Denver temperatures remain in the 80s after a month of record-setting heat. It’s hard to believe that the winter holiday season is almost upon us.

But at Muppet labs we have been hard at work creating seasonal drink mixes for this fall and winter, and two projects are now complete. Both are following the trend this year toward comfort-food drinks. This will be a strong season for flavors associated with a traditional home kitchen.

For one customer, we developed a Pumpkin Spice syrup. Our second formulation involved creating a ginger spice latte.  We are extremely happy with the results in both cases.

From a flavor standpoint, customers also have begun inquiring about our spicy chocolate syrup which has a chocolate base and is flavored with peppers, ginger and cinnamon.

As people grapple with political, economic, and financial uncertainty, the consumer shift to the comfortable becomes even more pronounced.  So this year, get ready to enjoy the taste of pumpkin pie, gingerbread and chocolate and cinnamon in your special beverage.

Last post, I recounted a story of a chain that switched from making its own chocolate syrups to Mont Blanc products.

Let me say now that I would never discourage someone from trying to create their own products to use in their stores. A unique mocha is a wonderful drink and, as the most popular flavored beverage served in a café, becomes something of a signature beverage.

For those do-it-yourself mocha makers, I would say that it’s good to consider the following:
1. Consistency is the hallmark of any successful café, so having a consistent chocolate drink is important. Understand going into it that this is very hard to do when mixing different ingredients every day. And consistency becomes exponentially more difficult when different employees are making the chocolate syrup. Trying to get every employee to measure different ingredients accurately and make sure that they blend properly is challenging at best.

2. You will need to make the syrup fresh every day. The mixture of cocoa powder, sugar, and water doesn’t contain any preservatives and has a high water activity. Therefore, it is very susceptible to mold growth. Refrigeration can help slightly, but it isn’t feasible to keep the chocolate syrup container refrigerated and bring it out for every chocolate drink you make.

3. Portion control can be a challenge. This gets back to a consistent drink and one that isn’t left to the odd measurement by employees. One of the things Mont Blanc does is pack a ½ oz. dispenser pump in every case of product that we sell. That way, operators have consistent measures and recipes for every drink they serve. One forum participant said his recipe used equal parts cocoa and sugar and water, mixed until it seemed like the right consistency. Not exactly precise measurements! For sanitation and consistency, the best method is a stainless steel bowl and pump. Expensive, but precise. If you go this route the bowl and pump will need to be thoroughly cleaned every day or two. Don’t forget to completely dry every component of a stainless steel pump or the trapped water will create microbial growth in the fresh product you add. By packing a disposable pump in every case Mont Blanc sells, we actually encourage our customers to use the pumps in all four bottles and then throw away the pumps without worrying about cleaning them.

4. A successful mocha is a unique mocha. All of our customers are known for their unique mochas. For that reason, we currently produce three different chocolate syrups with unique taste profiles. Sweet Dark Chocolate is for people who prefer a sweeter drink, Semi Sweet is for customers who want a more European taste, and our newest syrup using chocolate from Ghana is made using Omanhene cocoa powder. Combining any of those tastes with unique espresso blends is sure to create a signature drink.

5. Take a careful look at cost. The issue of cost came in the discussion forum and several people commented that it is cheaper to buy the ingredients and mix them in the store daily instead of purchasing a ready-made chocolate syrup. Appearances can be deceiving. The costs of all of the raw materials need to be considered. The most important is cocoa powder. Different cocoa powders will yield different tasting syrups, so in creating your recipes it is important to realize that there are many kinds of cocoa powders and each one will give you a very different taste profile.

There are innumerable questions that can be raised in regards to which raw materials to use – and the costs associated with those materials.

For cocoa, will you use a low-fat or high-fat powder? Alkalized or natural? Domestic or imported? Single origin or blend? Once you have sampled enough different cocoa powders (in syrups, of course) to make a decision, keep in mind that you need to purchase a sufficient quantity from your supplier to enable you to make enough syrup every day. Buying in small quantities will increase the cost. Next, there is sugar. And this, too, will influence the taste and final cost of your syrup. Regular granulated or baker’s sugar? Brown sugar? Organic or Fair Trade? Finally, are you adding any additional ingredients, such as vanilla? Pure vanilla, of course, is expensive (I found several suppliers online selling it at about $60/gallon). If you do use vanilla, I recommend buying an eye dropper to help measure the number of drops per batch.

Trial and error will help determine how much to add to your recipe. But that will bring you back to the over-arching questions related to the cost and value of creating your own syrup.

• Is there any waste or mess when mixing the product?

• Can your employees measure a precise amount every time? Spilled drops of vanilla and an ounce or two of sugar and cocoa powder left on the counter adds up when you are throwing that much money away every day.

• How long does the mixture keep before a fresh batch needs to be made? If any gets thrown away, that is another cost. And do you have a backup container ready to go? Running out of syrup always seems to happen just before the big rush of mochas are ordered, and it is a time consuming process to make a fresh batch while customers are waiting.

• How consistent is the product, and is it made the same way each time by every employee? Remember that your customers will need to know what to expect each time they order their mochas.

After you consider all of these points, you might consider the blind taste test I wrote about in my Aug. 9 post. I’m more than happy to send samples for comparison.

I was reading an online coffee forum where there was an active discussion about the advantages of making ones’ own chocolate syrup from scratch in a store daily, as opposed to buying one that is ready-made. A lot of the comments were accurate, such as the ability to customize a particular taste profile by working with different cocoa powders, sugar ratios, and unique formulas.

The forum discussion reminded me of an event involving a highly successful chain of coffee shops that used to make its own chocolate syrup from scratch in their stores - daily. When we first approached this company, it took great pride in their unique chocolate syrup that incorporated cocoa powder, sugar, and water. They already had a number of stores and each of these stores created their syrups every day.

Mont Blanc presented the executive team - all of whom are well-respected for their coffee expertise - with several of our syrups and we invited them to do a blind tasting. In the blind tasting, all five of the tasters - including their coffee roaster and CEO (who at the time had been in the business for over 20 years) - all ranked the drinks made from their homemade syrup last.

The result was they switched to one of our syrups. But there was high-level concern that store managers would be upset they were “selling out” by purchasing a ready-made product. To the contrary, all of their store managers and many of their baristas were thrilled they no longer had to make a mess in their stores every day by mixing cocoa powder on the counter in full view of customers.

Their employees understood the tradeoffs and decided that although the idea of a store-made syrup was appealing, the reality was that a ready-made syrup gave them consistency, portion control, increased food safety and ease of use.

That blind tasting was nearly 10 years ago and we continue to supply their chocolate syrup. And every year they sell more mochas than the last.

Now I would never discourage shop owners from trying to create their own products to use in their stores. But before embarking upon the path of creating a unique syrup from scratch, it’s useful to keep five points in mind. I’ll talk about those in my next post.

I’m curious. Do any readers of this blog currently make their own chocolate syrup from scratch?