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From CRS to Chocolate, and so much in between!

A lot has happened since graduating from Cal in 1999. I was one of those re-entry students when I arrived at Cal in 1997 and had been involved with the Golden Gate National Recreation Area’ s park restoration program and had also been deeply involved in City College of San Francisco’s biology and ecology departments. At one point I was the college liaison for the Park Service, conducting class presentations in order to entice students to volunteer for restoration activities in the Marin Headlands. It helped that some instructors offered extra credit for such noble activities. Not to mention that views of the city from the Headlands were amazing!

After arriving at Cal, I immersed myself in classes and campus life, enjoying the fact that I did not have to work while going to school full-time-wow what a concept. My two years at Cal went very quickly and I often found myself wishing that I could have been there for the full four years - but I guess there is always graduate school. I was part of the well known CRS program (Conservation and Resource Studies) and was able to construct my own curriculum around my passion at the time, which was wetlands and wetland restoration.

During my last semester, I took a class taught by some outside environmental consultants that focused on the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). I liked the fact that the class focused on various aspects of the environmental world, including policy, permitting, planning, and various environmental resource areas.

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Upon graduation, I hit the ground running trying to find an entry-level job in the environmental consulting field. I eventually landed a job with a small consulting firm in Oakland that was working closely with the Navy on clean-up activities at various Navy facilities in the Bay Area. I quickly learned that not all environmental consulting was created equal. This particular firm focused on health and risk management-which meant lots of number crunching, something I did not find very interesting. Several months later I left after taking a job with yet another firm, doing more of the type of work I was interested in - my first project included working with US Coast Guard.

Fast forward several years and I found myself feeling unchallenged creatively; much of consulting work includes reviewing documents written by specialists in other fields (e.g. traffic specialists, geologists, hydrologists, etc) and incorporating that information into a document that will ultimately be used by lawmakers to approve or deny a project.

I ultimately figured out that I needed to find something creative in order to balance out the more cerebral part of my life. I started baking, something I used to do when I was a kid, in the kitchen with my grandmother. I also started taking classes in baking thinking that I might want to become a pastry chef. Somewhere along the way, I also began incorporating chocolate into the recipes and was constantly asked by friends to provide the chocolate desserts for their special events.

I traveled to Paris, France, to study pastry and chocolate for several weeks at the Ritz (I had also spent 4 months in Italy while a student at City College) with one of their renowned pastry chefs. I continued taking classes in the Bay Area and experimenting on my own.

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At one point I was making both pastries and chocolate candies and thought about starting a business that would incorporate both of these items. It should be noted that all this time, I was working full-time in the environmental consulting business.

It soon became clear that I needed to focus on either chocolate or pastry, and after a discussion with a pastry chef friend, I decided to channel all of my creative energies into chocolate.

Fast forward again several more years and I now am the proud owner of Coco Delice Fine Chocolates. The business based in Oakland, has grown slowly and steadily and I have developed a following here in the Bay Area, with our products being sold at Whole Foods and the Pasta Shops to name a few. Our chocolates are made from high-quality chocolate, we use locally produced organic cream, many of our fruits and spices used in our chocolates are organic, we use no preservatives, and we have incorporated some Fair Trade chocolate into some of our recipes.

While I no longer work for an environmental consulting firm, I have begun my own consulting firm (Kearney and Associates), where I am a sub-consultant to other firms. Presently, I am working mostly on water supply projects for the City and County of San Francisco, but am looking to expand my connections with other firms in the Bay Area that are working on smaller, more short-term projects.

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It should be noted that my chocolate company is my top priority, but my consulting work has allowed me to steadily build the chocolate business without taking on too much debt or having to rely on investors. In fact, I am in the process of searching for a site in Oakland’s re-development zone that can be turned into the new Coco Delice Fine Chocolate production facility. And of course, this facility would be the “greenest” chocolate facility in the country - would one expect anything less from a Cal CRS graduate?

My current vision includes

and lots of other fun green stuff.

In preparation for this vision, I am working with the San Francisco Small Business Development Center which has provided me help in developing a long-term financial plan and has helped me to re-construct my business plan. The SBA also has a program for helping small businesses purchase their own buildings, something I plan to take advantage of.

This is a very exciting time for me, for so many of the things that I have worked on in the last decade are all coming together in an amazing way. And while I am not a specialist in all the areas that will come into play for my new vision of the chocolate production facility, I am comforted by the fact that I have the Cal community to fall back on for advice and expertise.

Dennis Kearney
posted September 23, 2009 10:15 PM

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Comments (1)

I like to talk to about some business plains for another country, please call me @ 415-771-1207.

posted by Shahid Hassan | 2009-11-11

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