Jael Rattigan, co-founder and CEO of French Broad Chocolate in Asheville, believes in using business as a force for good. What started in 2006 as a mom and pop farmers' market stand has grown to a thriving certified B Corp with eighty-five employees and includes a Chocolate Lounge & Boutique, an experiential Chocolate Factory & Café, and Creamery & Café. Her chocolates have been recognized in many national and international awards, and she was the recipient of the WomanUp "Best in Business" award in 2016. Her two sons, Sam and Max, eat chocolate for breakfast.

What is your idea of perfect happiness? A warm-out-of-the-oven chocolate chip cookie and a glass of cold whole milk.

What is the purest thing you have ever tasted? Cacao fruit straight from the tree.

What is the best thing you can do with your hands? I can make a killer dark chocolate brownie, hand-roll thousands of truffles, and pipe chocolate like a machine. I can tuck my kids into bed, feel for a fever, and hug away their hurts.

What was your first experience with sustainable eating? My first experience discovering sustainable eating was in college in Madison, Wisconsin. I lived around the corner from a food cooperative called Mother Earth. It was one of those classic hippie shops with barrels of bulk grains, a small selection of fresh veggies, and alternative milks. It was the first time I began to think about where my food came from and making intentional choices about it.

What do you love most about what you do? Chocolate makes people happy, and I love to make people happy. There’s really nothing else I could ask for.

What do you consider the most overrated ingredient? Cayenne. I think there are so many more interesting chilli peppers.

Is there anything you don’t particularly care to eat? Bacon. Sorry!

Where did you enjoy a meal out recently, and what did you eat? White Labs Kitchen & Tap in Asheville, NC. It’s a brewpub located in a yeast laboratory, so the food and beverage menu has a fermentation bent. I love their pizza made with 72-hour fermented pizza dough, and topped with kalamata olives, preserved lemon, confit tomato, and feta.

Are there any mentors or food heroes you would like to thank? Alice Medrich, you are my chocolate hero. Your book, Bittersweet, inspired me to pursue a career and life in chocolate and I will forever be grateful with you as part of my business origin story.

What are your favourite books or cookbooks? Bittersweet by Alice Medrich, Bravetart by Stella Parks, Vegetables by Alice Waters.

What is the dish on your own menu that most engages you? Though I’ve owned a dessert restaurant for eleven years, I am still most captivated by a warm, crisp, yielding chocolate chip cookie. The perfect chocolate chip cookie must be buttery, with a good presence of vanilla, and the right balance of high-quality dark chocolate. Ours include a sprinkling of freshly roasted cacao nibs to add the crunch of nuts while keeping the flavour all chocolate.

What do you make from scratch? Everything. Bread, pancakes, cookies, mayonnaise, dressing, chocolate, ice cream, you name it. (Though not ramen, I’ll leave that to the pros.)

What would you be doing if you weren’t doing what you are doing? I really can’t imagine any other career at this point. If I weren’t working, I’d be travelling the world and eating awesome food.

How do you like to spend your day off? Hanging out with my kids, going for hikes, and giving my house a good clean.

What does success mean to you? Success is being able to do what makes me happy, contributes positively to my community and the world, and gives me a sense of purpose. Ideally it also allows me to travel and eat well.

What is your current obsession, the thing you think about at 3am? Building a sustainable business that will live far beyond me.

What are the qualities you most admire in others? Kindness, empathy, creativity, and leadership.

Can you tell us something we don’t know about you? The first restaurant I opened (Bread & Chocolate in Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica) was the first restaurant I ever worked at. I had always been a passionate home cook and baker, but that was my first foray into cooking as a business.

If you could eat only one thing today, what would it be? Fresh, naturally-leavened, lightly-toasted bread, slathered with a great deal of butter, sprinkled with flaked sea salt.

Which producer or supplier really brightens your day? Jonathon Flaum from Farm to Home Milk is a Zen monk, playwright, milkman and overall inspiration, devoted to a simple life of connecting farmers to customers by delivering farm-fresh milk to the residents and businesses of Asheville.

Which words or phrases do you most overuse? Source, origin, craft, bean-to-bar, authentic. Thanks for calling me out. :)

Which talent would you most like to have? I’d love to be a good dancer.

If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? I’d be more organized. A lot of people count on me to get stuff done, and I think I’d serve them better if I had better systems.

What do you think the food of the future will look like? The dream is that people feel an emotional connection to the source of their food, eat with intention and gratitude, and experience pleasure from the act of cooking and eating.

What is your number one sustainability tip or trick? Eliminate food waste wherever possible. We just had a family dilemma because my younger son was throwing away the crust from his morning toast. Instead of composting it, or forcing him to eat it (yuck), I decided to cut the crust off before toasting it and save it. That “waste” has turned into bread crumbs for chicken tenders, croutons for salad, and afternoon snacks with a hunk of cheese or butter.

Jael Rattigan