do what you like, and then we'll clean it up and start over from there. Start from scratch.

One of these days you'll get a tanker.

You know, one of these days we will. We get some pretty unique requests. We've, you know, we've had people want us— had a guy bet me I wouldn't dip his credit card in chocolate. And well, absolutely. You know, we have a food-grade plastic we can heat shrink onto just about anything. So we trunk his credit card in that food-grade plastic. We dipped it, bagged it up for him, and he just thought it was the funniest thing he's ever seen.

I hope you got him to pay for it before.

We did. Otherwise it'd be hard to slide. Yeah, but we got— you know, Jamie came up with a great idea to put money in a chocolate bar. She saw it somewhere, and we actually opened a $100 bill inside of a Happy Birthday bar. Oh wow, that is a fantastic gift.

And he is still up first.

Yeah, it's all sealed up. I mean, money's dirty, so Yeah, we make sure it's nice and sanitary and something you're gonna be able to enjoy the chocolate once you're done.

Oh my God, it's a great idea. There she goes.

A little bit more.

Did you go home and your boyfriend goes, honey, that your perfume smells great?

It's the chocolate.

I have been told that I do smell like chocolate when I go.

I guess so. Just got to get in your pores. But you know, there's a lot of worse things you could smell like. Chocolate is a pretty darn good Absolutely.

Dogs go crazy when we come home. Dogs love chocolate. They love the smell.

I think that's pretty much universal. Everybody loves the smell of chocolate. It's just, it's one of those smells that just gets you every time. You know it as soon as you smell it.

You want to feel it?

Sure.

Can't eat it, I might as well feel it. Wow, Chef Dennis was just chocolate dipped.

So it's not—

I would have expected it to have been hotter.

Exactly. You want it just where it's just cool to the touch. Yeah, not cold, but just a little bit cool. That takes care of that.

So that's just the cooling process then? Certainly.

It's going back into where it came from, goes back in there to work with it, makes it easier to dip and mold and all the fun things that we do.

What is the the worst accident you've had with chocolate? I mean, not someone got hurt, but just funny.

You know, we haven't had a terrible one. I think we probably had close to a bin get dumped kind of on the floor one time, and that— it just made me cry. So yeah, there wasn't much more to it than that. Luckily, these guys are really good with, you know, taking care of this expensive commodity.

I, I had a server drop a chocolate dispenser one time, and it was in a very short area, and it exploded upwards, and she was just dripping. Of course, it wasn't good chocolate, it's probably Hershey's, but, you know, she was covered in chocolate.

You know, we did do a chocolate fountain outside one time, and we warned the people, and they were friends of ours, like, look, outside, you get a gust of— it doesn't take much wind, it's gonna blow all over the place. Like, no, no, it's fine. We insist, we want to do this. So, you know, of course we wanted to work with them and they were clearly warned. And sure enough, a breeze came up and it just started blowing chocolate off to the side. You know, quickly had to kind of recover, put up a windbreak and make sure nothing was going to get splattered. But they took it in stride. It was fun. It was fun for them. You know, it was just an adventure for the day.

You know, that's how you have to look at things. If something bad happens, you know, it's not the end of the world. As long as no one dies, it's not a bad day.

Yeah, I'm a firm believer in that. If it don't be nice, we can fix it. Remember that, it can be fixed, whatever it is. So you can just enjoy it.

We are having some really wonderful experiences here with this chocolate. Let's see if we got any more. Everyone's just enjoying it. Jerry Murphy is here. What is the shelf life for chocolate, retaining its taste and freshness?

You know, solid chocolate is good for about a year. It really is. It's the natural enzymes in it are natural preservatives. So chocolate itself, it's moisture and heat that's going to cause any problems. Once it's melted, you know, that's— we melt it down and we temper it. Once it's tempered, it's still good for that year.

So you can just keep repeating the process. Is there a point that you've been melting it that you have to say it's done?

You know, I'm sure there is, but we just—

we use so much of it.

