IN THE NEWS

Everyone Loves These Chocolates

The coolest place in Houston is always inside Mark Caffey’s car when he’s delivering a cargo of chocolates. On nearly any day from his office in The Heights, the founder of Chocolates by Mark drives here and there around the city to brighten the days and nights of adults and children.

Brides and grooms serve his truffles at showers and receptions, celebrants at charity balls nibble them with hors d’oeuvres, and CEOs hand them out as gifts to clients. Visitors to spas end soothing sessions with the rich morsels, while guests in hotels find them on their pillows as one last, sweet taste before sleep. On nearly any Houston day, chilly from a norther or dripping with humidity, Mark gets his candies to customers’ fingertips whole and fresh.

“We know how to transport chocolates,” he says with a smile and a shrug. “The van or car is cold and the chocolates are nested in coolers and ice packs.”

While his business is steady year-round, this is his sweetest season, when Houston’s calendar fills with holiday activities. So is May, when Mark delivers morsels to as many as 65 galas.

Chocolates Goes to School

With one nibble many are hooked on Mark’s creations. “I have one client who tasted my chocolates at a gala and now buys 20 pounds a month,” Mark comments. “She hides them from her family. She splits them up in small batches and hides them all over the house, like behind books.”

Youngsters and adults are both eager students of his Chocolate Academy, a themed party for celebrations such as birthdays. The parties are proving so successful that Mark is expanding them to Dallas, San Antonio, and Austin.

Kids become honorary chocolatiers for the day in Chocolate Academy. They create their own chocolate pizzas, paint tee shirts with special, chocolate-like paint, and get hats and certificates.

Mark sets up his Chocolate Academy for grown-up occasions, too, including corporate retreats in which employees get to play with chocolate. “We did one Chocolate Academy for the Hummer Corporation,” he says. “They actually made their own chocolate Hummers and decorated them like they wanted.”

Rich Taste of Chocolate

Mark makes truffles in a dozen flavors, including Irish cream, champagne, cappuccino, mint, and butter pecan. He also produces almond butter crunch, milk almond toffee, dark peppermint patties, and chocolate crème de menthe. One of his most elegant gifts is a single truffle in a Limoge box.

While his on-line catalogue features such items as chocolate golf balls and chocolate-scented candles, his clients request many other forms. Mark sculpts chocolates in shapes of daisies and as butterflies with sweet, silent wings. At one ballroom wedding reception decorated like the out of doors, guests found nests with clusters of chocolate almonds as eggs.

Perhaps the rich taste of truffles makes people think of money, so he often mints chocolates as coins. He rewards guests at baby showers with decorative boxes tied with pink or blue bows and filled with chocolate “gold.” For bridal showers he fills small treasure chests with chocolate doubloons and scatters coins on tables like spare change.

He’s even made candy weapons. “One bride wanted chocolate rifles,” he recalls. “In jest I asked her, ‘Is this a shotgun wedding?’ She laughed and said, ‘No we’re both hunters. We want something different, something guests will remember.’” So Mark crafted in white and dark chocolate 3-inch rifles, loaded only with calories, and holstered them in small saddlebags.

You might say he wrote the book on chocolate for a banquet honoring former President George Herbert Walker and First Lady Barbara Bush at Houston’s Museum of Printing History. Mark created 500 4- by 5-inch books with pages of white chocolate and covers and squiggles of lines of dark chocolate.

From Oil to Chocolate

The Chocolatier closed one volume of his life and opened another when he changed careers from sweet crude to chocolate. He left a position as an accountant with an oil company and stepped into a college kitchen/classroom at Houston Community College to study as a pastry chef.

After graduation he didn’t mind working long hours, he recalls, but just didn’t want to do it for someone else. So, while he held a full-time position for 8 years, he worked even longer hours building his own business, “out of my house, like most new companies do,” he says. Finally, he went with his chocolates full-time. He still works long hours--usually from 6:30 a.m. to 7 p.m.--but for himself.

At a factory in north Houston Mark watches his chocolate poured into hundreds of molds. He meets with clients at his Heights headquarters, where two employees pack candies for shipping and four salespersons make calls.

The business has more than doubled in the past few years. That happens when cocoa and creativity are cast in the mold of hard work. “I have an artist’s ability, and I wanted to do something with it. I just never knew it was going to be with chocolate,” he comments.

Best of all, he can taste sweet success and still remain slim. “I eat chocolate but have a fast metabolism,” remarks the guy who loads truffles into the coolest car in Houston.  To visit Mark please call for an appointment.

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