One of the entrepreneurial success stories of the South Bay has suffered a major business reversal for the unlikeliest of reasons. Marsatta Chocolates, a business that started making premium candies ten years ago and was rapidly expanding, suddenly lost their lease due to a hockey game.
The company was founded by Jeffray Gardner, a former professional ice hockey referee who moved from Canada to California. When Gardner started Marsatta, he was one of very few chocolatiers in California who starts with the cacao beans, rather than a partly processed product called couverture chocolate. When business got too brisk in the kitchen that he shared with other businesses, Gardner rented commercial space in east Redondo Beach. The office there was decorated with hockey memorabilia, and on Saturdays when all nearby businesses were closed Gardner’s sons and their friends would don rollerblades and play practice games in the parking lot.
All was well until one day when the landlord drove by and saw the boys practicing. There had been no complaints by neighbors, and an adult was present. There was nothing in the lease forbidding staging hockey games in the parking lot, though it should be noted that there are some things you don’t prohibit because it never occurs to you that anybody might do it. Nevertheless the landlord decided this was an unacceptable use of the property, and on the next day Gardner received a demand that he vacate his space.
“The landlord was absolutely inflexible, demanded I be out in thirty days,” Gardner said. “We tried pleading with her, but nothing. I had to take everything apart, a whole certified kitchen, and put it into storage.”
This bolt from the blue came at a critical time – Jeffray’s wife Naomi had just given birth to a premature child by emergency caesarian. The boy weighed just 3 ½ pounds and had complications from the early birth, and the stress from business and family took a double toll. Jeffray was visiting his wife and child in the hospital, packing up all the machinery of his factory, and struggling to keep producing enough chocolate to satisfy his existing customers. These included a big customer that he had recently landed, the Ciao Bella gelato company. Inevitably, the demands of family and moving came first, with dire consequences.
“I was making over a thousand pounds a week, including the big Ciao Bella account, but I had to turn it back,” Gardner said. “I’m down to two to three hundred pounds a week now. It’s hard to even do that at the moment, with our little guy in the hospital – I go there three times a day. I’ve got lots of backorders now, and no businessman likes to see that.”
Jeffray Gardner is back in the shared kitchen where he started, but he has his eye on a new location. He is planning on moving to the former florist shop at the corner of Del Amo and Anza, which would allow him to operate a retail business and factory in the same space while expanding his wholesale operation. Since he has been selling his bars in gourmet stores in an ever-expanding radius there is obviously potential.
“The landlord on Anza has offered me a five year deal, which gives me security… In the best of circumstances we could be up and running by the holidays, not exactly as I’d want it to be, but a few display cases and a place to work,” Gardner said. “Until the place is certified, I can also make it where I am now. We may have people working on the building while we’re also selling chocolate, but it’s doable.”
Gardner doesn’t have the money for remodeling now, but has started a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds. Donors will receive gifts of chocolate, their name on the wall of the new store, and Gardner’s undying gratitude when the store is open. For now, Gardner is dividing his time between making chocolate in his makeshift facilities, visiting his son whose condition is slowly improving, and selling chocolate at the Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday farmers markets. The fate of his company is in the hands of his friends, customers, and kind strangers who want to help a tiny chocolate company through a time of adversity.
If you wish to know more or to help, go to kickstarter.com.
