FAQs

We'd love to see you in our store in Echo Park. We're located at 1605 Grafton Street on the corner of Echo Park Avenue and are open daily from 8am-7pm (and until 8pm on Fridays & Saturdays). You can also give us a call at 323-372-9865, email us at info@chocolatedispensary.com, or fill out this form and one of us will get back to you. We'd also love to see you on Instagram!

No, we do not make anything (except the newsworthy drinks in the café). We curate one of the largest collections of craft chocolate in the United States with a retail store in Los Angeles and an online store that ships nationwide.

Yup! We're located at 1605 Grafton Street, Unit 102A in Echo Park, Los Angeles. We're open daily from 8am-7pm (and until 8pm on Fridays & Saturdays). We also have a café serving highly-praised hot and cold chocolate and coffee drinks, truffles, dippable shortbready yums, gelato, and more!

I'm sorry. We don’t understand the question.

So it is written.

No. We dispense chocolate. That’s why we call it... oh, never mind...

Eat it!

Then email us at info@chocolatedispensary.com, and we'll make it right.

While we cannot accept returns on food items, if you have an issue, please send us an email, and we'll do our best to make the situation right.

Click here!

OMG – yes! That’s one of our favorite things to do. Either email us at info@chocolatedispensary.com or give us a call at ‭323-372-9865‬ or use our Contact Us form. You can also click here to see some of our best selling products.

Ah, yes, the age-old question. Craft chocolate is largely undefined but is also sometimes known as “small batch” or “bean-to-bar" chocolate (though it does not have to be either). What it really means is that the chocolate is made with extremely high-quality ingredients, sustainable and ethical products and processes, and is usually made in small quantities. Think of it as the opposite of mass-produced chocolate like Hershey’s or Mars. Craft chocolate is a fast-growing market, and we’re so happy to be a part of exploring this beautiful art with you. 

Oh, yeah. Not only is it unspeakably delicious, it's also good for you and the world. You probably care about what you put in your body, and when chocolate that's made with simple, quality ingredients goes down the hatch, your body is going to pull you aside and say, "thank you!" Craft chocolate makers also care about the environment and the livelihood of the people who grow the cacao beans and make the chocolate, which feels pretty great, too.

The makers we sell often pay way above fair trade prices for the cacao, and travel to the countries of origin to meet in-person with the farmers. We like that eating delicious craft chocolate can be a small way of making the world a better place.

Dark chocolate can last up to about 2 years unopened but we recommend consuming it within 18 months. Milk chocolate has a slightly shorter shelf life – around 18 months – and white chocolate should be consumed within a year or so. We recommend storing it at room temperature, around 68-70 degrees Fahrenheit, if possible. Please don't put your chocolate in the fridge.

Short answer, yes. Long answer, is...

Chocolate comes from the cacao fruit, which grows on a tree, gets harvested, fermented, dried, and roasted. You can then proceed to crack, winnow, and grind it to make what we all know as chocolate but you can also press the cacao. If you do so, what comes out of the press is two things: a) cacao mass (the brown stuff that looks like the familiar cocoa powder you make into hot chocolate) and b) cocoa butter.

Even 100% chocolate contains both cocoa butter and cacao mass because both exist – in almost equal parts – in the cocoa bean.

White chocolate only uses the butter (which is why it is white). So, yes, white chocolate is chocolate. And craft white chocolate is amazing, because it uses only the best butter from amazing cacao.

Mass market white chocolate uses low quality cocoa butter (if any at all) and then dumps in a bunch of other oils and vegetable fats, sugar, and preservatives until it tastes like a cloyingly sweet candle. So yeah, don't eat that stuff. Ew, gross.

We start by getting to know the makers. We have spoken face-to-face with almost every chocolate maker in our collection, and this is a practice we intend to continue. We want to make sure, not only that we love their chocolate and how they source and make it, but that they love what we’re doing, too. We only work with producers who use ethical and sustainable ingredients and practices in both their sourcing and production techniques. We highlight small, BIPOC, women-owned, and family-owned companies, whose products are often hard to find on retail shelves and in online collections. In fact, there are a couple brands we carry that aren't carried on any other shelves in the U.S.

After that, you guessed it: we taste the chocolate. We are looking for great flavor and textures, interesting and inventive flavor combinations, a great story, and a wide variety of chocolates from around the world that allows us to really taste the essence of the source cacao. We will highlight different makers, flavors and themes throughout the year to ensure you have the chance to taste as much chocolate as possible.

We currently carry about 1,000 chocolates from 110 or so small makers from all around the world.

If you have a favorite craft chocolate that we don’t carry, let us know by emailing info@chocolatedispensary.com.

This is a great question! A chocolate maker gets the cocoa beans from a farmer (usually already fermented and dried), then roasts, winnows, conches, and tempers the chocolate before molding it into the chocolate you want to stuff in your mouth, usually in the form of bars.

A chocolatier takes already made chocolate (called "couverture" – basically baking chocolate) and melts that down to create their own creations, like truffles, bonbons, chocolate-covered nuts, barks, and sometimes even bars.

We are neither. We are happy chocolate proprietors and dealers! Think of us as an independent bookstore, but all our books are chocolate.

As you can imagine, this topic comes up a lot, mostly because folks have read this article from Consumer Reports written in 2023.

A lot of marketing has created a very "doom and gloom" vision of chocolate, basically implying (without outright saying it) that there is so much lead in dark chocolate that you might as well check into hospice right now and wait it out cuz the end is coming. No one is wrong to help inform customers of the potential risks of cadmium and other heavy metals but the hype around it is blown way out of proportion in many instances. Dark chocolate often does contain metals, mostly cadmium, (it is more present in darker chocolate because of the higher percentage of cacao) but shellfish, kale, lettuce, legumes, mushrooms, root crops and other foods have especially high levels of cadmium also.

You might find this explanation by Greg D'Alesandre of Dandelion Chocolate especially illuminating, There is a lot to be learned here - and unlearned - and we hope you'll take the time to take a listen.

Many of the chocolates we carry are vegan, gluten, nut, dairy, and soy-free. However, we do sell products that contain nuts, dairy, and other inclusions.

Most chocolate makers work in facilities where these ingredients (especially nuts) may be present. Kindly refer to makers' ingredients lists and packaging for complete dietary information.

Please use all due diligence when choosing which chocolates you buy, share, and consume.

We ship using USPS Ground Advantage, USPS Priority, and FedEx 2Day. While we are not in charge of transit times, we estimate 2 business days to California, 2-3 days to all other west coast and Mountain Time destinations, and 5 business days to all other destinations. We do ship to Alaska and Hawaii but only offer Priority shipping to both locations.

We ship Mondays-Thursdays when temperatures (at origin and destination) allow, but we reserve the right (and you definitely want us to) to hold packages if we feel that the chocolate may be damaged en route due to the weather.

We do not control the delivery schedules of any carrier and are not responsible for any packages left on door steps, incorrect addresses, etc. Please read our full Shipping & Returns Policy for more information.

Yes! We reuse all the packaging we possibly can (which is why you may see remnants of other stickers and marks on your packages when they arrive). When using new materials, we do our best to source the most sustainable, recyclable, and reusable materials to box, label, and package your chocolate.

Tattoos are cool, but avoiding inks on our labels and inserts that are bad for the environment is cooler. By this logic we're cooler than tattoos.