Crowdfunding push to relaunch The San Francisco Chocolate Factory brand

By Douglas Yu

- Last updated on GMT

The San Francisco Chocolate Factory was renamed Bridge Brands five years ago
The San Francisco Chocolate Factory was renamed Bridge Brands five years ago

Related tags Chocolate Marketing

A $10,000 crowdfunding push has been started in a bid to relaunch The San Francisco Chocolate Factory brand.

Bridge Brands - which was formerly known as The San Francisco Chocolate Factory - has launched a campaign on crowdfunding site Fundable.com to resurrect the brand.

The San Francisco Chocolate Factory was started in 2000 and manufactured city-themed chocolate products to the tourist trade in the Bay Area.

“As tourists went home, we started getting more calls for shipments to other parts of the country,”​ said CEO Mike Litton. “We changed our name to Bridge Brands about five years ago to accommodate other parts of the country that wanted less of a San Francisco affiliation.”

“As we started developing more products for other cities and other niche markets, we lost our focus on simply selling gourmet chocolates under our original name, The San Francisco Chocolate Factory, our strong base,”​ he added.

Chocolate discs

Bridge Brands offers chocolate discs including 31% white chocolate, 38% milk chocolate and 72% dark chocolate. They retail between $7.50 and $10 for a three-ounce tin and are primarily available in specialty shops, duty-free shops, wineries, souvenir shops, as well as Marshalls and BevMo throughout the US.

“We are unique insofar as we sell gourmet chocolate in bite-sized pieces in tins designed for different niche markets,”​ said Litton.

The business said it has opted for the crowdfunding route to relaunch The San Francisco Chocolate Factory brand as it doesn’t have “deep pockets like Hershey, Nestlé and Mars.”

“We started the business with personal savings and have plowed everything back into the company as we have grown,”​ Litton said. “We need the capital to finally hire the sales support and marketing experience we need to grow sales of our products.”

The old-fashioned way

Otherwise, it will “keep doing things the old fashioned way, with blood, sweat, and tears,”​ added marketing consultant Skip Sanzeri.

The company hopes the funding will help to grow the business by at least 30% per year and to increase its national distribution.

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3 comments

Fair enough...

Posted by Massie,

How about this for an objective fact? If you go to the backers' section you'll see that Mike Litton and a Greg contributed. Well, Mike is the president of the company that's asking for money and Grant works for fundable itself. So 50% of the backers are not real backers.

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ConfectioneryNews response

Posted by Oliver Nieburg,

Hi Massie,
We chose to take down the comments as we're unable to prove personal experiences with the company as truthful. I will contact you by email with further rationale as I cannot do so here without repeating the comments.
Regards,
Oliver Nieburg, ConfectioneryNews editor

Report abuse

Why do you delete truthful comments about this company, Douglas?

Posted by Massie,

Why are negative comments being deleted, will you get a percentage of whatever they're able to muster from their pathetic little fundraiser? Well, that number will be ZERO. Just like your journalistic integrity. Why silence the truth?!??!!

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