Socola Chocolatier’s mascot, Harriet the Flying Alpaca, will be finding herself a more permanent place lớn live in the Rincon Hill neighborhood, located just south of the financial district of San Francisco. Socola Chocolatier’s new store & café is slated to open just in time for Valentine’s Day.
For Wendy Lieu, a first generation American whose parents were war refugees from Vietnam, opening a chocolate café in San Francisco may seem like a whimsical pipe dream. Lieu found herself at the age of 19 selling homemade chocolates at a farmers’ market in Santa Rosa. She, along with her sister, Susan Lieu, the business and marketing guru behind Socola, later started selling their chocolates—in flavors such as sriracha, guava & ca phe sua (Vietnamese coffee)—wholesale khổng lồ specialty shops like Bi-Rite Market & supermarkets lượt thích Whole Foods.
“I always had a dream of creating a store,” says Wendy Lieu, owner và chief chocolatier at Socola, as we peek into the under-construction, future trang chủ of Socola Chocolatier + Barista. In addition to their chocolates, which will be made on-site, they will serve hot chocolate, Four Barrel Coffee, tea, và pastries such as a guassant (guava croissant with cheese) from Patisserie Philippe, where Lieu externed. Customers will be able to lớn choose from Socola’s signature truffles khổng lồ melt in a cup of espresso—a truffogato—as well as a tea selection curated to lớn match their tea-influenced chocolates such as jasmine, chai, earl grey, & matcha.
Socola is the word for chocolate in Vietnamese, a nod to lớn Lieu’s Chinese Vietnamese heritage. Lieu’s mom was pregnant with her when her family left Vietnam as refugees in 1982. Her parents spent two years in a refugee camp in Kuala Lumpur—where Wendy was born—before they eventually settled in Emeryville, CA. “I escaped many times by boat, in a small boat, and finally I made it,” says Tom Lieu, Wendy’s father, in a recent phone interview. Once there, Wendy’s mother learned to vì nails & her father delivered papers. After years of saving, her parents opened their own nail salon.
Lieu remembers booking manicure & pedicure appointments at the nail siêu thị when she was as young as 8 years old. “We were hustling!” exclaims Lieu, as she reminisced over her formative years. They sold Girl Scout cookies và their homemade friendship bracelets while working at the nail salon. ”We’ve just grown up being business women & entrepreneurs.”
Growing up in a Vietnamese household, Lieu was no stranger lớn cooking and the love và appreciation of food. She scoured cookbooks and received “weird gifts” like a sandwich press, and even made her own French bread when she was nine. However, there was one food vật phẩm that baffled her—chocolate.
While working at Sanrio Surprises, a Hello Kitty store in a strip mall, Lieu, then 15, would pass by See’s Candies everyday, và wonder how chocolates are made. “We’d obviously eat their samples and buy chocolates too but eventually one day I was like, ‘Wait! How did they make that?’ I loved lớn create things, but I couldn’t figure out how khổng lồ make chocolate.”
She started poring over magazine recipes, experimenting with ingredients, and saving up the wages she got from working at the Hello Kitty store to buy chocolate-making supplies.
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Her big break came when their Santa Rosa neighbor, a kinh doanh person for KSRO, tried her chocolates. Within a week, Lieu found herself on the radio talking about her hobby và newly-minted chocolate business. “Everyone we knew was calling in và they were like, ‘Wendy! We didn’t know you started a business.’” “And I was kind of like, ‘Me neither!’”
Though Lieu clearly had a talent for chocolate-making, she felt like she didn’t have the tư vấn of her father, who raised Wendy and sister Susan as a widowed single parent after their mother passed away when Wendy was 14. As with most immigrant parents, Lieu’s father’s desire for a better life for their children played a very significant part in his view of the sister’s budding business. “’I didn’t bring you to the U.S. So that you could make chocolates,’” Lieu recalls her father telling her. Her father wanted her lớn go lớn college và get a stable job. Lieu said that was the toughest part—seeking her father’s approval.
So Lieu went on lớn college, graduated and pursued a career at a major consulting firm. However, chocolate remained her side hustle, & passion. She maintained her chocolate business with her sister & attended pastry school at night & during the weekends at Tante Marie.
In 2012, Lieu made the decision to work full time at Socola. It wasn’t the challenge of owning a business that worried her, or the boys’ club of chocolatiers. With names lượt thích Joseph Schmidt, Jacques Torres, and Dolf Teuscher, the world of chocolate is a mostly-white, male boys’ club. “I taught myself & sometimes it feels like I’m not as credible as other people, but my chocolates speak for me,” Lieu said. “Delicately daring” is how she describes her chocolates.
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Lieu was worried about how her father would react.
They were driving from Houston to lớn Austin when she broke the news—that she was quitting her job và focusing on chocolates full-time. “If I put 100 percent of my energy into it I don’t know what it could be but it could be something amazing và I would rather try for that—to see what that unknown is going to be.”
His reaction was one she did not expect. “He started tearing up and then was lượt thích ‘That is exactly what me & your mom said when we left Vietnam. Do it.” Lieu still gets teary-eyed recalling that moment of her dad’s acceptance.
Lieu’s come a long way from the teenaged girl who just had a passion for making chocolates lớn a full-fledged business woman và chocolatier.
“I’m very proud & I think she will be very successful,” says Lieu’s father in a recent interview. “I’m very happy.”
Socola Chocolatier + Barista’s grand opening is Tuesday, February 11. Earlier that week, Lieu willing picking up her father, who’s flying in from Texas lớn celebrate with his daughter.
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Ashlyn Perri is the Digital & Interactive truyền thông media associate for the Center for Asian American Media. She was born, bread & buttered in a Japalian (Japanese & Italian) household in San Francisco.
