Simply complex.
Dandelions are weeds.
Most people don’t give them a second glance.
But if they did, they’d notice that dandelions are beautiful. They bloom into bright pops of yellow. They go to seed and their wispy white spokes float through the air.
They evolve in the harshest of conditions, enduring the whole while.
These facts rendered “dandelion” the perfect fit for the bean-to-bar chocolate brand founded by Todd Masonis and Cameron Ring.
Much like its leafy yellow counterpart, Dandelion Chocolate is seemingly ordinary, using just two ingredients — single-origin cacao and organic cane sugar. One bite, though, and it doesn’t take long to imagine the hidden complexity of cacao and the balance of science and craftsmanship needed to shine a light on each bean’s unique flavor (in lieu of drowning it out with other additives).
The start of something sweet.
So, how did a home-grown chocolate company come to craft award-winning treats and master the art of gifting to grow the channel nearly 80% in one year?
This whole story starts with a whirlwind journey involving a high-dollar tech exit, an inspirational visit to a cacao farm, and countless hours spent hand-making chocolate bars in a garage.
After doling out tiny batches to family and friends, and selling at farmer’s markets in San Francisco, the duo officially opened Dandelion Chocolate to the public in late 2012. While a lot has changed since they started sharing their chocolate with the masses, a lot has also stayed the same.
For instance, the company outgrew its first storefront in San Francisco’s Mission District and opened a bigger facility just a few blocks away. Dandelion Chocolate now has six brick-and-mortar shops in the US alongside pop-ups and a long list of global stockists.
Their shops and cafes offer chocolate-based baked treats, rich and thick hot chocolate, fruit from the cacao bean, and a selection of products from gift sets and single-origin truffles to limited-edition holiday goods. It’s a variety that satiates the palates of foodies and cocoa newbies alike.
At their 16th Street factory in San Francisco, people can watch the chocolate-making process, learn about how they make two-ingredient chocolate, and sample some of the best bars on earth. But one of the best ways to share this artisanal chocolate experience with others?
Gifting.
The Problem: Spreadsheets Put a Kink in Scaling Corporate Gifting
Dandelion Chocolate has officially had an online footprint since 2011. The original website read like a blog where visitors could scroll through updates about classes, new recipes, and construction of the new space in the Mission District.
At the time, the brand’s ecommerce store offered three different bars and one gift set containing all three. Fast-forward to 2020. The coronavirus pandemic made its way to the US, and Dandelion Chocolate had to close up their physical shops in its wake.
However, it wasn’t long before the team started noticing an uptick in online sales. With nowhere to grab their products in person, and an increased need to send chocolate to friends and family for a bit of comfort and care, ecommerce became a lifeline.
“Dandelion was very in-person retail-focused,” remembers Flora Nishihara, Dandelion Chocolate’s director of partnerships. “There was minimal online presence until COVID. Suddenly, they had to diversify and change the way the business ran. They had to digitize very quickly.”
To better serve shoppers and find a way to sell as much online as they had in person, the website was overhauled. The site’s scrolling homepage of information and chocolate-making insight was transformed into a more navigable shopper-friendly experience. For example, the block of heavy text in the header was replaced with a simple headline and a bright yellow CTA sending people to the online store.
Seemingly overnight, Dandelion Chocolate shifted focus from optimizing the in-person experience to optimizing the online experience. Despite this relatively new territory, the company succeeded — but not without its growing pains.
Seizing the corporate gifting opportunity.
The team always knew people were buying Dandelion Chocolate for their own indulgence as well as sharing the experience with friends, family, and coworkers as gifts. But now, in the land of ecommerce where experience and personalization rank supreme, extra insight about each shopper was crucial. Unfortunately, Dandelion didn’t have a way to dig up those extra details.
“We didn’t have a way to get that breakdown,” recalls Flora. “There wasn’t a way for people to do multi-ship at checkout or indicate that they were buying 50 boxes of toffee because they’re gifts. It was all flowing through the same channel.” Without extra ecommerce intel, it becomes difficult to know which products are popular online gifts, plan production and inventory, engage with gifters or recipients, and more.
As for corporate customers who found their way onto the site, they had to make their own path. “Corporate gifting was a very clunky process where it would only happen if someone emailed us and said, ‘I want 50 gifts, can you send them to these addresses?’”
What’s more is that a lean team was managing the in-house process. “In 2022, we had one person fielding guest care, corporate gifting, and wholesale,” says Flora. “It just wasn’t sustainable. So in 2023, we decided we needed to make B2B a legitimate channel and invest in it.”
As the year went on, corporate gifting evolved from an ad hoc experience that clients stumbled on into a clear purchase journey. The customer care team was tasked with doing real outreach to potential corporate clients, and a gifting landing page, PDF catalog of gifts, and contact form were launched in tandem.
Now that a process was in place and curious gifters had a destination on Dandelion’s website, a new problem started bottlenecking the process: spreadsheets.
“The customer care team hated spreadsheets,” says Flora. Despite the heap of spreadsheets and their tedious nature, “…we hit target. We went over target, even, and it was great. We then knew that corporate gifting is huge, and we knew that 2024 was going to be the moment. It was something we really believed in.”
It was time to take what the team had learned and make the experience even better for corporate customers and Dandelion’s in-house team.
