Chocolate business

7 Chocolate Brands That Started in a Kitchen or Garage

By Oliver BennettPublished October 15, 2026Updated October 15, 202611 min read

Seven small chocolate brands made their first chocolate at home or close to it: Dandelion in a friend’s garage in California, Garcia Nevett and FIX in home kitchens, Marou in a cofounder’s kitchen, Omnom in a small apartment and Majucau in a living room in São Paulo. The seventh, Montezuma’s, began with a machine the size of a kitchen sink, and its home-kitchen story comes from a single retailer. None of them went from home straight into a purpose-built factory.

Each case rests on at least two sources, one of them independent of the brand, and every figure carries the date its source gives. They run in order of the founding year the sources give, earliest first.

Montezuma’s: two lawyers and a kitchen-sink-sized machine (UK, chocolatier to manufacturer)

Montezuma’s started in 2000 with a chocolate shop in Brighton and very little equipment. Helen and Simon Pattinson had left their jobs as London lawyers the year before, and when they began, ConfectioneryNews reported in 2016, “the cofounders only had a kitchen-sink-sized machine.”

Their own shop was the first channel. The company’s anniversary post from July 2024 recalls getting ready “to open the doors of our first store in Brighton.”

Manufacturing started in a rented building. Simon Pattinson told Food Manufacture in 2008 that they “started manufacturing from a tiny little rented converted stable five miles up the road” from their later site. That site, on Birdham Business Park near Chichester, became home in 2005. By 2008 it was processing 300 metric tons, turnover was about £5 million including the shops, and production staff had grown from about 20 to 45.

Supermarket contracts pushed the next jump. After deals with Sainsbury’s and Trader Joe’s, the same 2016 ConfectioneryNews report said, the company was putting £500,000 into a continuous production line with a 90-meter spiral cooling tunnel, taking capacity from about 350 to 800 metric tons a year.

The founders sold a majority stake to an investment firm in 2018. In 2023 the company filed a notice of administration and was sold, and the Pattinsons came back to run it as joint managing directors, ConfectioneryNews reported that June.

The sources disagree on two points. The home kitchen appears only on a 2023 news page from Southern Co-op, a retailer, which says the couple “started off in their kitchen”; the trade press describes the small machine and the stable instead. And the July 2024 anniversary post marks “20 years since Simon and Helen left their jobs as lawyers,” which points to 2004, while Companies House records the company’s incorporation on March 14, 2000.

Garcia Nevett: two home kitchens and farmers markets (US, chocolatier)

Susanna and Isabel Garcia Nevett began their Miami business in their own kitchens, selling at farmers markets and from tables at chocolate shows. That account comes from a September 2025 profile by Florida SBDC at FIU, a small-business center writing about one of its own clients. The sisters were born in Venezuela. Susanna studied architecture; Isabel studied international politics and worked as a journalist.

The first Miami venture was called Cacao Art. In 2014 it won a Good Food Award for a ganache with cardamom and Tupelo honey, as Miami New Times noted that October, when Cacao Art was a finalist again.

The move out of the kitchens came in stages. As their profile grew, FIU writes, the sisters “graduated from their home kitchens to a small commercial space.” In 2018 they rebranded as Garcia Nevett Chocolatier de Miami and opened their first storefront in South Miami, with a kitchen inside the shop. About two years before the 2025 profile, they moved production to a larger dedicated facility and kept the storefront as headquarters.

The company tells the start differently. Its about page begins in 2009, when Susanna and Isabel created Latitud 10 Chocolateria Artesanal in Venezuela, followed a year later by the move to Miami and Cacao Art. FIU calls Cacao Art their first venture. The company page also leaves out the farmers markets and the home kitchens.

Dandelion Chocolate: a garage in East Palo Alto (US, bean-to-bar)

Dandelion made its first bars in a friend’s garage in East Palo Alto, where Todd Masonis and Cameron Ring started in 2010. The two had cofounded Plaxo and sold it to Comcast in 2008. A 2011 post on the company blog calls the garage “our lab.” Dandelion is a bean-to-bar maker, working from the cocoa bean onward.