Chocolate bar from us, take it home, a year later it still should taste fresh and great. You know, luckily, like I said, we keep busy, so everything we're making is, is really fresh.

Very cool. There's any other questions here? When she's done, will they share? Right, not sharing is not nice. Sorry, Ray.

We're gonna try to work on that virtual chocolate experience for your online.

You know, if we could work on the smell, you guys would really be suffering. Someone mentioned pistachio. I need a bigger bib. All right, there you go. Thanks, Tate. So you ready?

We got our mise en place over here, and she can kind of just slide right over there. Very good.

Sure. All right, so can you turn that camera just a little bit?

Just turn the whole tripod. Take the whole tripod. A little bit more, a little bit more.

Right there, perfect.

All right, thank you.

Okay, so for our nutty bark, we do about an ounce or, uh, yeah, an ounce of each one, each nut. So we have pistachio, almonds, and, uh, pecans, and then we put them all in here and then we'll cover it with chocolate and then sprinkle the sea salt on the top. So, um, I went ahead and pre-weighed them out so that you got your even amount of I can see where this is going.

It's going to be good just thinking about it.

Yeah, you know, and that's, that's been so much the fun is, you know, being able to be creative. There's so many different things that you can do with chocolate and not just, you know, you can decorate, you can make fun recipes. You know, Jamie's been you know, our main inspiration here in the store. She, she's created so many of the kind of new menu items, quote unquote, if you will, for what we do here. And we got a real following for, for things like the Nutty Bark and our sea salt bars, sea salt caramels. And then of course, we'll have to show a picture of Jamie's shoe at the end. That's a—

is that her shoe?

Molded shoe. Oh, that was her creation, and she's just taking it to the next level. We've got a—

I've seen that on Instagram and seen pictures of it. You did really well with Now let me ask you a question. Why didn't you just pour something? Why did you just kind of spoon it in?

Because if I poured some in there, sometimes it's too heavy for me to do, and then I'll just dump everywhere. Gotcha. So I just kind of used the spatula so I couldn't get it on everything.

I didn't know if there was a technical reason for that.

Portion control. Yeah, kind of make sure it doesn't get out of hand.

Okay.

Yep.

And then you just kind of sprinkle.

Now is that one bar?

That's one One. Yeah, that's usually— it's about a half pound that we do, and we break that up into pieces and sell them in a foil pouch.

Okay.

Yeah, normally in the store we have a 65% dark chocolate, or we have a milk chocolate version, and we can always make the 72% as well.

So yeah, this one is the 72%, which is actually lactose-free, um, whereas the other ones do have milk in it, but this one does not have milk in it.

So it's a vegan option as well.

Wow.

How do you have it again? Do people come in and ask about the vegan?

Absolutely, a lot of people. I mean, you know, lifestyles are changing and people are much more concerned about what they're eating. So there's a lot of requests for gluten-free, you know, we have, most of our items are gluten-friendly. Right. You know, it's chocolate by recipe is a gluten-free item. You know, we dip and dunk different things in it, we can separate it out and work with it. So we have, you know, probably half the items in the store are gluten-friendly or more. And anything we make, just about in our 72% chocolate vegan as well. So we have a lot of options there.

Have you ever had any problems with people saying, well, yeah, it's back there with the other stuff?

Or—

well, you know, you have some people with like a celiac condition and they know what they're able to and to have and not have. And that's when we can take it and we can separate some chocolate out. If it's milk or dark or the 72%, we can hand temper it separately for them, do everything we can to minimize any kind of cross-contamination. The same thing with allergies, you know, we want to make sure that if someone has a concern, we address it the best we can. We can. And I think the biggest thing is we're just completely upfront and honest about what happens with the chocolate. So there's— we're not going to risk anybody's health. They know what it is and they can determine if it's, you know, good for them. And, uh, you know, we're able to make a lot of people happy. We've had kids who can't have milk who had their first Easter Bunny through Peterborough, you know, because we have a dairy-free option and it's, it's a big deal.

Now what makes it dairy-free? Is it just because the milk solids aren't put in it, or— Absolutely.

