Aggie Chocolate Factory: a unique approach to selling chocolate

The idea came to Paul Beck at work: chocolate nibs mixed with a vanilla shea butter soap base. He’d seen something similar done before with coffee grounds. The larger particles acted as a sort of exfoliator, making the soap more appealing to certain audiences.

Beck had experimented with coffee ground soap before and decided to apply the same concept with chocolate nibs — roughly ground cocoa beans — at the Aggie Chocolate Factory.

“It’s also just kind of a novelty item,” Beck said. “To have the soap with the cacao on it is cool.”

Beck, the cafe manager at the Aggie Chocolate Factory, asked his boss for permission then finalized the production process. Finally, the factory began producing and selling chocolate nib soap.

The Aggie Chocolate Factory opened in November 2018 as a facility focused on providing outreach and research opportunities to students as well as high quality chocolate products to the community — products like the factory’s novelty chocolate nib soap.

“We do single-origin chocolate,” Beck said. “Which means rather than mixing the beans from the various origins and making kind of a generic chocolate flavor, we keep them separate. Because then the tasting notes end up being quite different in the final product.”

Most chocolate found at stores use beans from a variety of origins. This makes the factory’s single-source approach unique.

“It’s kind of more of a chocolate connoisseur paradise,” Beck said.

The factory gets their beans from Ghana, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador and Belize. Because most of their bars are only made out of one type of bean, each bar has a specific, natural taste.

“We have bars that taste more like coffee,” said Jentrie Gilliland, the factory’s assistant manager. “Other ones that taste more caramelly, as well as some that taste fruity.”

Chocolates are differentiated by the color of their wrapping paper, which delineates the type of bean and country of origin.

The factory sells everything from chocolate bars and cacao meat seasoning to apparel, but Beck said the factory’s chocolate bars and frozen hot chocolate are some of their best-sellers. 

The frozen hot chocolate essentially resembles a chocolate shake, including whipped cream and chocolate nibs sprinkled on top. 

The chocolate bars — most specifically the factory’s trademark Go Aggie Bar — are Gilliland’s favorite.

“It has the iconic skyline that includes Old Main and then Utah State’s campus,” Gilliland said.

In addition to providing research opportunities to students, more than 100 students come to the factory every year as part of a USU chocolate-making class. The factory also opens up the chocolate making process to the community. 

“We also offer tours for free, so people can come in and learn about the entire process,” Beck said.

Everywhere from the factory’s research opportunities and outreach to its unique chocolate products and novelty cocoa items, the factory provides something fresh to the community.