From Deseret News archives:
Avenues family loves its sweet job
The Avenues resident is a co-confectioner of Hatch Family Chocolates, 390 E. Fourth Avenue, along with his wife, Katie Masterson, and father, Jerry Hatch.
Every day the three put together the ingredients that will become the day's chocolates. Each chocolate is hand-dipped, which is one of the things that distinguishes the business, Steve Hatch said.
While hand-dipping makes the chocolates more original, it also makes the process slower, and it's difficult to keep up.
"The biggest challenge is (to have) hand-dipped chocolates. We roll all the centers out by hand and dip them by hand," Hatch said, noting that most chocolate shops use what's called an enrobing machine, which is basically a big conveyer belt that sends the chocolates through the machine to be dipped. In the time it takes the Hatches to make a few hundred candies, other chocolate places could make a few thousand.
"Our biggest obstacle is we can't keep them in stock. We sell it as fast as we make it," he said. "It's kind of a Catch 22 situation — if we did have everything in stock all the time it would mean things were sitting on the shelf in surplus."
Going into the chocolate business wasn't something Steve Hatch ever pictured himself doing. However, as the store has its third anniversary this month, he classifies it as a "sweet job," which constantly evolves.
The store was founded by Hatch's father and Masterson. Jerry Hatch learned to make chocolates from his mother who worked in different candy factories dipping chocolates during the Depression, as they were one of the places that would hire women. When growing up, Steve's father would always make chocolates for holidays, he said.
After Jerry Hatch retired, he and his wife separated, and he was bored. He started making chocolates to sell at boutiques around the valley about 15 years ago. Masterson, who is originally from Chicago, moved to Utah five years ago to be with Steve after they met at a convention. She spent a number of years training as a pastry chef, and her family was in the restaurant business in Chicago. She picked up some seasonal work after moving to Utah but hadn't found anything permanent.
Jerry Hatch asked Masterson if she wanted to come learn the chocolate business and work with him.
Masterson said her favorite thing about the business is watching a batch of ingredients turn into a beautiful creation.
"(I love seeing) when it goes from being 10 different ingredients and turns into a batch of caramel after we mix all the ingredients," she said. "I love the finished product when it's dipped in chocolate. The whole process is amazing. . . . , especially when you bite into it and it has a thick layer of chocolate."
