When customers ask, "What's your favorite bar?", it's always a difficult question to answer. Asking me to choose a favorite from our carefully curated selection is like asking me to choose my favorite child. While I certainly have some bars that I eat more often than others, I enjoy almost every bar in the store at some time or another. I say "almost every bar" because my palate is different than some of our other team members. One of our team members, Julia, has a wonderful palate for chocolate, and prefers the earthy and smoky bars much more than I do. She has some favorites that I don't like so much. They're still fantastic bars of chocolate, they just aren't as suited to my preferences.

I use the differences between me and Julia as an example of how we curate our collection. While I make the final buying decisions, I take into account the feedback of my team because they eat a lot of chocolate, they have great palates and they know what makes a quality bar of artisan bean-to-bar chocolate.

In honor of the many varied palates of the Chocolopolis team, this week's Thursday happy hour features staff picks! It's the first time we've done this, and the team is excited. Each of them has made a sign describing one of their favorite bars, and we'll have those signs and samples of the bars out during happy hour on Thursday from 5-9pm. Here's what they've picked:

Julia - Fine + Raw Sea Salt
Roxanne - Amedei Red
Jennifer - Michel Cluizel Mangaro (Madagascar)
Heaven - Bonnat Java Milk 65%

For our final week of our third anniversary celebration we've scheduled a bevy of great chocolate events in addition to our weekly happy hour. From smoked chocolate mousse, to a happy hour that features Staff Picks to a serious talk on cacao farming in Panama to a "Meet the Chocolate Maker" event, we have something fun for everyone.

Happy chocolate tasting,
Lauren