Two of Park Slope’s premiere chocolate shops have one thing in common — aside from the obvious fact that they sell chocolates. Both were built from the creative energy of artists with a love for dessert who, as it turns out, just happened to have a knack for business. Both Nunu Chocolates and The Chocolate Room in Park Slope produce fine chocolates that you can find all over Brooklyn. But in the increasingly expensive Park Slope, running a successful retail and wholesale chocolate business is still a matter of precarity, constantly under the stress of balancing survival with your craft.
Naomi Josepher and her husband Jon Payson came to New York in pursuit of the arts. Now they own the Zagat-rated dessert cafe The Chocolate Room.
“Jon moved here to be a rock and roll drummer and I moved here to be a dancer. We met in a restaurant working together on the upper east side,” Josepher recalled meeting her husband in the ’90s. “We didn’t have a lot of money so at night we would walk up 2nd Avenue and go out for dessert. That was our thing.”
When they moved to Park Slope in 2003, they were both fitness consultants. When they decided to go into the restaurant business, renting out a dilapidated building across the street from their apartment cost them $1200 a month.
“Jon picked up a book on chocolate. He was in Barnes and Noble and called me asking ‘What about a chocolate shop? There’s no chocolate shops in Park Slope.’ So we took our $2,400 we had saved up for first month and last month.”
The Chocolate Shop opened January 2005. They were at their initial Park Slope location for 10 years, before moving across the street to 51 5th Avenue, where The Chocolate Room has been since 2013. There were only five items on the menu in 2005. Now they carry dozens of chocolates, brownies and cookies, prepackaged snacks like the chocolate caramel popcorn, and Naomi and Jon even have their own cookbook.
Their biggest hit was one of the original five. The recipe for the chocolate layer cake has not changed since 2005. It is still airy, still has delicious layers of light frosting. It is not overpowering the way you might expect a slice of chocolate layer cake to be. It’s decadent, but not overindulgent. You could sit yourself down at the with a cup of coffee or espresso and dig into to the slice, and still be able walk out the door without the assistance of a wheelbarrow.
Of course, that’s only if you stuck to the cake. It would be easy to be tempted with the addictive chocolate caramel popcorn, that is just heaven for lovers of salty and sweet. The chocolate chip cookie is another favorite of Chocolate Room regulars, but Naomi Josepher isn’t too pleased with it after 14 years.
“We are recreating our chocolate chip cookie,” Josepher said. “I’m not happy with it.”
A lot of folks running a business like this would not mess with success, but at The Chocolate Room something is different. The artistic passion that drives the owners means there is always more to be done, always practice and revision before the next performance.
Despite Zagat reviews, years of packed houses and reliable clientele, running a business in New York City is no cakewalk.
“There’s very few days we give ourselves pats on the back,” Josepher said. “We try to, but we are under constant challenge of how to make this work.”
These challenges include higher wages and higher rents. In order to stay afloat, and still give their employees a livable wage, The Chocolate Room has dove deeper into wholesale and web sales of chocolates. They sell via FreshDirect, and their brownies, cookies, and chocolates are sold at Barclays Center, Brooklyn Museum, and BAM.
Further south down 5th avenue, Andy Laird and wife Justine Pringle run Nunu Chocolates, a special store that is a cafe, bar, and chocolate factory all wrapped into one. With locations in Park Slope, Downtown Brooklyn, and now the Financial District in Manhattan, Nunu has been expanding since 2008. The idea of making chocolates started when Laird was a touring musician.
“We saw all the merch tables looked the same,” Laird said. “We thought what else could we put on the table that would be cool? And we both paused and said chocolate at the same time.”
They lived in Park Slope at the time and began selling chocolate to local businesses. In the nascent days of the food scene they sold at the first Brooklyn Flea and collaborated with other locals about how to run a business.
The chocolates are the star of the show in all locations. The Park Slope store is small, with the displays and chocolate machine lining the exposed brick walls. There is a beer tap behind the counter pumping out local brews. It is right at home next to the espresso machine. Beyond the counter, there are only a handful of tables.
The silver beast behind the counter was shooting out dark rectangular chocolates. They were salted, waiting to be packaged. These are the grahams. The highlight of Nunu’s selection is a wonderfully buttery graham cracker dipped in chocolate. The shop sells many boozy chocolates as well, partnering up with local breweries when they can. These kind of partnerships are Laird’s favorite part of the job.
“One of the saddest things is how few of the mom and pop shops we used to sell to still exist,” Laird said. “You are all in it together. Sure, it’s a bummer to miss out on an invoice, but these shops are really having a tough go.”
Laird echoed Josepher’s sentiments on the success of the shop. In this part of Brooklyn, it’s more survival than it is about trying to thrive. It’s impossible with Amazon, and the way online retail is going, to run a business like this without selling your wares online or wholesale.
“Wholesale can constrict for a few years. And now the new location is adding a new dynamic. This doesn’t necessarily replace [selling to local shops] because it’s not one to one, but it’s a different focus as we try to deal with that beast called Amazon.”
Nunu Chocolates’ Park Slope location opened in 2014. In 2018, a location opened in the World Trade Center. Managing this new shop is the owners’ primary focus for the time being.
