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Les Chocolats Favoris
Les Chocolats Favoris is a relatively small Canadian chocolatier, confectionery, and ice cream company founded in 1979 in Lévis, Quebec just outside of Quebec City. The company is famously known for its artisan quality chocolate, canned chocolate fondues, and the innovative creation of chocolate dipped ice cream. As of October 2016, the company has a total of 23 store locations across Canada.

History
With the objective of creating jobs for the members of the immediate family, the original founders opened the chocolate factory with only three employees. Making traditionally handmade chocolate, the factory specialized primarily in producing chocolate for the Easter season. But gradually over the years, the artisans started to develop more and more products of different kinds, using European skill and expertise acquired throughout the years as their inspiration.

In 1996, the modest chocolatier on Rue St-Joseph in Lauzon, Quebec, moved to a bigger estate in Vieux-Lévis, where they launched a revolutionary new creation: ice cream dipped in chocolate. The company gained such an enormous success from this new product that it attracted people from all over the region and introduced the company’s reputation to the very peak of chocolate recognition.

Motivated by the success, the company opened its first branch in Charlesbourg, Quebec in 2006, following another subsidiary in Cap-Rouge in 2011. Both shops were an instant success and paved the way for the business’s next project, an entirely new and modern style of chocolate factory (as opposed to the historical houses it set its previous three shops) which they opened in the Neufchâtel district in 2013. The idea was so well received that in 2014 the business opened three more of them in Saint-Nicolas, Trois-Rivières and Boucherville. Subsequently in 2015, another six of these unique chocolate factories were created: one on the corner of Avenue Cartier (Quebec) and the rest in Sherbrooke, Drummondville, Terrebonne, Repentigny and Gatineau.

Expansion
After a decade of success, Quebec City entrepreneur Dominique Brown left Beenox, a video game development company he founded at age 21 in the year 2000, and swapped video games for chocolate. In pursuit to take on new challenges and “looking for a company with an established brand that [he] thought [he] could develop,” Brown bought Les Chocolats Favoris in January of 2013 after learning it was for sale and teamed up with partners Daniel Gauthier (co-founder of Cirque du Soleil), Luc Dupont (co-founder of Attrium Innovation, Aeterna), and Virginie Faucher.

In early 2013, Chocolats Favoris merely had three chocolate shops, with 65 employees, all of which were founded in Quebec. In addition to these branches, Brown planned to extend the company and break into the Canadian market. In the wake of 2016, he managed to accomplish so by opening the company’s first boutique outside of Quebec, in Ottawa, Ontario, followed by a new chocolate factory in Victoria, British Columbia.

After launching a headquarters of 32,000 square feet which include activities of production, administration, distribution and creation in Quebec City in late 2015, the company has almost double its production capacity and by the end of 2016, Les Chocolats Favoris acquired a number of 1000 employees and 23 chocolate shops across the country.

With new products and retail concepts to diversify the offer of chocolate, such as Brown’s innovated and unique product of canned chocolate fondue and expanding the range of ice cream dipping flavours to a dozen varieties (from dark chocolate to white chocolate, to salted caramel or an orange flavour), Les Chocolats Favoris won multiple awards in the retail industry in 2014.

According to Dominique Brown, it’s by focusing on the fondue market and its branding efforts that has enabled Les Chocolats Favoris’ growth to skyrocket. The company has even pierced the food market outside of Quebec by distributing its products in grocery stores across Canada: Sobeys in Ontario, and the Thrifty Foods in British Colombia.

But it doesn’t stop there. Due to the fact that the concept is fairly new and ingenious, Brown and the company intend to break into international expansion by 2017, starting by establishing chocolate shops in the United States, before the idea is replicated.

By 2020, this major expansion plans to achieve an annual revenue of $100 million in revenue. In 2017, in-store sales are expected to generate $35 million.