A passion for chocolate
Sobeys inks deal with booming Peace by Chocolate to carry products
A marriage of two businesses that started off — as do many great love affairs — with a box of gourmet chocolates is driving the growth of a start-up Antigonish chocolatier.
In a deal inked between Sobeys and Tareq Hadhad’s Peace by Chocolate, the national grocery store chain is going to carry the Syrian-born, Canadian entrepreneur’s chocolates in its Atlantic Canadian stores starting in October.
“We’re really excited about it,” said Sobeys spokeswoman Shauna Selig in an interview Friday. “There’s the appetite to take it nationally if they have the capacity and want to do it.
“We don’t have an exclusivity agreement but have agreed to purchase all the product they can make,” she said. “To start, that will be the Sobeys in Atlantic Canada and then, as they increase production, we will be letting other regions know. Product may be in Foodland and Co-op stores throughout the Atlantic as well in the future.”
Peace by Chocolate, which started out as a tiny chocolate factory in a shed, is booming and moving into much bigger digs at 746 Cloverville Rd. in Antigonish.
That’s a Sobeys-owned building. Big 8 Beverages, a Sobeys subsidiary, operates on one side of the building. Peace by Chocolate is moving into the other side with a grand opening scheduled for Sept. 9.
“It’s almost (12) times bigger,” said Hadhad in an interview Friday. “The old factory was just a tiny shed. We moved the machines last weekend … and we are still doing the hiring.”
The company is planning to hire 15 – 25 people depending on the final configuration of its production line.
The main criteria to get those jobs is simple enough. It’s a passion for chocolate. “We just need people who love chocolate,” said Hadhad. “It’s a job that can be trained for in a week.”
Born in Syria, the physician-turned-entrepreneur and his family left the country in 2013. After working with the United Nations and World Health Organization in the region, he came to Canada as a refugee in December two years ago.
Within months, he and his family were making their first chocolates. Their adopted community of Antigonish embraced them and went so far as to help them with that shed which has housed their first chocolate factory.
It was a love affair from the start.
And when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau mentioned the family’s chocolate-making business in a speech before the United Nations in September last year, Peace by Chocolate’s business skyrocketed.
“When I opened the online store at Christmas last year, in December, there were 1,500 boxes of chocolate ordered in three hours,” said Hadhad. “People were so excited that we had to shut it down. There was no place to make that chocolate.” Now, there will be. Although Peace by Chocolate’s products do taste great, Hadhad admits that most people are in love with the chocolates even before they taste them. This family’s success clearly inspires many people. It’s Peace by Chocolate’s social commitment, though, that clinches it for most people.
The privately held company, which does not disclose either its revenues or profits, takes at least a part of those profits and uses them to help others in need.
“When there were wildfires in Alberta … part of the profits … went to the relief efforts in Fort McMurray,” said Hadhad.
The entrepreneur’s energy, creativity and social commitment has not gone unnoticed. Friday, the Invest Nova Scotia economic development fund announced it had named Hadhad to its board of directors.
“Tareq will make an excellent addition to the Invest Nova Scotia board,” said Business Minister Geoff MacLellan in a statement. “Tareq’s enterpreneurial journey and experience building the Peace by Chocolate brand will be invaluable as Invest Nova Scotia continues to fund projects that build a stronger economy and create more jobs for young Nova Scotians.”
Hadhad’s first meeting as a board member of Invest Nova Scotia, which is currently in talks to bring in yet another board member and has an additional vacancy on the board beyond that one, will be Sept. 15.
“It is an honour for me to get this appointment,” said Hadhad. “It shows the people of this province really care about newcomers.”
Invest Nova Scotia, whose mission is to fund innovative ideas that can boost the economy, has an annual budget of $5 million. So far, three projects have been approved: the Propel ICT business accelerator; the Navigate Startup House incubator, and; the Social Enterprise Network of Nova Scotia.
“The one that excites me and it’s very much outside the box is the Social Enterprise Network,” said Invest Nova Scotia chairman Kenneth Deveau in an interview Friday. “They generate revenue to reinvest in other projects and make a greater impact on society…. They are developing an entrepreneurial spirit.”
It was Hadhad’s combination of education, experience living and working in other countries, his entrepreneurial flair and commitment to social causes that endeared him to Invest Nova Scotia.
“Tareq really brings something unique, an original perspective,” said Deveau. “We don’t want a bunch of people around the table with the same outlook on life. “He’s a person with tremendous energy ... an amazing networker and asks questions no-one else would think to ask.”