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Date: 4/17/2023
NORTHAMPTON — For almost a year now, Ana Bandeira Chocolates Café has been making headway on 48 Main St. in Northampton as the company’s first location in the U.S.
The Brazilian chocolate shop and world-class café and bakery first opened in May 2022 where the Patisserie Lenox was, but the first several months of operations were spent discreetly so the concept of the business could be ironed out.
“We had six or seven months of operating a little under the radar, but it gave us a chance to work out some of the kinks and figure things out,” said Dave Haughey, a local musician who runs the development side of things for Ana Bandeira, as well as the day-to-day operations in Northampton.
Since officially putting the Ana Bandeira sign up in January, the business has attracted more customers and they are firmly ready to make waves as a multi-faceted establishment that offers Brazilian chocolate bars, breads, pastries, café drinks, breakfast, lunch and desserts.
Background
While the Ana Bandeira location in Northampton is a rather novel business, the name’s legacy encompasses four generations of Brazilian tradition.
According to Haughey, his wife’s family has operated a cocoa farm in Espiríto Santo, Brazil since the 1930s using the same cacao seeds throughout their history. His wife is from Brazil.
Haughey, his wife’s brother, and his brother in-law started the Ana Bandeira chocolate factory in Brazil a little before the coronavirus pandemic utilizing the cocoa farm and its natural ingredients.
“We started our first sales coinciding with COVID-19,” Haughey said. “We started as peer-to-peer sales and direct-to-consumer.”
This was a convenient way to operate the business in Brazil since the majority of their customers at that time were using the WhatsApp or Instagram to order their chocolate.
“We were able to build up the company and name really before we started thinking about a storefront,” Haughey said. “And then about a year-and-a-half ago, we opened our first tiny store in Brazil, and it was basically a stand of chocolates with an espresso machine that was inside of another store.”
Right after that, the group started building a bigger production and eventually opened a larger factory store in Brazil.
As they were building out the second store, the place in Northampton went up for sale, according to Haughey. “All of a sudden in three months we had a store operating in Northampton,” he said. The goal now is to continue to operate the second flagship store in Brazil as well as grow the store/café in Northampton.
The Pioneer Valley connection
Outside of helping with these stores, Haughey is also a cellist, improviser, composer and teacher. He and his wife moved to the Pioneer Valley about seven or eight years ago, which made it easier for Haughey to bounce between Boston and New York for gigs.
“This was a nice in-between to be able to get in and out of the cities and fly out for gigs,” Haughey said. “This is a relatively good location where we can have a quieter lifestyle.”
With Northampton being a familiar downtown location for almost a decade, Haughey felt it was the right spot to open the first Ana Bandeira chocolate shop in the U.S.
Making headway in Northampton
Because they were taking over what used to be a café on 48 Main St., Haughey said they wanted to maintain that type of aura.
Outside of the famous Brazilian chocolates, the Northampton menu also includes anywhere from homemade croissant sandwiches, eggs benedict on homemade English muffins, waffles and pancakes from scratch, lunch sandwiches, special drinks and so much more.
“All of the menu is kind of designed to highlight whatever it is we are making at the store,” Haughey said.
At the moment, the café allows people to put chocolate in their pancakes and waffles, as well as in a special salad, but Haughey is looking to add more flourishes to the menu in the near future.
For example, Haughey said he also wants to incorporate the Brazilian chocolate in different parts of the menu, like making a chocolate mole for a sauce for a sandwich. “Those are the next steps,” he said.
“Tree-to-Bar”
What makes this chocolate more special than others is its organic qualities. Unlike some chocolate you may find in a convenience store, the product Ana Bandeira sells is carefully curated using locally sourced, and natural ingredients without any flavorings or preservatives.
The process of making this chocolate is a carefully-curated one that involves a handmade procedure from “tree-to-bar.”
By working with the cacao for four generations, Haughey said he and his wife’s family know the characteristics like the back of their hands. They maintain the same taste and quality by going through the same fermentation and roasting process.
“Just like coffee, we find a really precise roast profile that enhances characteristics that we like, and tamps down the characteristics we don’t want,” Haughey said. “So, you get a lot better flavor.”
Their carefully-curated chocolate has garnered international recognition for the business. According to Haughey, Ana Bandeira won two gold medals at the Northwest Chocolate Festival, one of the biggest international chocolate competitions for craft chocolate. The two bars recognized were their 60% milk chocolate bar and their café latte bar.
“For the café latte bar, we press cocoa butter out of cocoa beans, make a white chocolate, and then we grind whole coffee beans back into the bar,” Haughey said. “The main flavor is of coffee rather than chocolate, so it’s kind of a unique thing.”
Working in synchronicity
According to Haughey, he and his wife’s family all work together to make the shops run smoothly. Haughey helps with developing menu ideas and running day-to-day operations in Northampton, his brother-in-law and mother-in-law direct the farm out in Brazil, and then his brother-in-law’s wife spearheads a lot of the aesthetic purchasing choices.
“We all do a little of everything, but we all have our foot more firmly planted in one plant,” Haughey said.
As Haughey and his family continue to firmly plant themselves in Northampton, Haughey said he would love to make the chocolate more of a focal point at the U.S. location.
“We started here as a café, but we haven’t had enough time and importation logistics figured out to be able to really present our chocolate as our main featured item,” Haughey. “So, going forward, that is one of my main goals is to have more chocolate options and more things front and centered.”
People can learn more about the company and how they produce their chocolate by visiting their website: https://www.anabandeirachocolates.com/. There is also a list of musical events coming up on the calendar.
The store is currently open every day, and the hours are posted at the bottom of the site.