The first sales were at a market. In September 2010 they sold bars at the Underground Farmer’s Market, and with new customers and wholesale accounts taking an interest, they signed a lease on Valencia Street the next month, Mission Local reported in November 2011. The building had been an auto repair shop. By then the pair had waited more than nine months for a permit to change its use from auto industrial to food industrial, and the company was self-funded with less than a million dollars.

By early 2012 the bars had spread well beyond the market. In February 2012, Santa Clara University listed the bars in more than a dozen outlets in California, Oregon, New York, Washington and Victoria, British Columbia.

The factory’s opening date is less clear. Mission Local said in November 2011 that it was slated to open later that year; Santa Clara said in February 2012 that it would open later in 2012. Looking back in 2014, Masonis told investor Hunter Walk that one permit took “over a year and a half,” and that “while still in the garage, we started winning awards and getting wholesale orders.”

Marou: cake tins in Sam’s kitchen (Vietnam, bean-to-bar)

Marou’s first bars were made “with just a blender, an oven, and cake tins in Sam’s kitchen,” in the words of the company’s story page. Samuel Maruta and Vincent Mourou, both French, met on a camping trip in 2010, the company says. Knowledge at Wharton describes them as dropouts from banking and advertising; Vietcetera calls them a former banker and a former filmmaker. Work began in February 2011, and the brand launched that November.

Out of the kitchen, they set up a factory just outside Saigon with help from a chocolatier, and they scoured local markets for equipment they could adapt, Vietcetera wrote at the brand’s ten-year mark. Knowledge at Wharton places it in a factory complex in Thu Duc that houses three small and medium-sized businesses. Marou’s own shops came later: Saigon in 2016, Hanoi in 2017 and Thao Dien in 2020, according to Vietcetera.

The early numbers are dated. Knowledge at Wharton reported in 2015 that revenue was $120,000 in 2012, the first full year; that Marou made 3 metric tons of chocolate in 2014 and exported 70% of it; and that, at the time of writing, 20 employees made 100 kg a day. In the ten-year piece, a founder put the staff at 177. Exports, about 75% of sales at the start, had fallen to about 15% before the 2020 pandemic.

Who bought first depends on the source. Maruta told Wharton, “Our first order was from La Grande Epicerie de Paris.” Vietcetera describes “their very first sale to the erstwhile Oasis Deli in Thao Dien.” The two may describe different moments, a first order and a first sale, and neither source explains the other.

Omnom: an apartment, then a gas station (Iceland, bean-to-bar)

Omnom spent its first months in a small apartment, according to Pastry Arts Magazine in winter 2022. Childhood friends Kjartan Gíslason, a chef who had been toying with the idea of a pastry shop, and businessman Óskar Þórðarson bought machines and spent “months of tinkering” there. By 2013 they had converted an old gas station into a factory and Omnom was official. In 2016 they moved to their current location.

The magazine also reports a sharp rise in online sales after Omnom appeared for about four minutes on a Netflix program in July 2020. It gives no figure for that rise.

Omnom’s own story page dates the brand to 2013 and says the two “quickly set up a modest production lab inside a converted gas station in Reykjavík.” It skips the apartment. It also notes that Gíslason had worked as a chef in Iceland, Luxembourg, Norway and Sweden.

FIX Dessert Chocolatier: a home kitchen in Dubai (UAE, chocolatier)

FIX began in 2021 as a side hustle run from Sarah Hamouda’s home in Dubai, CNN reported in June 2024. By then a team of 10 worked in a rented kitchen, the filled bars were sold only through a food delivery app, and daily orders had gone from single digits to 500.

