FALL RIVER — Thousands of strawberries and enough roses to rival any florist, if florists made bouquets out of chocolate. With Valentine’s Day around the corner, a local chocolate company is gearing up for one of the busiest times of year.
Francis Cox, president of Dorothy Cox’s Chocolates and part of the third generation to run the family business, said Valentine’s Day is the third busiest time of year for them, after Christmas and Easter.
The company sells about 250 different kinds of chocolate candies, but this week, most customers will be looking for something specific. Chocolate-covered strawberries are their number one seller for Valentine’s Day; chocolate roses are also popular.
“People tend to know what they want,” Cox said. “They hopefully already know what their girlfriend or boyfriend likes.”
The Fairhaven-based company relocated their factory from Wareham to the former Save a Lot building on Fall River’s Griffin Street late last year. The building includes a retail shop, along with the factory where about 15 people craft their confections.
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Inside the manufacturing portion of the building, machines like chocolate melters, conveyor belts and chocolate enrobers – devices used to cover things with chocolate that Cox compared to a “little chocolate car wash” — sit next to shelves loaded with ingredients like industrial-sized bags of milk powder and ten-pound bars of chocolate waiting to be melted down.
Since moving to Fall River, the company has purchased four chocolate-making machines from Necco so they can start making their own chocolate from scratch for the first time, instead of belting down bars to cover things like raisins or put into molds. And, they plan to start offering homemade ice cream in time for this summer.
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Valentine’s Day chocolates and roses
But this week, they’re focused on gearing up for some of the most hectic days of the year.
Along with the strawberries and roses, many customers will pick up some of their butter crunch candies, the company’s signature chocolate-cover toffee pieces. Cox said the method for making those is the one recipe to remain completed unchanged since his great aunt, Dorothy Cox, launched the business in 1928.
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All told, Valentine’s Day will mean they sell about 500 pounds of chocolate-covered strawberries, all dipped by hand, 500 pounds of butter crunch and 3,000 chocolate roses, Cox said.
“It’s a big time for us,” he said.
Audrey Cooney can be reached at [email protected]. Support local journalism by purchasing a digital or print subscription to The Herald News today.
