Isabel Garcia Nevett: My sister Susana and I make artisan chocolates using mostly chocolate made in the country of origin of the cacao. In our case, it's Venezuela. We take a lot of inspiration from our childhoods in Venezuela, where there is very good chocolate and cacao. We have that chocolate background from growing up there. Then, we infused that with our new home in South Miami and South Florida. Now we have this Miami layer to it as well.
Isabel Garcia Nevett: My sister started her first chocolate business in Venezuela. She developed a crunchy caramel that she dipped in chocolate, and that was about 20 years ago. She was doing it more for gifting during the holidays. But it set her on the journey, because when you are going to dip something in chocolate, you don't just dip it. You have to really learn. There's a lot of technique behind chocolate. We were still in Venezuela when we got together and started our first small chocolate business.
After a while, it became unsustainable for us to remain there, so we decided to move. We were lucky that our whole family ended up in Miami. Once Susana and I were here, we decided to start a chocolate company here in Miami. There was [definitely] a learning curve.
"You can drop me in any part of our business, and I'll know what to do. I can make chocolate. I can do the social media posts, and I can also tell you our sales numbers."
—Isabel Garcia Nevett, Garcia Nevett, Chocolatier de Miami
Isabel Garcia Nevett: We started very small and grew very organically. We started our first company, Cacao Art, in 2012. That's when we were tiny cottage food producers working out of our kitchens. We did events, we did markets, and so on. Then, we started growing. We started entering our chocolates for awards and getting some recognition. We appeared in newspapers. We started talking to people in our area, and then we rented our first commercial kitchen. We worked out of that, and then we decided to take a leap of faith in 2018 by opening our first brick-and-mortar store.
When we decided to open a store, we did some thinking about our brand. We changed from Cacao Art to Garcia Nevett, our parents' last name. We wanted to really make people understand that this is something that we're so proud of that we put our name on it.
It also harkens back to chocolatiers as artisans in their own right. Much like you will find in Europe, a lot of them put their names on their chocolate products. We wanted to create a space that felt sophisticated. We want our brand to be elegant and sophisticated, but also homey in the sense that you feel very welcome.
Isabel Garcia Nevett: We used QuickBooks Online from the get-go, even before we had an online shop. We use Shopify as our point of sale and online shop, and we like that it's fully integrated with QuickBooks. We also have a PayPal account that’s fully integrated with QuickBooks. Our bank accounts are also fully integrated, which makes everything much easier for us.
Our biggest social media channel is Instagram. That's where we have most of our following. I like to say my client is very much a woman like me, and we're mostly on Instagram at the moment. We also post on LinkedIn. Some people have asked us, why aren't you on TikTok? It's a generational thing—I don't get it!
Isabel Garcia Nevett: Susana and I have divided up the responsibilities in a way that works out for us. Susana is very creative, so she does a lot of our design work and product design. I take care of social media. I handle the business operations side with our accountant, but we each do a little bit of everything. We're trying very hard to get to the place where we're working on our business and not in our business.
"We used QuickBooks from the get-go, even before we had an online shop."
—Isabel Garcia Nevett, Garcia Nevett, Chocolatier de Miami
Isabel Garcia Nevett: It's worked out really well for us. One of our family traits is that we're very fair, and that's a family value: fairness, justice. If Susana is working extra hours, I'll make sure I work extra. I'll make sure she gets a break. If we're investing in the business, we both always invest the same. If there's a decision to be made, we might get someone else to come in, but if one of us isn't OK with an idea, then it's shelved. We'll talk about it later. We're also extremely loyal. And we try to be very fair when it comes to anything to do with business in general.
Isabel Garcia Nevett: I’m a peacemaker. I’m introverted. When it comes to chocolate, it sort of gives you the idea that I love just sitting down with my chocolates and a cup of tea and taking that moment alone. And I want to think I have a good sense of humor.
Isabel Garcia Nevett: She's very creative, she’s a go-getter, and she's also very funny. We have that in common.
Isabel Garcia Nevett: The importance of knowing what your business’s story is, telling that story, and figuring out how your customer fits into that story. It's not just about us. We want them to give them that experience of real chocolate, of all the work that goes into it. There's a lot to educate the consumer about—why's this chocolate so much more expensive than other chocolate, for example— but there's so much behind chocolate that people just take for granted. It’s a very complex food to make and then to process into something else.
And when people understand, they feel more kinship toward our brand, which is ultimately what we want. We want people to feel that connection, that they also belong to our story. I can tell you stories for every one of our bonbons.
Isabel Garcia Nevett: This is our second year in our new commercial kitchen. We needed a bigger space because we wanted to increase production. It's been a learning curve. One of the most important lessons is to have a team that you can rely on. But you have to have a procedures manual where everything is written down. So in case there's a change in your team, you can smoothly transition [the work] to someone else.
Isabel Garcia Nevett: Like I said before, we've grown very slowly, very organically. We've done this little by little, only what we can afford. We've bootstrapped a lot of our business, to be honest. We only just started getting loans and a line of credit in the past two years, I would say. We didn't want to do a huge investment with a huge loan or anything like that, that we weren't ready for.
Isabel Garcia Nevett: We’ve had a good experience with our bank so far. We were able to get terms that worked for us. Right now, we have our line of credit that we use for emergencies. We try to be very responsible with credit cards. We try to pay them off as quickly as we can. So we’re conservative.
Isabel Garcia Nevett: Sometimes it makes me feel overwhelmed, but most of the time I'm really proud. Both Susana and I have children, and we love that they grew up around this shop. They grew up seeing us grow as a business. Both our little girls think they will take over at some point. That's our exit strategy, to leave them the store. I love that they can be proud. They can see their moms doing something that's worthwhile.
Isabel Garcia Nevett: That we can pay our employees good salaries. We're excited about training them, paying them. They're excited to come work for us, which is great. We're women-owned, women-operated, and we have a few men who come in and out.
Isabel Garcia Nevett: Christmas accounts for 35% of our sales for the year. 40% of our year starts in November. It's a huge deal. I was very proud that this year we didn't just keep our heads above water. We were able to celebrate Christmas with our families. We opened the store every day. We produced enough. It’s not like we weren’t at the shop, coming home at eight every night, but we felt so much more on top of things.
Isabel Garcia Nevett: Definitely my husband and my little girl. I know they're both really excited about seeing the company grow. Obviously, my mom and dad, I mean, we named the business after them, so that's definitely something that keeps us going. Of course, my team, we have a beautiful team of mostly immigrant women, so we want to be there for them as well.
Isabel Garcia Nevett: Not necessarily opening more and more shops, but growing the online side of our business. We're looking to increase production to make sure that our company is viable. We want to grow on the corporate gifting side, which is a huge part of the business. One of my dreams is to showcase our chocolate at the chocolate salon in Paris, which is a huge deal.
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