The Solution: See Ya, Spreadsheets! Hello, Zest
This partnership is somewhat serendipitous.
The Zest team happened to indulge in Dandelion Chocolate during a team offsite in San Francisco’s Ferry Building, also home to one of the brand’s brick-and-mortar shops. After nomming on the artisanal chocolate, Zest CEO and co-founder, Alex, swung by the Dandelion website. After some light clicking around, he saw the typical B2B gifting experience at play — a landing page with a one-size-fits-all purchase journey.
Knowing Zest could help Dandelion offer a more flexible and modern corporate gifting experience right on its website, Alex reached out to Todd. Todd looped in Flora, who immediately advocated for the platform.
“We knew we could not do spreadsheets anymore. They’re horrendous,” Flora mentions. “So when I saw the email come in from Zest, I immediately thought ‘This is great!’ And honestly, it was a godsend.”
Funneling large B2B gifts into spreadsheets has been the norm in ecommerce for decades. And while they have the power to put every single bulk order detail into one sprawling Excel file, that’s where the benefits end.
The trouble with spreadsheets and gifting.
Manually updating spreadsheets, then transferring that information to an ecommerce backend to submit the orders is time-consuming. This approach is prone to human error at every step, and address validation is a nightmare.
The sheer amount of time required to process a gift order of any size also meant that corporate gifters needed to place finalized orders at least two weeks in advance. And when you account for the back-and-forth emails and calls to finalize the products, budget, recipient list, and any artwork, corporate clients had to realistically start the process well before the two-week mark.
With Zest, though, all of those issues would disappear.
The clean, user-friendly gift catalog neatly laid out all of Dandelion’s giftable goods, eliminating the requirement to download a PDF catalog and face another point of friction. After selecting their gifts, shoppers can add personalized gift messages, upload addresses in one click, schedule gift shipping dates, and pay for it all in one easy transaction.
Gifting Dandelion Chocolate finally felt as seamless as simply shopping for yourself.
Once a customer places a gift order through a self-service storefront, it’s automatically piped into their ecommerce backend. Processing time went from weeks to minutes.
For the customers, Zest gave them an easier path to purchase their gifts online.
For the team at Dandelion, Zest gave them freedom from spreadsheets.
The Results: Dandelion Chocolate Sees 79% Lift in Corporate Gifting
Less time processing orders means more time caring for customers.
“We needed to find a way to automate spreadsheets if we wanted to increase our goals and forecasts,” says Flora. “The team would spend hours just going cross-eyed over them, and it wasn’t sustainable. We were so excited when Zest entered the conversation and could fix this problem — it was the biggest selling point.”
Zest was able to take the burden of spreadsheets and processing times off the shoulders of the team at Dandelion Chocolate. Today, the customer care team is using that time back to foster client relationships, continue B2B outreach, and, yes, even give white-glove concierge service to gifters who prefer that over a self-service experience.
As for customers? “I’ve seen people who are like, ‘Oh my god, this is great! I love this! It’s so much easier, I don’t even need to talk to you!’ And having Zest has had a really positive experience on our repeat customers. They send a gift once and come back to send different gifts to different people,” recalls Flora.
Dandelion Chocolate’s gifting channel can now meet corporate customers with the experience they prefer. Whether a client craves a high-touch project worked out over a couple weeks, or they want to complete their gifting project in just a few minutes all on their own, they’re empowered to do either at Dandelion Chocolate.
The stats show shoppers were hungry for flexible, modern gifting.
The gifting landing page got a bit of a facelift, and word of the new gifting paths started showing up in the brand’s email marketing. Despite this new path to purchase straying from the one-size-fits-all corporate gifting norm of forms and phone calls, customers picked it up right away.
The experience just made sense. A self-service storefront made it possible for people to send gifts to multiple addresses in one checkout, “…which is something they can’t do on the rest of the website,” making gifting akin to shopping for yourself. And the ability to upload recipient details and see instant address validation gave shoppers total control and confidence in their order.
“We flew past our forecasted goal for 2024. We saw a lift in corporate gifting of 79% in Q4,” reports Flora. “And we can finally separate corporate gift orders from non-corporate gift orders,” and they can keep all of it separate from sales through their DTC website.
Looking ahead, the team wants to dig even deeper into the data — understanding what types of businesses are gifting, why businesses are gifting outside the holiday season, and beyond. Before Zest, it was impossible to tell who was gifting and why outside of clients who emailed. But now, the power to personalize post-gifting emails, spin up highly targeted ads, and tailor on-site messaging even further is in Dandelion’s reach.
Dandelion Chocolate Crafts the Best Chocolate — And Customer Experiences — On Earth
Dandelion Chocolate is a brand with one mission: make some of the best chocolate in the world.
Over the past five years, the company has pushed their ecommerce site forward, making this artisanal chocolate accessible to pretty much everyone who wants to try it — or share it — around the globe.
Dandelion has perfected the in-person experience at their brick-and-mortar shops, and the online shopping journey was smoothed out and streamlined in 2020. And now, Zest is proud to play a small part in rounding out the online gifting experience.
After all, when it’s easier to gift premium bean-to-bar chocolate to friends, family, and coworkers, more gifts will be sent. And sharing the joy of Dandelion Chocolate may be exactly what we all need right now.
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