You know, even a dark chocolate, like a semi-sweet, has a small amount of milk solids in it just to kind of add some creaminess to it. That goes from a semi-sweet now to a bittersweet, and we just don't have that in there. And it still stays nice and creamy, you know, it's a little bit crispier, a little firmer to the mouthfeel, but it's not overpowering. It's not that, you know, bitter, bitter chocolate. There's still a little sweetness to it. It's just a really well-balanced flavor. Very good. Okay, so that's our famous Nutty Bark.

I can see why.

A couple of kind of fun kids items, you know, Easter's coming up and that is, it's still a kids holiday. Sure, get back in the shop.

Yeah, see you when we're talking.

So we have something really fun we do for the kids and for the kids at heart. We've got a fantastic Pop Rock egg, which is just a lot of fun. You know, you put Pop Rocks in chocolate, you think it would just immediately all pop out and be done, but chocolate's kind of in between a liquid and a solid once it's melted, so it maintains enough of it in there that when you bite it, you get a little bit of that crunchy mouthfeel and you start to get a little pop in your mouth as you're eating it. Oh my God, it's just a fun item the kids love.

I guess so.

Yeah, so she's gonna go ahead and show us how to make that one.

Okay, so, um, I have my Pop Rocks that I put in a bowl. Bowl over here, um, and you're just gonna kind of take like a half teaspoon and put it into each mold. And we have like pre-molded out, um, eggs, um, that we kind of have. And then we're just gonna measure out for each egg and just go ahead and put it in there. And then, um, and then I'm going to fill each egg with the chocolate. It as soon as I'm done with this.

Guys, you use different flavor Pop Rocks or is there just one Pop Rock? It's been so long.

No, there's, there's a million flavors of Pop Rocks these days. These are cherry. I'm sorry, duty calls.

I understand, business is business.

These are cherry. So, um, right now we, I believe, just have cherry, but, um, we may— if someone wants another flavor, they're more than welcome to bring it in. Um, we always say that to our guests, like, if we don't have something in the store that they really like in chocolate, then they're more than welcome to bring it in and we'll weigh it before we dip it and then weigh it afterwards and just charge them for the chocolate. And so, like, if they wanted a different flavor for Pop Rocks, um, we're more than happy to do that for them. And so they're more than welcome to bring in— I don't know what flavors they have. I think there's like an apple one and, um, all of that stuff.

That's really a cool concept though.

So you could definitely bring it in and we'll make it for you.

Now, who else would, would have you bring something and let them dip it for you? So think about that if you're in the area and you have something you'd like specially dipped in chocolate. Now you know where to bring it.

Yeah, we, um, we have a guest that will bring in, um, Big Newtons a lot, and, or another one bring in gummy bears and we'll dip it— dip those in our, in our chocolate for them all the time too. It's a lot of fun, I guess.

So, and also people who are looking for, you know, different dietary restricted items, sugar-free Oreos that we can make with our sugar-free chocolate, you know, that's great, you know, different items. They want goji berries, you know, we've got a lot of license here to really be creative and just make whatever the guests would like.

That's really cool. You never hear of many people doing that anymore, just really catering to guests. So that's, that's exceptional in this day and age.

It really is. And I think that's been part of our success is, you know, we've taken this— we come from a restaurant background. That's good. You guys want something, you make it for us. That's just our mentality. So we've got a kitchen back here. It's a full kitchen. We can do whatever we want, you know, and, uh, any requests that people have within a, you know, a realm of reason. Yeah, we're happy to do it. It's, you know, I think it's been a key to our success. It's just making people happy.

Absolutely. Now you said you chocolate dipped a credit card. One time, just because someone dared me to, I franchised a cassette. Nobody ate it, but they just wanted to see if it could be done. If it could be done.

Yeah, I had somebody bring in a, you know, we have a chocolate cigar, which is just molded chocolate cigar. We had somebody bringing a real cigar they just bought down the street and they wanted us to dip that in chocolate. So, you know, we separated up all the chocolate, we dipped it in chocolate form and gave it back. But I honestly don't know what they did with it after. You couldn't eat it, you couldn't smoke it, so I don't know what you do with it. They were thrilled. So hey, if they were happy, that's what matters.

