DALLAS — You can make chocolate, even eat chocolate, any day of the year. But when it comes to shipping chocolate - a North Texas chocolatier will tell you that gets seriously tricky come summertime.
"It’s stressful, stressful every day," Kate Weiser, owner of Kate Weiser Chocolate told WFAA.
"We’re constantly checking weather maps, heat maps," she continued.
"I mean, I opened a chocolate shop in Dallas," she laughed. "I did this to myself."
Weiser said she spends money, time and energy, every June, July, and August, trying to sell and ship chocolate that won’t melt.
"We’ve gotten incredible at shipping chocolate in 100-degree weather," she said.
To make a summer sale, there’s a system. Step one, she said, they freeze the chocolate.
"That way the thawing process can begin while it's in transit," Weiser said.
Step two, operations manager Emily Dryden explained, is to insulate and ice it.
"We just kind of make an ice sandwich in here," Dryden said, as she wedged a chocolate box between 'bricks' of ice.
"If we don’t ship it like this it will essentially arrive like soup."
But shipping like this costs money, and their online orders dip way down in the summer. This May to June alone, they decreased by 72%.
"We not only have to worry about the temperature in Dallas," Weiser said. "We also have to worry about the temperature where our chocolates are going."
But Kate’s team, clearly, does not give up. They offer no melt guarantees and they test their shipping methods each week by leaving iced and insulated chocolate boxes inside their scorching outdoor storage unit.
"[We] just let it bake," Dryden said as she explained the testing process.
Summer months are not best for business, but Weiser said that’s OK. They get their goods safely to the people who will buy them and look forward to fall, and all the holiday sales to come.
"We just hang on tight and try to get through the summer every year."