Kate and Steve at their café on Isle au Haut.
Way back in 1995, when we met as housemates in one of those funky California cooperatives, we just knew that we were destined to work together. At the time, Steve owned and managed a small computer company and Kate was finishing up her degree in English Lit while working her way through the kitchens of California restaurants. Kate liked Steve's energy, his sticktoitiveness, and his really quirky sense of humor. Steve liked the way Kate knew her way around a pool table and loved new ideas and adventure. Together, we shared a love of food and community, not to mention a complete inability to think inside the box. Hooking up was a no-brainer.
Thirteen years later, married, and living in a hard-working New England fishing community, we're a long way from chore wheels, house meetings, and Om-ing around the dinner table. But our cooperative values are as strong as ever.
Two decades in kitchens from California to Maine has taught Kate lots about food and farms and the power of locally supported agriculture and small business. Mostly it's taught her that things just taste better when they're fresher. And Steve has learned that he's happiest working and thinking in and for small communities. A self-proclaimed "jack of all trades," his varied jobs and experiences (from owning a computer business to positions in town government to building houses to sterning on a lobster boat) lend infinitely to his creative can-do attitude regarding... well, just about everything.
The idea of making truffles on a wind-swept island off the coast of Maine was just random enough to appeal to us four years ago when Kate started studying chocolate. The idea of opening a funky, slightly urbane café in which to sell them at the edge of a quiet island forest was even more random—and therefore even more appealing. With Steve's talent at business and creative problem solving and Kate's gift with food and presentation, it sounded like just the business for us.
So you could say that our vision of working together has moved beyond marriage and roshambo-ing for bathroom cleaning duties. Creating BDC together isn't just about great chocolate, but about supporting local agriculture and using local resources as often as we can. It's about caring for our community and discovering and caring about communities as far away as Venezuela and Peru and Madagascar and Columbia and all the places where cacao is grown and traded. It's about expanding our sense of community to our customers, our patrons and anyone that peeks in just to say hi.
It's a way of thinking outside the box about the chocolates in the box.