Thanks to John Doyle '92, social responsibility has never tasted so good.
By April White
You'd think that appearing on the Food Network show Recipe for Success—a program that hypes those who "swallowed their fears to undergo a risky career makeover"—would be a cause for celebration. So why was John Doyle '92 feeling so glum when Jubilee Chocolates, his Philadelphia-based artisanal chocolate company, was featured on the television show last July?
"They kept saying that we ran out of chocolates before the holidays," Doyle moans to his mother over the phone, a few days after the Food Network broadcast that brought up one of Jubilee's less than prime moments. As Doyle is talking to his mother, we're seeing the businessman in Doyle, the one who parlayed a Middlebury degree and, later, a master's in Italian, into a lucrative investment-banking gig in New York, the one who turned $5,000 in personal savings into a $1 million chocolate company in less than five years.
Jubilee, which Doyle owns with his wife, Kira Baker-Doyle, did run out of chocolates during the chocolate season in 2003. It ran out again in 2004, and, if Doyle is honest with himself, he's not sure the same thing won't happen in 2005.
"I'm always worrying about making enough chocolates," Doyle says, after hanging up the phone. When Jubilee debuted in 2001, he and Kira made all the chocolate themselves—about 4,000 pieces a month; now eight employees produce, pack, and ship as many as 40,000 pieces of chocolate a week. In 2004, the three-year-old company produced 375,000 pieces; this year, Doyle anticipates making 420,000 pieces—or about 14,000 boxes—during the winter holidays alone.
But there's another side to John Doyle: a side that is slightly more romantic than John Doyle, the businessman. During his junior year at Middlebury, he spent six months studying in Paris, where he managed to eat his way through the Food Lover's Guide to Paris. This is the same John Doyle who lived in an olive grove near Florence after graduation and later quit investment banking to work in a trendy New York restaurant. (He subsequently left that job to work at the "more Vermonty" White Dog Cafe, in Philadelphia, which is run by Judy Wicks, a sustainable agriculture supporter.)
But both John Doyle, the romantic, and John Doyle, the businessman, consider it a success that Jubilee is doing for small-batch confections what Ben & Jerry's has done for ice cream: recreating the ubiquitous American treats with labor-intensive techniques, high-quality ingredients, and a socially conscious approach.
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With his cowlicked black hair tucked into a mesh cap and his sockless feet in untied Nikes, 36-year-old Doyle doesn't look the part of a modern-day Willy Wonka. But his Jubilee chocolates have inspired a devotion among foodies to rival the sugar fixations of Roald Dahl's memorably sweet-toothed characters.
"The flavors are delightfully fresh and distinct," raves Tish Boyle, editor of Chocolatier magazine.
"Ordinary flavors made extraordinary by fresh ingredients," exclaims Consumer Reports, ranking Jubilee number one in a taste test that included La Maison du Chocolat and Jacques Torres Chocolate.
"These are the most amazingly delicious chocolates I've ever tasted, and for me it was instant love," declares Ruth Reichl, editor of Gourmet magazine, which featured the artisanal chocolates on its cover in February 2003.
A framed copy of the elegant Gourmet cover—"We found our favorite chocolates!"—rests beside Doyle's Post-it note-covered desk on the concrete floor of Jubilee Chocolates headquarters, a windowless, cinderblock corner of a former Goldenberg's Peanut Chews plant.
"I'm not in love with chocolate," Doyle admits, as he weaves through the factory's maze of rolling trays of cooling ganache. "I saw it as an opportunity." After working at the White Dog, Doyle wanted to pursue a career that would partner his business sense, love of food, and piqued interest in sustainable agriculture.
High-end chocolate, still a small portion of a $13 billion chocolate industry, seemed like an intriguing option. It was a relatively untapped market, and the foodie in Doyle liked the myriad flavor possibilities. Consumers of specialty chocolate want to know what they are going to get when they bite into the confection, and in the case of a Jubilee chocolate, consumers read about organic raspberries, strawberries, and lemongrass grown by farmer Glenn Brendle in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania; aromatic, shade-grown Mexican coffee from the fair-wage Mut Vitz cooperative; and biodynamically grown ginger from Papohaku Farm in Hawaii.
Doyle began by experimenting with chocolate recipes in his Philadelphia apartment, hosting tastings for his neighbors. His technique improved, but he was still an amateur, so he approached Robert Bennett, then the pastry chef at Philadelphia's vaunted Le Bec-Fin.
"A lot of people asked to work in our kitchen," Bennett recalls. "I always said no." But he gave Doyle advice, recommending some professional-level cookbooks. When Doyle returned with the chocolates he had concocted from the complex recipes, Bennett welcomed him into the small pastry kitchen. "He was really passionate about [his craft]. He was paying attention to every detail and striving for perfection. His chocolates easily blew away all the major producers like Godiva."
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If you order a box of Jubilee chocolates—$36.50 for a 28-piece box—you'll find a peppermint variety that would be a distant cousin, many times removed, of a Peppermint Pattie. The mint in this confection is tended and harvested by students at Philadelphia's inner-city University City High School, and it's gently melded with hot cream in Jubilee's North Philly kitchens. When the spicy, cool flavors have been coaxed from the leaves, the cream is strained and poured over 40-percent Valrhona milk chocolate and sprinkled with sugar. The resulting ganache is poured into shallow rectangular molds and hand painted with a thin coat of chocolate. Once the ganache has set, it's sliced into one-inch squares and enrobed in more rich Valrhona. Each square is marked with an X and packed in a plain wooden box with a satin ribbon and an insert about the University City High School students and the Valrhona chocolate. Social responsibility has never tasted this good: The slight resistance of the brittle chocolate shell gives way to melting memories of mint juleps and sultry Southern afternoons that make you forget all about Pattie, but just might make you remember the students of UCHS. That, for Doyle, is the recipe for success.
April White is the food editor at Philadephia Magazine.