According to Dictionary.com, an artisan is, “a person skilled in an applied art or craft,” which is why Chocolate Pizza Company in Marcellus, New York has been this area’s home for artisan chocolate for nearly 30 years. We have a team of skilled artisans who create the most amazing, unique and delicious chocolate specialties imaginable. Fine chocolate is part science and part art form and our talented team are masters of both.
There is a handmade quality to artisan chocolate that distinguishes it from products that are mass produced. There are giant chocolate companies with machines that automate every function of the process and relegate the human aspect to simply monitoring dials, digits and conveyors. There is plenty of science perhaps in mass produced chocolate but there is no art form, no individuality, no applied craft. Machines can run around the clock, at speeds that far exceed human capacity but they lack character, distinctiveness and suffer quality.
Fine chocolate, artisan chocolate, requires a personal touch, a human touch. It requires people like we have at Chocolate Pizza Company who are true chocolatiers.
When we say we make chocolate that is unique, delicious and impressive, we mean it. Machines don’t make it, we do. Human hands, not stainless-steel depositors, are behind Chocolate Pizza Company treats. For example, our best-selling Peanut Butter Wings are rippled potato chips covered in peanut butter and drenched in chocolate. We make hundreds of thousands of Wings a year and each chip has peanut butter applied by hand.
Why would we do that? Because we don’t want to thin our peanut butter with oils or additives that would be necessary to have a machine automate that process. We want to use real peanut butter and lots of it and to do that you need a person picking up each chip and applying peanut butter before it is covered in chocolate. The result is a one-of-a-kind taste experience many customers describe as the best thing they’ve ever eaten.
Our custom Chocolate Pizzas are the definition of artisan chocolate. There are machines that can write, “Happy Birthday,” or “Get Well Soon,” or “Merry Christmas,” or any other message on a Chocolate Pizza but we do every one of ours by hand. Each year, thousands and thousands of customized Chocolate Pizzas are scripted in white chocolate by chocolatiers whose skill adds an unmistakable personal touch to these distinctive chocolate gifts. It’s an amazing skill that few people have but it is the essence of artisan chocolate – the creation of a made-just-for-you Chocolate Pizza that is unique in every way.
People appreciate handmade gifts. They recognize the craftsmanship of making something from scratch. There is a very personal appeal to things that were made for us by someone rather than something that rolled off an assembly line.
But our chocolatiers do more than Chocolate Pizza and Peanut Butter Wings. They apply their creativity to an impressive array of chocolate specialties like caramel and nut Drumsticks, pecan and cashew Clusters, Peanut Butter Sparklers, Fancy Chocolate Flip-Flops, beautiful “Tux and Gown” pretzel pairs and elegant “Lace and Pearls” wedding favors. The variety is end-less but the craftsmanship is consistent and magical. We see chocolate as a canvas and our chocolatiers as artists. We invite new ideas, new tastes, new ingredients, new directions because that creative freshness is the heart of what we do.
Where we use specialized equipment in our production process supports, not replaces, our people. It may be a computerized melting vat that stirs hundreds of pounds of exceptional Swiss-style chocolate or a tempering machine that holds our melted chocolate in a precise temperature range or an enrobing belt that drops a curtain of tempered chocolate for our sweets to pass under. But at each stage, people are creating, decorating, packaging and presenting the products – skilled people applying their craft.
Chocolate Pizza Company proves every day that artisan chocolate made right here in Marcellus has the quality, creativity and consistency to attract legions of customers across town, across the country and even across the globe. We have received orders from chocolate lovers on 6 continents and had our handcrafted chocolate enjoyed by A-list celebrities, Hall of Fame athletes, music legends, top political and business leaders and more. In October, we shipped 31,000 handmade Chocolate Pizzas to a national retailer who featured our artisan chocolate in 215 stores across 16 states.
But just as important to us is the “Happy Anniversary” Chocolate Pizza we made and delivered to a military wife whose husband was on an extended deployment overseas or the chocolate specialties we helped a Gold Star Mom pick out for the holidays or the gift basket that went to a surgeon as a thank you for saving a life. Those gifts are important to us because they were special to our customers. We made each one by hand with care and joy, the way we approach every order. You see, artisanship is a mindset not a method.
People wrongly think of artisan chocolates as tiny mom and pop operations that produce a few tasty bon-bons but Chocolate Pizza Company breaks that mold. Artisan chocolate is about your commitment to the craft, your dedication to the art, your discipline for the science behind creating imaginative, fun and satisfying chocolate specialties. It is a mindset and a pride in balancing technology and craft, in embracing a process that allows “a person skilled in an applied art” to put a bit of themselves into every sale.
We are proud to say that for 3 decades Chocolate Pizza Company has been Marcellus’ artisan chocolate company, serving the local community with unique chocolate gifts. Owner, Ryan Novak, is from Marcellus, he graduated here, was married here, lives here and is active in the community. He started as a dishwasher for Chocolate Pizza Company here in Marcellus at age 15 and learned the chocolate trade from the company founder. In 2010, at age 21, he took over. Ryan is especially proud that when his company outgrew its village location he kept his business in Marcellus and built a new facility. Marcellus is Chocolate Pizza Company’s home and while we have taken a taste of Central New York’s most unique chocolate across the country we have never outgrown our local roots. So, when you need fine chocolate for yourself, your business or any occasion, there’s only one name to remember for artisan chocolate in Marcellus and that is, Chocolate Pizza Company.
 
