Scharffen Berger is an artisan chocolate makers company owned by Artisan Confections Company (A subsidiary group of The Hershey Company). The story of the company is much more interesting and personal than many others and gives the brand a much more unique and romantic feel about it. The company are often considered the starting force for the boom of high quality premium chocolates in the United States.
The story started with the physician and co-founder of Scharffen Berger, Robert Steinberg. In 1989 Steinberg was diagnosed with cancer and was told that he had a 50% chance of dying within 10 years of the diagnosis. Steinberg sold his doctors practice and started to explore some more interesting career choices for the remainder of his life. At some point Steinberg read through a 600 page book about chocolate and cooking at the suggestion of a friend which is what influenced him and interested him in the art of chocolate making.
Steinberg travelled a lot to learn more and more about the process of chocolate making and visited a chocolate company in Lyon, France called Bernachon. He loved the company and sent them a letter asking if he could take part in an internship to learn more about the their methods in chocolate making.
He was successful an Bernachon granted him a 2 week internship.
After returning from France, Steinberg soon ran into his neighbour and former patient John Sharffenberger. Scharffenberger told Steinberg about how he was looking to sell his wine making business and winery and look to other business ventures. During the conversation Steinberg offered Scharffenberger a piece of chocolate that he acquired at his internship.
"Robert had this chunk of chocolate in his pocket that I think he'd been carrying for months. But it tasted better than anything I'd ever had,"
This event made Scarffenberger and Steinberg partner up and start creating chocolate. Their first experiments worked with using very basic home kitchen instruments and making the chocolate in Steinberg's own home. They used the name Scharffen Berger Chocolate Maker because Scharffenberger's own wine business already had a relatively well known name in the surrounding area and gave the company a head start.
In 1997 the pari made their first batch of chocolate in a factory in San Francisco. In just 4 years the company had already moved to a larger factory in California.
Scarffen Berger were one of the first companies to really appreciate the premium chocolate production and performed every step of the creating including actually roasting the beans themselves. They were the first american chocolate company to ever put the % of cocoa solids on the packaging of the bar, a trait which has been since copied and become the standard for premium chocolate bars as it gives the suggestion of higher quality.
On July 25th 2005 the company announced that they were to be bought out by the Hershey Company for double the annual profit of the company (Approximately $20 million). In the same year Hershey bought another similar premium chocolate brand and formed the Artisan Confections company which has since grown to incorporate more chocolatiers.
Steinberg died as a result of his diagnosed Lymphoma on September 27th 2008 aged 61. He survived for nearly double his originally predicted life expectancy.
Currently Scharffen Berger produce a number of different chocolate based products, the most renowned probably being the chocolate bars. They come in 1 or 3 ounce bars and cover around 8 different flavours.
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