As we get ready to celebrate Labor Day weekend 2014, we also celebrate another exciting milestone: construction has begun at 221 West 79th Street, NYC!
After two years of dreaming and working and planning, this week we finally had all the requisite permits in hand, and we began to build out our physical space. Soon... there will be a physical location where you will be able to go to learn about chocolatiering and to make beautiful, delicious, personalized things with your own hands.
We have to admit, it's actually a bit audacious to create a business dedicated to personal experiences that happen in a physical place. We've noticed that the most talked-about ventures these days tend to involve "an app for that," and so many entrepreneurs are trying to facilitate transactions via screens rather than encourage interactions in person. Of course, many digital innovations are cool and useful, but... they're mostly aimed at allowing us to get away with doing less. Interacting less. Going fewer places in the real world and spending less time connecting as a community.
Voilà Chocolat aspires to offer an antidote to all that. Going to a physical place and making tangible things -- such as fine chocolate treasures that you can touch and smell and taste and admire and present to someone else who will be delighted by it -- is an incredibly fun, satisfying, even therapeutic endeavor. You can derive pride and happiness from crafting physical things, whether creating beautiful chocolates to give to a loved one or constructing a beautiful store to share with the community, that you can't feel from anything else.
So as we approach Labor Day, our physical labor is underway. We've hired contractors, they're laying floors and running electricity, and soon you will have an amazing and unique place in the neighborhood to come and make your own chocolates -- what a wild idea!
We wish everyone: Happy Labor (Day).
Consulting the plans for 221 West 79th Street.
New kid on the block.
