Brief Overview
A chocolate lollipop business doesn't really require much explanation. However, to be thorough, I will give a brief overview of the idea.
Chocolate lollipops are similar in size and shape to lollipops made of boiled sugar, except they're made of white, milk or dark chocolate. Chocolate pops are used for gift giving, wedding favors, special occassions, birthday parties and can even be used to decorate cakes. Because they're easy and fairly inexpensive to make, starting a chocolate lollipop business can be a fun way to earn a living. To ensure your home-based chocolate lollipop business is successful, there are several things you can do.
Getting Started
Because your chocolate lollipop business is food related, it's goverend by several governemental agencies and restrictions. However, don't let that deter you. You can apply (where necessary) for licensing and approval, or find alternative facilities.
1. Contact your state's department of health to be sure it is legal to produce food for sale in your home. Most states and provinces don't allow this, so you may end up having to rent a commercial kitchen. Even so, you can still run your business from home; you just can't make the chocolate lollipops there.
2. Purchase wholesale chocolate, sticks, molds, sprinkles, decorations and packaging from a supplier such as Candy Plus or Sugar Craft. Buying wholesale will enable you to make greater profits.
3. Offer customers innovative flavors of chocolate lollipops by mixing in concentrated flavoring, from a brand such as LorAnn, with your melted chocolate. Flavor combinations you can offer include dark chocolate and orange, milk chocolate and strawberry, white chocolate and coconut, dark chocolate and raspberry and milk chocolate with coffee flavoring. Just to name a few.
4. Secure local venues to sell your chocolate lollipops, such as farmers' markets, a mall kiosk, city fairs and festivals, flea markets or craft fairs. If you're selling online, set up an ecommerce site such as Foodzie or Etsy, or start your own chocolate lollipop blog.
5. Ship internet purchases with cold packs, via two-day or overnight delivery. Chocolate lollipops can easily melt any time of year, but especially in the warmer months.
6. Consider offering seasonal lollipops in shapes that coordinate with specific holidays, such as Valentine's Day, Easter, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah and Christmas.
7. Develop different types of products aside from the standard chocolate lollipop to bring in extra revenue year-round, such as chocolate lollipop bouquets, miniature wedding-favor lollipops and gluten-free chocolate pops.
How To Make Your Chocolate
Most of the time when people think about making homemade chocolate they think about someone working in the kitchen and making some chocolate that is tasty, but not really the kind of high end chocolate that you find in a gourmet store somewhere. But you can make gourmet chocolate yourself, and it doesn’t have to cost a fortune.
The ingredients make the chocolate. Whenever you're baking or cooking, the quality of the ingredients that you use really makes a difference. If you bake cookies with butter instead of margarine you can taste the difference. If you use real vanilla extract instead of imitation vanilla you'll taste the difference. The same principle applies when you’re chocolate. Using only high quality ingredients is a must if you want to make the kind of chocolate that'll keep your customers coming back for more time and time again.
If you want to make gourmet chocolate but you don’t want to go to the extreme of ordering cacao beans, roasting them, grinding them, and going through the entire traditional candy making process you can buy 'melt and pour' style chocolate bases that are made from higher-end ingredients than most of the 'melt and pour' style chocolate, but you will need to get those from a specialty candy store not the local craft and hobby store.
Online there are several retailers that specialize in selling high-end gourmet chocolate making materials to homemade chocolate makers. An online search should turn up a few shops that you can order high quality 'melt and pour' style chocolate from. Another ingredient that is really important when you’re making your chocolate is the add-ins that you’re putting in your chocolate.
The trick to saving money on your add-ins is to hit up your local farmer’s market or grocery co-op to get the best organic ingredients at decent prices. You can buy organic nuts, make your own peanut butter blends, get special organic and luxury syrups and sugars and oils and fresh herbs like lavender and rosehips to add into your chocolate.
When you’re making gourmet (high quality) chocolate you can also add in different kinds of high-end alcohol to some of your chocolate to give it a great exotic taste. For example you could pair a high quality dark chocolate base with some raspberry flavored vodka and a few dried raspberries to make a wonderfully dark and sweet homemade chocolate. Or you could add some high end cognac to a lollipop for a wedding that you would use to dip fruit into.
Painting Chocolate Lollipops
To add an extra special artistic touch to your lollipops, try your hand at painting the chocolate. You can "paint" lollipops with colored melted chocolate and an artist's paint brush. Make sure the paint brush is cleaned and has never been used with real paint before. Wait until the chocolate lollipops are completely hardened before painting.
What You'll Need To Paint Lollipops
- White chocolate lollipop melts
- Oil-based chocolate tints
- Glass bowl
- Double boiler
- Small artist's brush
2. Pour the melted chocolate into a glass bowl.
3. Add drops of an oil-based candy colorant that can be used to color chocolate. Follow the instructions on the bottle to see how many drops to add.
4. Mix the chocolate and color together.
5. Paint the lollipop with the chocolate paint using a small artist's paint brush.
6. Follow the designs already on the chocolate from the lollipop mold or freestyle your own design.
Tips & Warnings:
Do not use regular liquid food coloring to color chocolate.
Homemade Lollipop Molds
Lollipop molds purchased from stores often consist of a plastic or metal tray with several cavities to shape melted candy into lollipops and include recesses to insert lollipop sticks. These molds are difficult to make at home but you can make old-fashioned lollipop collar molds using aluminum ribbon purchased from a home improvement store. Collar molds are best used to make hard candy lollipops rather than chocolate lollipops.
What You'll Need To Make Molds
- Paper
- Pencil
- Wood
- Hammer
- Finishing nails
- Lollipop stick
- 1-inch aluminum ribbon
- Pliers
- Leather gloves
2. Tape the pattern to a scrap piece of wood.
3. Mark dots at 1/4-inch intervals along the perimeter of the pattern alternating between placing a dot just inside the outline and the next dot just outside of the outline.
4. Hammer finishing nails into the dots. This will form a frame for your lollipop mold.
5. Place a lollipop stick at the bottom of the pattern with the top of the stick extending into the pattern area. This will mark the place where the stick will be inserted into your lollipops.
6. Weave 1-inch wide aluminum ribbon back and forth through the finishing nails, following the line on the pattern.
7. Bend the ends of the aluminum ribbon with pliers at the bottom of the pattern so that the ribbon extends approximately 1 inch down the length of the lollipop stick.
8. Remove the stick and gently lift the homemade lollipop mold up and off of the finishing nails. The mold is now ready to use.
Tips & Warnings:
Place the mold on a baking sheet or silicone sheet and pour the liquid candy from a lollipop recipe into the center of the mold (see Resources). Insert a lollipop stick and allow the candy to cool before you gently lift the mold off of the lollipop.
Rub a little vegetable oil onto the inside of the mold to prevent it from sticking to the candy.
Wear leather gloves while working with the aluminum ribbon because the cut ends of the ribbon may be sharp.
Wrapping Things Up
After spending so much time creating your chocolate lollipops, you'll have to package them. Here's where you can exercise your creativity as well. Visit your local craft supply store and check out all the different kinds of papers, plastics, ribbons, decorations, and who knows what else, you can use to wrap your lollipops in. You could buy paper doilies to make wrappers for wedding lollipops, or perhaps you might find plastic twist ties with little animals on them that you could use to wrap lollipops destined for a child's birthday. The point is, once you start looking around, you never know what kind of great ideas you come up with.
Have fun with your chocolate lollipop business, and best of luck.
Until tomorrow,
Terry
