Chocolatier Holly Westbrook is closing her Los Gatos store, the Chocolate Dream Box, after 26 years in the business.
May 30 was the last day for customers to stop by to say farewell and and buy handcrafted Belgian-style chocolates, caramel pecan turtles, rocky road, toffee and more.
Running a small business is challenging enough, Westbrook said, and “the pandemic didn’t help” — especially coming as it did during a normally busy season.
“Chocolate is very seasonal,” she said. “We missed Easter and all the teachers’ gifts. We lost a third of our year’s sales. I don’t see how we could recoup.”
Longtime customer Jeanne Gardner said she’s been savoring and stockpiling her favorites.
“Holly and fellow chocolatier Jack (Schroeder) make the very best chocolates I’ve ever had, and believe me I’ve done many comparisons,” Gardner said. “A friend and I were talking about how sad it’s going to be to take the last bite.”
For Westbrook, it’s been an eventful run. She started out selling chocolates made by others, then trained to become a chocolatier herself.
After getting her first taste of fine European chocolates while on vacation, Westbrook contacted the Belgian consulate and found a supplier in the United States that made Belgian-style chocolates. She opened her first store on North Santa Cruz Avenue in 1994.
“At the time, there really weren’t that many stores where you could buy really good-quality chocolate,” Westbrook told the Mercury News in a 2008 interview.
Ongoing issues with suppliers prompted her to start tinkering with her own recipes and training at the California Culinary Academy.
In 2006, she moved the store to the Kings Court Shopping Center on Blossom Hill Road. With help from Schroeder, a longtime confectioner, she added caramels and toffees to her repertoire, according to Mercury News archives, and made chocolate specialties in antique molds.
She also phased out the European-style imports in favor of her original recipes for a line of fine chocolates that included the Cherry Bliss, Tahitian vanilla ganache with a brandy-soaked tart cherry; the Exquisite, single-origin dark chocolate ganache; the Passion, filled with passion-fruit puree, and more than 20 others.
Eight years later, she lost the lease at that center and moved again. She’s been located at the Downing Center on Union Avenue in Los Gatos since then.
She and Schroeder have been busy making chocolates for the shop’s final days. They’re inviting customers in — just two at a time, for social distancing during these COVID-19 days — and will sell those, plus the store’s array of gift items, from noon to 4:30 p.m. today, Friday and Saturday.
Details: 15557 Union Ave. at Los Gatos-Almaden Road. www.chocolatedreambox.com
