CCC carries a line of gourmet-boxed chocolates, including chocolate-covered strawberries.

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Chocolate Chocolate Chocolate (CCC) Company has been making chocolate lovers smile for more than 25 years. In fact, the company says all of its chocolates come with “a smile in every box.” Founded in 1981 by Dan Abel, who spent more than a decade training with the finest chocolatiers in the world who brought back their cherished family recipes from Europe. CCC carries a line of gourmet-boxed chocolates, premium truffles, sugar-free chocolates and holiday/seasonal chocolates. 

Abel spoke with Food and Drink about CCC’s distinguishing factors, innovations and recent developments.

Food and Drink: What sets CCC apart from other chocolatiers?

Dan Abel: Fresh, handcrafted chocolates (and) excellent customer service. When people come into our stores, (there is) the aroma of chocolate in the air. (There are) free samples in the front (and) there are windows to see candy being made. Our stores are filled with over 800 chocolate molded novelties, an entire wall of fresh boxed chocolates and a 24-foot old-fashioned candy counter with the largest assortment of chocolates in the Midwest to pick and choose from. Customers have the ability to create their own box, piece-by-piece.

Many of our employees have been with the company for more than 20 years. They know that going beyond customers’ expectations is the only way to retain happy customers.
Our motto is to be a customer service-oriented company with a premium chocolate company in the back.

FAD: Tell us about your innovation that allows you to ship products during the summer time.

DA: One accomplishment in the last two years is the ability to ship our products anywhere in the country during the warm weather months. We originally underestimated the difficulty of this problem and spent six months developing a specially designed cooler, learning just the right amount of ice/gel packs and how to package the product.

We developed one little secret, which makes our shipping a two-part process. It doubles the amount of time it takes for us to ship a box, but that is a small price to pay when the chocolates arrive in perfect condition. Many candy companies shut down their shipping for summer because of this shipping problem. Because of (this innovation), the orders we receive over the summer have tripled since 2007. We hope to see the same increases next year.

FAD: How important is technology to CCC?

DA: Technology is a key ingredient to keeping our products fresh. We have employed many inventory procedures over computers, created custom software to track sales, department totals and monitor sales by UPC. Our servers keep track of our entire inventory from the date it was manufactured, so nothing goes out of date. We use e-mail as official form of communication for the company, as well.

FAD: Tell us about the stores you recently opened.

DA: We have opened eight additional stores since 2002 through franchising and continue to move forward. Six of the new stores are inside St. Louis in an approximate 30-mile span from the original location, while two new stores are across the river in Illinois. Two of our retail stores are actually inside a grocery store, Dierbergs Markets. Customers at the Dierbergs checkouts can look into the windows and see our entire store.

FAD: What is in store for CCC?

DA: We will continue to grow by opening new retail stores across the country.  We also have future plans to open a larger manufacturing facility to accommodate increased catalog, Web site and wholesale orders. Our current facility was designed to run two lines and accommodate the demand for about four stores. Since then, we have built our e-commerce Web site, wholesale division and national catalog. We also have a new project [that] will bring us to a national level of chocolatiers.