David Lurie – President, Seth Ellis Chocolatier, LLC

We make a product called Sun Cups. It’s a roasted sunflower seed buttercup, like a Reese’s Cup. We also make a mint cup and a caramel cup. And they identify to 11 of the top food allergies. So one of the opportunities that put us in a market that nobody else is in… we’ve created a product that we can put on the shelf that is allergen friendly and soon will be allergen free. The last left in the 12 food allergies is dairy and in 2015 we will do a dairy-free dark Sun Cup. And so that probably has become our biggest opportunity because the consumer base continues to grow as people learn that they have food allergies. Probably the biggest and most difficult challenge, and part of what’s connected me back to FIU, is this whole chocolate experience because those that know that chocolate’s a commodity and it’s getting harder and harder to grow, and harder and harder to find. And so the prices keep going up, and so sourcing a high quality product, like I do, that from the rain forest because we wanna give back; And then to be allergen free, and then to be soy lecithin free, as soy being one of the allergens to have a chocolate made like that because 95% of all chocolate that’s made today has some form of soy… or lecithin in it (may not be soy lecithin) is very difficult, and I’ve seen our prices go up tremendously. Dairy, same thing! We buy organic cream, and what’s happening is the organic dairy farmers are seeing that they can get as much money for conventional milk, and so they’re converting because it’s a lot less expensive. And so cream availability has gone way up. And finally, sunflower seeds! We do a roasted sunflower butter. We’re non-GMO, and so sourcing that with no pesticides is very difficult. And there’s a change-over every year in September. And so when the change-over happens, if we’re not prepared and we’d not bought enough of the sun butter paste in advance, we run out of the product and can’t make more. We’ve gotten very good about timing that, but we’re still kinda tied to one supplier and so looking for additional sources is always very difficult. So I’d say those are probably the biggest challenges, outside of the typical challenges of a start a business, which is raising money and having enough cash to keep operating.