Food industry consultant Jeffrey Mannion, 51, opened the Chocolate Butcher Chop Shop at 22 Merchants Row in Williston, next to Casa Grande restaurant, on November 22. Mannion has sold bags of what he described as “rough-cut chocolate chunks” under the Chocolate Butcher brand in grocery stores in Boston, Connecticut and the New York metropolitan area for about a decade, but this is his first dedicated retail outlet.
The new store sells the bagged chunks, bagged chocolate truffles and what Mannion calls snack boards: chocolate chunks packaged with salty and sweet complementary snacks, such as pretzels and candied nuts. It also stocks those snacks separately, so customers can assemble their own combinations or gift pairings.
Mannion’s small Williston production facility creates the rough-cut pieces by chopping 10- to 11-pound slabs of high-quality Belgian and domestic chocolate into irregular chunks, he said. He likened it to how a fine butcher shop might break down a whole animal into steaks and roasts.
Over his years consulting in the chocolate industry, Mannion said, he often saw colleagues nibbling on small pieces from the large blocks that serve as the main ingredient for many glossy chocolate lines. The Chocolate Butcher aims to “simplify the fancy world of chocolate,” he said.
“I’ve always been drawn to the idea of random-size pieces,” Mannion said, adding that portion choice is another advantage. “This is a very approachable and informal way to eat really good chocolate, and, the way that it’s cut, it just pairs nicely with other things as well.”
This article appears in Dec 10-16 2025.
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