Will Gustwiller (Courtesy photo)
Food, South Park

Will Gustwiller’s Chocolate Factory

The Founder of Eclipse Chocolate in South Park Talks About His Craft, a Big Win, and New Directions

By Frank Sabatini Jr.

What began as a humble home-based chocolate business has blossomed into a nationally recognized operation in South Park that belts out high-quality confections from more than 100 different recipes.

Will Gustwiller launched Eclipse Chocolate in 2003. Two years later, he established his first retail address in University Heights, where he introduced a cafe component to spotlight the intoxicating interplay of sweet and savory ingredients in various dishes. Although after quadrupling his space at the current South Park location in 2013, he added a full bistro, began conducting chocolate-making workshops, and became $16,000 richer from winning a chocolate competition hosted by Guy Fieri on The Food Network.

Yet, as Gustwiller revealed in our recent conversation, the winds of change are blowing due to supply issues, inflation, and Covid. Those factors, he told us, may likely alter Eclipse Chocolate as we’ve fondly come to know it.

Downtown Condo Guys: What originally led you into chocolate making?

Gustwiller: With a masters degree in sculpture from San Diego State University, it was my primary interest to become a functional artist. But you have to sell a lot of artwork to pay the bills. So I began experimenting with truffle and chocolate bar recipes at home—and eased into selling the products to local hotels and at farmers markets. It turned out that my chocolate hobby was a practical solution to becoming a self-employed craftsperson because chocolate is something people can interact with and explore.

Downtown Condo Guys: When you started the business almost 20 years ago, did it feel particularly risky at the time?

Gustwiller: I’m going to say no because I was too naive to know any better. People still ask me how I came up with the courage to do it, and I used to blow off the answer. But now looking back, I don’t really know how I managed.

Downtown Condo Guys: Are you a one-man show?

Gustwiller: I am the sole proprietor of the business as well as the content cooking executive. But my domestic partner, Daniel Youngren, is the front-of-the-house manager.

Downtown Condo Guys: What are some of the products you sell at Eclipse?

Gustwiller: Truffles, chocolate bars, drinking chocolates, Rocky Roads, and caramels. It’s a big, diverse catalog. We make everything by hand, in small batches. If we don’t stick to those high-hanging fruits, then we will never be able to outshine our mass-manufacturing competitors.

Downtown Condo Guys: Your biggest sellers?

Gustwiller: Our salted exotic caramels—from day one. They are the perfect synergy of flavor because nobody’s ever going to get sick of sweet and salty. Compared to others on the market, machines don’t sprinkle sea salt very well over individual confections. It’s too much of a delicate task. We hand-sprinkle every confection, which makes a difference.

Downtown Condo Guys: What are some of the special, unique ingredients that go into your chocolates?

Gustwiller: We are still committed to using Fair Trade Cocoa sourced by Guittard Chocolate Company in San Francisco. I consider them our industrial partner, even though they are family-owned. They just celebrated their 150th anniversary.

Also, I consider myself a spice collector. So we use more than 100 different spices when making our chocolates. Some of them are rare finds, such as long peppercorns and wild fennel pollen.

Downtown Condo Guys: What are some of the sweet-and-savory bistro dishes you offer?

Gustwiller: For our weekend brunch menu (9a-3p, Friday-Sunday), our chili burnt-caramel hollandaise is the showpiece of our Benedicts and quiche. It’s the sauce that keeps us in business. And candied cocoa nibs on our house-made salads is another example. We discontinued dinner service in the bistro because we only have 30 percent of the staff we had prior to Covid.

Downtown Condo Guys: You also sell meal kits?

Gustwiller: Yes. They’ve been one of our saving graces for staying in business during Covid. I translated brunch and former dinner items into frozen meals, which we call Dinner Delights. We have about 50 different recipes that rotate through.

We also relaunched our patio with Covid loans to introduce a sister pop-up brand named Sprinkle Magic. It features an afterschool sundae happy hour from 2 to 4 PM on weekdays on the remodeled patio, which looks like a vintage ice cream parlor. We use our sprinkles for soft-serve sundaes and other family-friendly desserts. They are ridiculously colorful blends that never existed when we were kids.

Downtown Condo Guys: How did you develop a knack for cooking?

Gustwiller: It was through decades of trial and error, and watching a lot of the Food Network, back when it was part of the Golden Age of actual cooking shows.

Downtown Condo Guys: Speaking of the Food Network, tell us about your show appearance and the $16,000 you took home.

Gustwiller: I was a contestant on a special episode called Guy’s Chocolate Games in 2017. It was a stressful experience. I had only 30 minutes to make each dish in three separate rounds using chocolate elements. In the final round, we were required to cook a ‘romantic dinner’ using porterhouse steak. I made it with cocoa-balsamic, cocoa nib noodles, and asparagus and won!

We used the money to launch our build-a-bar concept, which was an onsite chocolate workshop series that we discontinued indefinitely when Covid started.

Downtown Condo Guys: Are supply shortages affecting your business?

Gustwiller: The insider answer is yes, enough to have almost put us out of business. Everything is in short supply. A large part of what I used to make I can’t make anymore because it’s no longer profitable. But the silver lining is that everyone is so much more comfortable buying online, and it’s allowed us to increase our e-commerce reach twofold. We sell and ship to anywhere in the U.S., which we did before, but people weren’t forced into that before Covid.

Downtown Condo Guys: What are the biggest misconceptions consumers have about chocolate, given its many nuances?

Gustwiller: People underestimate the complexity of its anatomy. There’s cheap and terrible chocolate out there, and there is amazing chocolate out there–and everything in between. If you want to taste premium quality, you have to spend premium prices.

Downtown Condo Guys: Milk, semi-sweet, or bitter? What is your favorite type?

Gustwiller: It isn’t about the chocolate. I’m more interested in those exotic infusions. It is the flavors that will dictate the canvas I’m on.

Downtown Condo Guys: What are your future goals for Eclipse Chocolate?

Gustwiller: Eclipse grows in phases, and I’m thrilled for our next business venture: a chocolate-themed B&B! We’re currently looking for investors & executive business partners to launch this exciting new concept.