Senator Rocket, the founder of the Eat Vermont media and technology platform, and two silent partners have invested a six-figure sum in Bristol’s Farmhouse Chocolates. The specialty chocolate company’s married co-owners, Eliza La Rocca and Erlé LaBounty, will remain involved with the business they have grown over more than a decade to annual sales of $400,000. This first investment of its kind for Eat Vermont may serve as a model for future deals in the state’s specialty food and drink sector, Rocket said.
Eat Vermont guides consumers through Vermont’s local food scene. The ownership stake in Farmhouse Chocolates supports Rocket’s goal of building a more resilient local food system, he told Seven Days.
Since the 33-year-old launched Eat Vermont in 2015, it has garnered nearly 40,000 Instagram followers and about 7,000 downloads for the associated app. Over that time, Rocket said, he has witnessed the highs and lows of trying to build artisanal food companies in Vermont.
“The great advantage of specialty foods is that we can import dollars by exporting food,” he said. However, while “there are many talented artisans and there are many talented businesspeople, there are fewer people who are talented at both.”
Rocket sees his investment strategy as a way to share some of the risk — and potential rewards — of experimenting with new tactics. The aim is “to help accelerate small artisanal businesses in Vermont, growing them to a comfortable, healthy, livable scale,” he said.
Like many entrepreneurs, LaBounty, 44, and La Rocca, 40, have poured all of their time and energy into their line of confections made with certified organic, fair- and direct-trade chocolate. A couple of years ago, they began the search for a buyer. “The business was at a point where it was ready to keep on growing, but we didn’t have anything left in the tank,” LaBounty said.
The couple’s decade-long friendship with Rocket helped seal the deal. They met when LaBounty worked at Otter Creek Bakery & Deli in Middlebury, where Rocket, then a college student, was a regular. While working with a business broker, the couple asked Rocket if he knew any potential buyers and were surprised when he showed interest.
LaBounty and La Rocca eventually did get an offer to buy the business outright. But they liked the idea of staying involved with Farmhouse’s next phase, providing continuity for customers and serving as a “test case” for “how much Rocket can leverage the network and resources that Eat Vermont has built for small companies like us,” La Rocca said.
“I knew he would present opportunities for the business that we couldn’t,” her husband added.
This article appears in Nov 19-25 2025.
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