How Sweet It Is
We wrote about Trade Secret Chocolates and its inventor, Matt Rubin, in 2016. Now we’d like to provide an update on this fast-growing Indianapolis-based business that got a boost from working with Ventures.
Rubin developed Trade Secret as a dairy, gluten- and soy-free chocolate for his wife, Sarah, after she learned a food allergy would keep her from enjoying most ordinary forms of chocolate.
Using just three ingredients – cacao beans, organic cane sugar and cacao butter – Rubin invented Trade Secret, a high-end chocolate available in the Indy area. In the process of making the bars, however, Matt and Sarah discovered melted chocolate tastes even better than the solid version. They also discovered consuming melted chocolate creates an experience, much like enjoying a cup of coffee, while consuming a chocolate bar is far more mundane.
That’s why Matt developed SoChatti, the parent company of his innovative chocolate startup, which allows you to easily melt chocolate to perfection.
Using the company’s patented pouch technology, the chocolate can be shipped in the dead of winter or the heat of summer and will retain its delicate flavors, a feat that is traditionally very difficult for chocolate manufacturers. Once purchased, consumers just heat the pouch in a bowl of water that is warm to the touch – around 110 degrees F (or place it in a countertop SoChatti warmer – launching later this year) and, presto, you have delicious melted chocolate for drizzling over desserts or however you want to try it.
“The pouch was designed so people don’t have to worry about burning the chocolate,” Rubin says. “Any flavor you experience with melted chocolate is more pronounced. This takes chocolate to the next level.”
Ventures helped Rubin enter the chocolate business by doing the testing and re-testing of melted chocolate to determine its optimal temperature, viscosity and other essential parameters.
“Their work was very valuable,” Rubin says. “Their team is not afraid to get their hands dirty,” – or covered in chocolate, as the case may be.
Commercially, SoChatti is already taking off despite being little more than a year old. You can find it on Amazon and at select retailers in the Indianapolis area.
