Marion Chocolate Shop open for business with new owners

“We were sitting on the porch and talking about commuting would affect our family and we saw Gae’s post about the shop being for sale and as a joke, I said we should buy it,” Katy said.

“Within six days, we went from knowing I’d be commuting and out of the house a lot to pursuing owning the shop,” Ben added.

The couple has no prior experience with chocolate, but neither did the previous owners when they opened the shop years ago.

“They said if they could do it, we could do it,” Ben said. “Being in the National Guard for almost 20 years has really translated to the operations side of the business: managing vendors, tracking inventory. I’m an engineer so it all kind of carries over.”

“We also have part-time employees that stayed with us that were here before,” Katy added. “They have years of prior knowledge. They are the experts who bring in all the wisdom here and they will make this place a success.”

The two also have taken lessons from observing businesses during the pandemic and said they want to add online options.

“We will be setting up in-store pickup so people can shop from the comfort of their home because that’s been so successful over the past year,” Ben said.

Katy added that the shop will be adding new flavors as well and also are welcoming any ideas from customers.

“I want to do a ‘flavor of the month,’ ” Katy said. “We make a small batch that we may only make once that year of a certain flavor and so if you snooze, you could lose. I think that would be really fun.”

One aspect of the business the couple wants to keep in place is partnering with other local businesses for events or flavors.

“We don’t want to add coffee or ice cream or anything here because we have that stuff in the area,” Ben said. “We want to do what we do really well and we also want to advertise our other local businesses too.”

Ben and Katy both said they are excited for this new chapter in their lives and want to welcome the community’s feedback and ideas on their social media pages.

“We think we can really have fun with this and keep interest by adding new things regularly. If we do things over and over again, it will wear us out. So experimenting is a lot of fun,” Ben said. “We want customers to know we are open to any feedback. If you’re not happy with something, shoot us a message on Facebook or if you go somewhere else and see something cool, we want ideas and input. We’re just excited to get going.”