Business View Caribbean | November 2020

74 BUSINESS VIEW CARIBBEAN NOVEMBER 2020 Triple Pleasure Chocolate Cake. “The creation is hand-crafted and blended from scratch to perfection,” she notes proudly. More corporate clients came calling for Smith’s decadent delights and her workforce was kept busy fulfilling orders for corporate, charitable, and community events. Five Caribbean hotels contracted Chocolate Dreams to provide ‘turn- down’ chocolates to be placed on guests’ pillows each evening. “People want sweets and comfort food,” says Smith of her handcrafted luxury chocolates. “We have a good brand so we’ve been able to command a lot of the market for it.” At the time, nobody could have anticipated that a world-wide pandemic would effectively close the hospitality industry down. So when COVID-19 struck, the growth that Chocolate Dreams was enjoying came to an abrupt halt. “We’ve had some challenges,” admits Smith. “Until the hotels get back to a certain occupancy, we don’t have that business anymore, so we’ve had to downsize.” Chocolate Dreams once again amalgamated to include retail and manufacturing in one location. Like many businesses in the COVID-era, Smith had to let several employees go, leaving her with only seven workers, down from 23. She acknowledges, “What happened in the factory prior to doing that was that we made the turn- down chocolates for five hotels on the north coast. We have over 250 hotels here so I had just started breaking into the market; I had been servicing them for a long time and I was just about to expand so that I could provide them with more, when COVID struck.” Chocolate Dreams continues a wholesale business to area restaurants and cafes, as well as having a boutique shop to service individual orders and walk-ins. “I still try for the corporate clients but, of course, corporate events have been cut,” Smith says. “A lot of events that I used to do have been cut and in order to keep my presence in a sector that is virtually non-existent now, I’ve Owner, Michelle Smith