Hamouda, who is British-Egyptian, and her husband Yezen Alani moved from London to Dubai in 2015 and both worked corporate jobs. In 2026 the founders told The National that the business “started in a small kitchen at home.” By July 2026, the paper reported, FIX had two stores at Dubai International Airport, one at Singapore’s Changi Airport and a concession at Harrods in London.

The press dates the turning point differently. Entrepreneur Middle East traced it to a TikTok video in December 2023, while The National says the bar went viral in early 2024. In May 2025, Entrepreneur Middle East reported 500 bars a day, selling out within minutes of the 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. releases on the delivery app, and said both founders had left their corporate jobs for the brand.

Every figure in this case comes from the press. FIX’s own website returned no readable text, so the case rests on CNN, The National and Entrepreneur Middle East.

Majucau: a living room in São Paulo (Brazil, bean-to-bar)

“A gente começou na sala de casa, em São Paulo” (we started in our living room in São Paulo), Mariana Basaure told Agência Sebrae in July 2024. In 2018 she was working as a nursing technician; she and her husband, Junior, had the idea that year and spent about a year testing. The name mixes Mariana, Junior and cacau. To buy small machines they sold their car, and they built their own shell separator, the winnowing step of the bean-to-bar process, from PVC pipe and a vacuum cleaner.

Partners sold the first bars: resellers, delis and organic bakeries. In October 2019, five months after the first sales, CNA Brasil counted 12 points of sale in São Paulo and Florianópolis. That month Majucau took first place in the popular vote at the Prêmio Brasil Artesanal de Chocolate, chosen by congress attendees, with a prize of R$2,000.

The paperwork followed the sales. Majucau registered as an MEI, Brazil’s individual micro-entrepreneur status, in 2019 and became an ME, a microenterprise, in 2021. By July 2024, Sebrae reported, it had moved from a 40 m² space to one of 120 m², had six employees and sold through physical and online stores.

The 2019 CNA profile says Mariana found a recipe online and doesn’t mention the living room. Sebrae’s account adds it. One tells less than the other; they don’t conflict.

The seven side by side

None of the seven moved from home straight into a purpose-built factory, and three of their first spaces after home had been built for something else: an auto repair shop, a stable and a gas station. The table lines up what the sources document for each. Bean-to-bar makers and chocolatiers run different businesses, and the guide to starting a chocolate factory compares those models.

What the seven cases have in common

Each brand took one modest step out of the home before anything that looked like a factory. Montezuma’s rented a converted stable. Garcia Nevett moved into a small commercial space, then a shop with a kitchen. Dandelion leased an old auto repair shop and waited months to have its use changed. Marou set up in a factory complex outside Saigon with market equipment it adapted. Omnom converted a gas station, FIX rented a kitchen, and Majucau worked in 40 m² before it moved to 120.

Selling started early. Dandelion signed its lease the month after its first market, and Garcia Nevett sold at markets and shows while still working from home kitchens. Montezuma’s had its own shop from the start. For the other four, the sources don’t put the first sale and the move in a clear order. Seven cases are a small set, and they show paths that happened, with no promise about anyone else’s.

Where the legal line sits

The cases record where these brands went, not what the law allowed them to do at home, and the rules depend on where you are. Dandelion’s wait for a change-of-use permit is the only legal detail these sources record. What you may sell from a home kitchen, and the options between home and your own workshop, are covered in scaling up chocolate production; registration in the EU, US and Turkey is in chocolate factory regulations; and what the move costs is in chocolate business costs. Check with your local food authority before you sell.

Sources and open questions

Second sources, by case: for Montezuma’s, the Southern Co-op page (a retailer) and the 2018 ConfectioneryNews report on the stake sale; for Majucau, CNA Brasil’s list of 2019 winners. The CNN piece on FIX was read in the copy published by ABC17 News. The Vietcetera piece on Marou carries no year; it marks the brand’s tenth anniversary.

Still open: who bought Omnom’s first bars; whether Marou’s first buyer was the Paris retailer or the Saigon deli; and FIX’s own account of its start.