That's what matters.

It was a job well done then.

Absolutely.

Gotta love it.

So what I just did was I just poured, um, milk chocolate in with the, the, um, Pop Rocks that I poured into the mold. And now I am mixing the Pop Rocks into the chocolate that I just poured into it. So now you'll have—

so now it'll be all throughout, all throughout instead of just on the top. Now, who came up with this?

You know, that was, I think, one of Phyllis's original recipes back in the day. She was a, you know, really a great founder for the company. She was creative, she was very quality-minded. You know, she had a different take on kind of what chocolate could and should be. And we're very much, you know, the neighborhood chocolates here.

Yeah, you know, we're right here.

You want something, great, we'll make it for you, you know. And that's been, you know, another key to success. But it sounds simple, but it really matters, you know.

It is, it's, it's a simple concept to actually work with people, give them what they want. And you would think more businesses would understand that, but unfortunately a lot of business Businesses don't. That's why a lot of businesses fail.

Yeah, I mean, that's the truth.

Yeah, you wouldn't be in this business this long. And I mean, one time I was coming here, I couldn't even get in the store, it was so crowded. I sat down outside, and there are seats outside, you can sit down, seats on the side. It's a beautiful little store, it really is. Is this building—

yeah, it's a 1917. Okay, it started off as a service station, I think, in 1917. Then it was a bank for a long time, and then it was the East India Trading Company, which was a two-story clothing store. Yeah. Uh, and so going back to the bank days, you know, before they divided in these offices above us now and our chocolate shop below, there's still a vault in the back. So our storeroom actually has like the day vault doors on it. It's about half-inch thick steel and plate steel on the ceiling, the walls.

Oh my God.

So if there's a hurricane or there's a tornado come on in We'll put you in the store.

There you go.

Yeah, eat some chocolate. You know, you're sick.

That's all you need, chocolate and a safe place to weather out the storm. Absolutely. Winter Park is, is beautiful. I mean, we were sent here when we first moved here and just fell in love with it right away. So yeah, we've got a lot of nice shops and we fit right into the community.

You know, it is a really unique area. It's just fun. You get a lot of great mix of locals and tourists and just everybody. You know, you can be a tourist from Orlando, we're not far, you know, we're a bordering city. Um, and it's just a unique little fun area and people find it and just absolutely love it. Now with the SunRail, you know, we're the main stop right here. This is— we've been told the best stop on the line just to stop for the day and find something to do. There's a beautiful park, there's great restaurants, there's—

you know, have a farmer's market on—

fantastic farmer's market. 7:00 AM.

Yeah, so there's a lot of reasons to come to Winter Park. And then when you're here, hop on over to Peterbrook and get some chocolate and take home too.

You can have a party here.

You can have a party here. Oh, I saw the pictures right here.

Yeah, we do chocolate parties. You get to come back here and dip and dunk and decorate different items. We do chocolate classes on Friday nights, and we've got a variety. Tomorrow night it's going to be, uh, make your own chocolate bars, and we've got all sorts of fun ingredients from chia seeds to dried mango and pineapple. Dennis Littley, uh, to Oreos and potato chips and stuff that you can make your own bars, make your own chocolate-covered popcorn with different toppings.

Now, how do you sign up for that?

Is that—

is it a cost to it? Are you signing up?

It's, uh, for the chocolate classes, it's typically $25 a person or $50 a couple.

It's a nice evening out.

I mean, really, it really is. It starts at 7 o'clock. They go an hour and 15, hour and a half, depending on what the class is. Just call ahead. We limit it to 10 people to make sure that we give everybody the attention that they need. You know, I'm not kind of lost in the shuffle, and it's a really fun time.

And everybody goes home with some chocolate.

Yes, you take home what you make, so you don't just have the experience, you get to go home and continue it, which is great. It's a date night, dip some strawberries and take your chocolate pizza, take it home and have some wine.

