It’s been just two weeks since we ate the last of our Advent Calendar chocolates. It takes a full 12 months of meticulous planning to pull off this project, which last year included 332,000 treats — largely hand-crafted by our confectioner partners. Lauren shares how it all came together:
There are so many simultaneous timelines weaving through our Advent Calendar that it can be mind-boggling! As we’re gathering 25 chocolatiers to craft 25 unique confections (that reveal a range of textures and flavors), we’re working with an astronomer to determine which celestial events to share with you. While that’s underway, our featured artist is creating celestial illustrations for our ornaments and packaging. It can feel like a wild juggling act. There were definitely moments of chaos we can laugh at now. Such as …
This past year, to ensure a safe and timely arrival of treats, we organized trucks to pick up the confections from the chocolatiers instead of shipping them via mail across the country. As you can imagine, we encountered some unexpected situations — shipments toppling over, vehicles never showing up … a truck got stuck at the Canadian border awaiting FDA clearance at customs. One chocolatier, Lisa Schoenbeck of Good Good Chocolates, was in the midst of opening her retail space the same day we were picking up her chocolates. She was so overwhelmed she bought a puppy! Meet Snoopy:
Just getting to the point of having confections ready to ship requires several samples and tastings (the best part of the job) to get to the perfect version of the treat you receive. We’ve had chocolatiers go above and beyond, sending us confections that are larger than expected — which is wonderful until they don’t fit in their ornament box! Every year there is a new, unexpected problem to solve.
We were really impressed with the final confections from all the chocolatiers last month. Every day we heard from people saying that day’s treat was the best yet. The pecan pie and ube treats were big hits. (We see you, ube lovers.) We’re going to try bringing back those flavors. Caramelized banana, lemon with pistachio, and yuzu got a lot of love too. And we all enjoy a good Caramel Explosion. When we get a lot of favorites across 25 days, it’s an indicator that we’ve curated a really good assortment — they’re all the best! Some folks even reached out telling us that if it weren’t for this Calendar, they would never have tried a particular flavor, but it turned out they enjoyed it.
Over and over, we hear from guests who love taking part in this ritual. Some gift it to friends or family — often discussing the treat of the day in a group chat. Others enjoy being introduced to new chocolatiers, watching their videos, and even visiting their shops. A few folks have shared photos with us of how they’ve used the ornament boxes to decorate their trees, garlands, or tables. We love seeing what you do with those boxes!
One couple we heard from has kept up an Advent Calendar practice through 26 years of marriage — they mentioned they’ve never enjoyed an Advent Calendar more than ours. For me, it’s so fun being able to share this tradition not only with my family, but also with thousands of strangers.
We’ve even gotten feedback from families whose kids now love searching the skies for constellations and meteor showers. We spend a lot of time making sure all of the night sky information is scientifically accurate, enjoyable to read, and easy enough to understand for those of us who aren’t astronomers. As much as we can, we coordinate those themes with a matching chocolatier and confection. And every year, we incorporate some new surprise elements or details for fun.
We’ve already begun working on our 2025 Advent Calendar. As it’s our ten-year Advent anniversary — we’re planning to make it our most plentiful and elaborate yet. Our 2024 Advent Calendar sold out despite increasing production by nearly 50 percent from 2023, and our waitlist grew to more than a thousand people within a couple days.
Chocolatiers interested in participating in our 2025 Advent Calendar can fill out our open call form and submit sample confections to be considered for inclusion. This will be our second year holding an open call. Last year, it helped us get to know some smaller confectioners we weren’t yet familiar with — makers like Cricket & Fig in Tulsa, and Dude, Sweet Chocolate in Dallas, both first-time contributors to our Advent Calendar. Chocolatiers, take note: For this year’s open call, we’re looking to receive initial samples by the end of February — ideally those samples will showcase what you’re known for and give us a sense of who you are.
We’re counting down the days until December 1st … though there’s a lot of work to do before then! We’re looking forward to meeting more chocolatiers, working with a new artist, and expanding our understanding of the cosmos. If you’d like to pre-order our 2025 Advent Calendar, you may do so here.
Part of our ritual is placing a preorder on Christmas Day for the next year’s calendar. Thanks for all of the work – you’ve become part of our holiday tradition – and definitely the one with the best taste!