A chocolate shop next door to an elementary school is the stuff of childhood dreams. For years, kids at Champlain Elementary School on Pine Street in Burlington have bounded across the parking lot to Lake Champlain Chocolates for a truffle or an ice cream cone — a predictable phenomenon that staffers call “the after-school rush.”
This fall, with expanded café offerings and earlier morning hours, the staff are hoping they’ll lure in parents for the before-school rush, too.
The chocolate company, now in its second generation of family ownership, celebrated its 40th anniversary this year with a serious renovation of its flagship store in the South End. Reopened in late September, the shop is now 50 percent larger.
Café offerings aren’t new to Lake Champlain Chocolates, which has sold hot chocolate and espresso drinks in its Pine Street, Church Street Marketplace and Waterbury Center stores since 2000 and housemade ice cream since 2001. The business also operated South End Kitchen at 716 Pine Street from 2014 to 2015, and it’s set to open a new Stowe location in November.
But the flagship store’s café used to occupy a former closet in a tiny corner of the retail shop. Now, it’s the centerpiece.
“We called it a café, but no one ever really considered it a café,” communications and project brand manager Meghan Fitzpatrick said of the old space. “We make such delicious drinks, and we wanted more space for people to sit and enjoy.”
A wraparound bar holds hand-dipped waffle cones, piles of pastries, sleek Modbar espresso machines and a Selmi Macchia chocolate fountain, which maintains a constant flow of hazelnut praline sauce. Seating for 20 — along the bar and in the back of the store — encourages customers to linger over their lattes.
The company made room for this revived café when it moved chocolate production from Pine Street to Williston two years ago. Through-the-window factory tours ceased at the beginning of the pandemic, and the shop’s observation deck “became obsolete,” Fitzpatrick said.
With the renovation, windows still offer a glimpse of action on a smaller scale: In Lake Champlain Chocolates’ “innovation kitchen,” pastry chefs, confectioners, and research-and-development specialists create small-batch products, ice cream and a brand-new lineup of fresh-baked goods every day.
Those baked goods were a team effort. R&D pros Kate Brown and Lauren Deitsch came up with the cakes and brownies, while general manager Leslie Ann Viets — a pastry chef with previous experience at the Inn at Weston and Ritz-Carlton properties — contributed her muffin recipes, Fitzpatrick said.
The result is a mix of breakfast pastries, cakes, classic cookies, brownies and blondies — many appropriately chocolate filled. Chocolate lovers can go all in on a decadent slice of flourless chocolate truffle torte or a towering piece of Burlington Blackout Cake (both $8 per slice), even adding a scoop of Belgian chocolate ice cream to make it à la mode ($3 extra).
“We finally have a brownie sundae, which everyone feels like we probably should have had forever,” Fitzpatrick said.
Even the chocolate-averse will find something in the new café lineup, especially for breakfast. Plain croissants ($4.25), cranberry-poppy seed muffins ($3.75), apple cider doughnuts ($2.75) and cinnamon coffee cake ($3.75) all pair perfectly with espresso drinks, made with Boston-based roaster George Howell Coffee’s Alchemy blend.
Or mix and match: Order a ganache-filled chocolate croissant ($4.75) with a smooth, well-crafted latte, or a lofty plain croissant with a spicy Aztec mocha. For every craving, the café opens daily at 8 a.m.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Chocolate for Breakfast | Lake Champlain Chocolates’ expanded Pine Street café bakes a new approach”
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This article appears in Oct 11-17, 2023.
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