So excellent, excellent.

Well, there's—

what better could you do? All right, now we have our chocolate eggs with our Pop Rocks in them.

Okay, and then she's going to show you our favorite little floppy-eared bunny. This is just the cutest little Easter bunny out there. Um, she's gonna show you how we mold each one of those individually. I'll bring one over to show the camera when it's finished.

So, um, what we do is we'll take the actual mold— it comes in two pieces and we have to clip it together, so that's what these shiny little metal things on the side are. Um, and then we will actually just pour the chocolate into it, and we pour it over a shaker table. We have this, uh, the kind of flat table you can see behind me over here, um, that we turn on while we pour, and it just kind of just shakes it while we're pouring to help get the bubbles out. Um, because if there's a bubble in the chocolate, then, um, then it leaves a hole. So, um, so we want to shake it out so that there's not a hole, like, in his face. And we don't want a holy bunny. I mean, like a—

yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's an idea.

Bunnies with a pierced ear.

Yeah, you can hold it.

There you go.

So there we go. I'll hold this side a little closer to the camera. That's our floppy-eared bunny. There you go. Put it right— just the cutest guy. Lots of fun. I'll put it right in front of the ship.

There you go. That's it. I love it.

So, uh, I'm just gonna turn it on. It's right back here in the corner, and you kind of just pour it.

Oh, you weren't kidding about a good shaker. Yeah, I wouldn't want to have to do that all day long.

Yeah, we're gonna, you know, make almost 1,000 of those bunnies this year. You know, as soon as Valentine's was over, we were pouring bunnies that next day, just trying to get ready for Easter. So that's a different kind of shake, shake, shake, shake your bunny. Oh my God, that's a lot of bunnies to be born. It is, it's a lot. Did you make these? Uh, yeah, we have one of our crew is particularly good at decorating. She came in and made those. Everybody here's got skills and talents to do this type of thing, but she's just extra exceptional at it. So she's— she decorated all these bunnies ahead for us, and we'll still have quite a few of these guys too. And this is, you know, like the biggest master tree. Those are about 4 pounds.

Oh my God. Are they solid?

Uh, no, they're semi-solid. So they're, you know, about an inch thick, but like the ears are solid, most of the head's solid, a little hollow cavity in the center.

That's so cool.

There's our bunny, and we'll put him in the fridge and clean them up once he's done, and then you end up with our little happy guy here.

I love it.

Very cool.

Well, you've really showed us a lot today. I really appreciate your time. And why don't you come back over here and take your cigarette and, uh Peter Burke Chocolate, chocolatier. I keep saying chocolate, chocolatier, chocolatier in Winter Park, Florida. And you have, you have a website, I know that. Absolutely. And you, do you send stuff out or is it hard to ship chocolate?

Uh, we ship, we ship all year round. Um, our website is peterbrookwp, so Peter Burke Winter Park WP. Um, you know, we ship in-state is, is automatically next day, so it's only $10 for an average size package. Out of state You know, the winter months is around $20, summer months might be $30 because we have to ship it next day air, right? But we ice pack and insulate everything and we guarantee it, it's going to arrive looking good and not melted. So, you know, you've got a sense of security with that and we're careful how we ship.

Great. So if you want some chocolate for a special occasion, just, uh, go to the website and we'll put that in later. I think I may have it on the, the event itself so you can check it out. If not, I'll make sure I add it. But thank you so much for coming. Thank you for demonstrating your wonderful chocolate skills. And look at, you know, there's people back in the store. And yeah, this is what's great. I don't know if you saw it, but there were people coming to the window to watch. And people can come all day long and just watch them make things, either on the street window or in the store window, and just get the thrill. Almost makes you feel like a kid again watching them make chocolate, no matter how old you are.

We're cleaning nose prints off the glass all day long, so we're used to it.

It's all right.

Gotta love it. It's a great— it's a good life.

Well, thank you so much for viewing, and thank you for the great show today, and we'll see you on the road again pretty soon.

Bye guys, thank you.

Bye, thanks.