Sweet Success: The Story of Alicja Confections, A Company Founded By 24-Year-Old Alicja Buchowicz
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Growing up, Alicja Buchowicz didn’t like chocolate. What she did like were unusual flavor combinations and – following a brief stint at a chocolate store – chocolate making. Bored at her desk job and seeking a creative outlet, Buchowicz decided to make bonbons in imaginative flavors, thinking she’d mostly sell them to friends and family. Instead, she sold 250 boxes on her Etsy shop in less than a month, which gave Buchowicz an inkling that she had something special on her hands.
The bonbons, while beautiful and popular, only have a shelf life of a few weeks, and in building her business Buchowicz turned to chocolate bars as the main vehicle for the out-of-the-box flavor combinations she wanted to create. She began with what she refers to as the OG Six: Ember Island (chili dark chocolate), Hippy (dark chocolate with goji berries, cacao nibs, chia seeds), Słodka Sól (salted toffee milk chocolate), Nicholas (milk chocolate with potato chips; named after Buchowicz’s fiancé), Party In My Mouth (white chocolate with popping candy and sprinkles), and matcha (green tea white chocolate).
“The first six bars came from things that I like to eat. I selfishly made stuff that I like, and apparently people liked it too,” said Buchowicz. She brought her chocolate to a local makers market in the spring of 2016; 72 chocolate bars that took her three days to make by hand: tempering chocolate in the microwave, pouring it into two molds that could only make six bars at a time, and wrapping the bars with paper printed with her designs.
The aha moment that led to the creation of Alicja Confections’ signature postcard chocolate bars (a mailable chocolate bar wrapped in airtight foil and packaged in a beautiful box with space to write a message) was purely serendipitous. Buchowicz had wanted full color packaging with custom designs from the beginning but struggled to find an inexpensive solution. A work friend requested a Nicolas bar and told Buchowicz not to worry about the packaging, so she brought it in simply wrapped in foil. “When I went to work that day, I put the bar on top of a stack of envelopes I had on my desk,” Buchowicz recalled, who noticed that the bar fit perfectly inside an envelope. It was the perfect solution: colored envelopes are cheaper to print than specialty paper, and it was a unique idea to boot.
After being met with a receptive consumer base at craft shows in Winnipeg, Ottawa (where Buchowicz and her fiance moved in the fall of 2016), and a particularly pivotal show in Toronto, Alicja Confections became Buchowicz’s full-time occupation. Using savings from her previous job, Buchowicz committed to pursuing her confectionary business for a year and seeing where it led. Teaming up with her fiancé, the pair continued to test the market and check out their competition. Then they pooled their savings, wrote a business plan and opened a store on Bank Street in Ottawa, in December 2017.
Alicja Confections has grown from a one-woman show to a team of 14, and while they’re now tempering chocolate with the help of a chocolate wheel, every other step of the process is still done by hand. The postcard chocolate bars (of which there are now 26 flavors, with more on the way) are packaged in sturdy boxes with eye-catching designs – some commissioned and others sent in by fans around the world. Buchowicz’s creations can be found in over a dozen stores across Canada, and she continues to evaluate different options for expansion.
Also notable is the fact that Buchowicz is self-taught when it comes to chocolate making, but rather than being a hinderance she sees it as an advantage when it comes to her creativity. “I think because I have a different perspective, because I wasn’t formally trained, I tend to think of some weird combinations that people wouldn’t normally do,” said Buchowicz.
