Willy Wonka inspired generations of kids to dream of owning a chocolate factory when they grew up—but Sara Miller and Mary and Michael Ervin have achieved it in real life. Ethereal Confections isn’t a factory on the scale of Wonka’s, and there’s no chocolate river. But they do make their own chocolate from cocoa beans, which they turn into truffles, peanut butter cups, and bars in flavors like pistachio-cranberry or strawberry with rose petal and pink peppercorn.
In the new space, the owners are hoping to be able to upgrade some of their equipment for making chocolate. Rather than buying chocolate from another company to turn into confections and bars, they make their own chocolate from cocoa beans—which was still a rarity among small producers when Ethereal started doing it five years ago. According to Michael, it was one of the first 20 or 30 companies in the U.S. to do bean-to-bar chocolate (there are now about 180 across the U.S. and Canada). Mary had worked at a chocolate shop in college, and says her boss there told her making chocolate from cocoa beans wasn’t something small companies could do. “He told me you needed a big factory with a lot of equipment,” she says. But on a trip to Madison not long after they launched their business, Sara and Mary talked to a chocolate shop owner who said she was about to try making her own chocolate from beans. “As soon as I knew that was a thing you could do, I wanted to do it,” Mary says.
