Guittard

Lured to the Barbary Coast by the California Gold Rush, Etienne Guittard traveled from Tournu, France in the mid 1800s with the intention of striking it rich with gold. He brought with him chocolate from his uncle’s factory with the hopes of using it to trade for mining supplies, but found that the chocolate was much more valuable to the wealthy miners, who were willing to pay him a premium for his chocolate. Upon this revelation, Etienne Guittard returned to France to refine his chocolate making skills and came back to San Francisco in 1868 to open Guittard chocolate on Sansome Street. He led the company for 31 years until his death in 1899, starting in the beginning with a few bags of cocoa beans before eventually growing the company into an established enterprise with an important part to play in San Francisco’s growing business community. To this day Guittard carries on its 150 years of family tradition of innovation and craftsmanship, using only hand-selected beans and generations old techniques and recipes.