Meet Mark Burrows

Today we’d like to introduce you to Mark Burrows.

Hi mark, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
Way back in 2019, I had decided that after years of working at the same thing, I would try something different. I’ve always had a love for chocolate, but nothing I’d eaten had ever really satisfied. The mainstream commodity chocolate was not cutting it, they all had the same flavor. About ten years prior, I had discovered a chocolate maker in San Francisco that had an amazing variety of flavors and they were delicious. I could not get enough of them but they were hard to come by. I live in a small town in Western Colorado so there was certainly no access to them without going to the “big city” and figuring out where the stores were that sold such items. I also traveled a lot for my work and would spend my off time searching the city for chocolate shops and new makers.

Anyway, in 2019 I started to wonder if this was something I could do, make my own chocolate, I figured that it must take really large industrial machinery, which it does, at scale. But I am looking to make small amounts and fortunately, due to makers like Scharfenberger, Dandelion, Manoa and others, there was starting to be a small revolution in the chocolate making for the home. I was able to purchase a small roaster (designed for coffee) and a grinder from another small company called Chocolate Alchemy in Eugene Oregon. Through a ton of videos and searching the internet for every scrap of information I could find, I was able to make my first batch in mid-summer 2019.

After trying many different origins and experimenting with roasting and conching, I rested on a few flavors and started to produce for more than just my family and friends. I was preparing for the holiday season to see if this was a viable area for me to move into. I signed up for a few holiday events to sell at and did so well that I decided I would move into chocolate production full-time. I would give myself another year to raise the funds to buy the proper machinery and tools to make it on a grander scale and keep my quality high. 2020 had different plans however and come early 2020, the pandemic had all but shut down my audio/visual and photographic world. I decided to take the leap into chocolate making, figuring that people would eat it regardless of the world situation, and I was right. Plus I could work by myself to keep others safe. At this point, I started to get it out to stores as a wholesale product and had to move into a commercial kitchen.

I was able to build my little empire piece by piece to the point now where I have several people that help me make and show and distribute chocolate, and by the end of the summer of 2022, I will have a new and much larger chocolate making facility that will also be a dessert/cocktail bar specializing in chocolate-based desserts and cocktails. with the manufacturing area fully viewable behind glass for all to see the process.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
The hardest part of making chocolate is the scale, the machinery that is required tends to be in the thousands of dollar range. Something I was short of most of the time. My biggest push was a successful kickstarter that friends brought to fruition and enabled me to make a bigger leap. Also, I’m a pretty outgoing guy but sales is not my thing. I started to work at festivals and sell chocolate directly to the consumer, which worked great and helped me hone my selling skills.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I’ve always been a creative, I just never knew where to apply it. I created a career in photography because I love the creative aspect of that work, but it’s really difficult to make sales in an era of a camera in every pocket. With chocolate, I am able to come up with new flavors and inclusions that I enjoy and test them on my friends. I also have to decide the “look” of the bar, the packaging, the materials used. I get excited about building something from nothing that has value to the world. With Chocolate, it’s only coming to the forefront that it has the nuances and characteristics of some many other farmed foods that we don’t think about any more such as coffee and wine. We accept that every wine, even if from the same grape will have a different taste based on if it’s grown in California or France. The same is true for Coffee and many other items. The flavor of the region and the subsequent handling of the product by the grower is critical to the development of the taste.

There are so many factors along the way that influence the taste of the chocolate. The farmer grows it and has to harvest only when truly ripe, which is difficult to do, it’s also a hand-harvested product. And has to be cut from the tree with care, if the tree is damaged it will never fruit in that spot again, lowering yields. It then has to be fermented for about a week and then carefully dried, all the while checking temperatures and removing unwanted materials, like sticks and parts of the pod. After drying it is shipped to me, where I have to decide how to roast. Low and long or high and short or something in-between. Many test batches are made to determine what’s optimal. After testing it’s put out to the world for the public to accept, or not.

Many small-batch chocolate makers use this same process. We set ourselves apart from each other with our ideas of what we want it to taste like. When you try a chocolate, that flavor is a direct result of what the maker loves. You get to taste what he/she enjoys. Be it deep rich chocolate flavors or nutty nuances or a bright and fruity profile that makes your mouth water. You’ll get a look inside the maker’s head as to what they prefer in flavors.

Pollinator Chocolate can be found at several Denver area locations, including “In-tea” in Littleton, The Denver Botanical Gardens and the Artisan Center – 2757 E 3RD AVE, DENVER, CO 80206. Also available at many locations in the mountains. Check the website at https://pollinatorchocolate.com/pages/where-to-buy

Pricing:

• 7.95
• 8.95
• 11.95
• 12.95

Contact Info:

• Website: https://pollinatorchocolate.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pollinatorchocolate/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pollinatorchocolate

Image Credits
®Mark Burrows

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