Valentine’s Day is not the only day where chocolate can be the star attraction! Chocolate tasting events can help your group bring in a tasty profit any time of year. Here’s a review of a Chocolate Tasting that I attended in 2006. This event was held around Valentine’s Day, but could easily have been an evening event in May, September or November! Read through the details, and imagine how your group could successfully take on this event!

“For the Love of Chocolate”
Fundraiser held 11 Feb 06, Community Events Center on Ft. Hood, TX

I wanted to report on an interesting, fun-loving fundraising event I attended today! I’m always a fan for anything chocolate, and have mentioned in the past that a great fundraiser for Valentine’s Day or anytime of year would be a Chocolate Tasting event. I finally got to attend one here in my town as a fundraiser for a volunteer childcare fund on my local military base. It was such a fun, light-hearted event, and my family of four had a great time! A gal I just met a few nights before is on the board of this event, and she said they usually make $8,000 or more with it. That’s certainly not bad for a single fundraiser for the whole year. And, though for many charities, $8,000 won’t last the whole year, it certainly is a great start to something wonderful!

The event is usually held the Saturday before Valentine’s Day and is the only fundraiser this group holds each year. It takes them about 2 or 3 months of planning to host the event, and most of that is just getting the sponsors, the donated items and securing the location. The event was held from 1pm to 3pm, but they were still announcing the auction winners at 3pm. They hosted both a live and a silent auction, with 40 donated items for the silent auction. These items included a 1-night stay at a B&B in another town, wines from a local winery, stays at a hotel in Houston, some prints/ paintings from a local art shop, donated themed gift baskets put together by groups of people, and even a park bench and a set of a chair and ottoman. One gift basket with a coffee maker and some coffee supplies had a start value at $400! Only a few items were live auction items, and I was unable to see most of them. The ones I noticed were movie packs with DVDs and popcorn, dried flower arrangements, and tickets to theatre performances in the area. There were also some door prizes announced every 15 minutes, including tickets to shows, small gift baskets, and the like. Of course, you had to be there to win one of the door prizes.

The event was held at a local community events center, and tickets were $5 per person, with kids under 10 for free. They served lots of donated chocolate items, such as slices of cakes, bonbons, chocolate dipped cookies, stove-top cookies with oatmeal (sometimes called haystacks), molded chocolates, fudge, brownies, chocolate filled eclairs, creme puffs, lady fingers, and more. I believe the items were donated by individuals, and perhaps some of the cakes were paid for by the group. The puffs and eclairs were the frozen styles you can purchase at Sam’s Club. But, all in all, it was just a large bake sale with lots of great items. A nice touch they had was to offer some fresh fruit and veggie platters to help cleanse the palate so you do not get too many sweets and kill your tastebuds. The tables were set up in a T shape, and all items were pre-packaged in muffin cups, in zip-top bags or on individual serving plates along the tables. There were approximately 8 or 9 banquet tables with 4 or 5 bisecting 5. Forks and napkins were along the routes, with some platters higher up on napkin draped/covered boxes for height. One or two ladies brought items out from a reserved area behind the scenes to fill in the gaps (no kitchen was available at the location). Drinks were located in large barrels of ice water in 2 locations, and they were bottles of water donated by Walmart… even said so on their labels.
ALSO- the BIGGEST part this year was that STARBUCK’S helped host the event! In previous years, the board members made coffee themselves, and it tasted like motor oil, according to my new friend, Sandy. This year, they asked Starbuck’s to help host the event! There were at least 12 different tables along one wall with various coffees being served by Starbuck’s employees. They also had specific things on their tables that paired well with that coffee. One table had some cream cheese bites, others had lemon candies, some had cookies. Best of all, they had small bags of samples of coffee at the tables that you could take home with you. I think the packs make one pot of coffee, and they are pre-ground. My hubby picked up their anniversary blend, and also their Verona blend. The coffee samples were in small paper Starbuck’s cups, about the size of a shot glass. All the employees were knowledgeable about their coffee, and they had some of their machines on hand to show how they use them. Starbuck’s had posters on the walls behind them to show the regions their blend was from, along with decorations on the table, like fruit baskets and literature. They also had a slideshow presentation on their coffees at one end of the building! It was quite impressive, and was allowed to run at the beginning of the event before the silent auction items were announced. They also had some frappuccinos in the drink coolers for people to enjoy.

There were several tables and chairs set up around the room, probably 40 tables of 8 chairs. These were covered with plastic tablecloths from those large rolls you get at the party stores. Balloons were all around the room, with some red ones stuffed into a larger clear one for some cool floating effects. Other decorations around the room included the many tablecloths on the serving tables, a small statue on the serving table, some crepe paper and Valentine’s Day decorations around the room. It was a large room, with high ceilings, and probably could have used some more decorations to take up the height.

They also had a kids corner where some games were being held. They had ring toss, bean bag toss, and two lanes for bowling. The prizes for winning the games were chocolate candy, mostly bags leftover from Christmas, it seemed. But, kids don’t care, and chocolate tastes good no matter what the wrappers looked like. The event also had some can-can dancers perform. My area has a Wild West night in a few weeks, and that particular fundraiser makes $60,000+ every year! It’s a big event, and some local ladies are recruited to do can-can dancing, so this was one of their practice performances for their big event. They looked great and did a great show.
The auctions were done nicely, though they had trouble getting attention for their live auctions over the noise of the crowd. Since there had been no announcements during the event, there was no designated emcee or speaker, and no specific podium to draw the attention for the live auctions. This was down a bit haphazard, and really should have used a microphone system to announce bids. The silent auctions were well loved, and there were so many great items, 40 of them! There were definitely items in every price range, with many starting at $5 and some starting higher, like the coffee one starting at $400 for the first bid!

My husband was dragging his feet about attending, because he was supposed to do something else later that afternoon. He was very glad he went, since he figures he drank well over $20 worth of Starbuck’s coffee and we all had lots of chocolate items. We paid just $10 for our entrance, as our 2 little boys were free. The organizers sold lots of ‘tickets’ in advance, which were special wrappers around a Hershey’s chocolate bar. This gave them enough advance money to purchase things for the event, like forks, tablecloths, plates, napkins and some decorations. All tickets were then turned in at the door for the door prizes, and you just wrote your name on the back of it. Total # of people helping that day was probably about 12: 1 or 2 ladies at the door collecting tickets and handing out brochures explaining the cause and the 40 auction items; 2 ladies bringing more food out from the back room to fill in gaps on tables and refill drink coolers; 2 ladies in charge of emceeing the event and the auctions; 2 ladies roaming around helping people figure out how the auction works and 1 lady signing people up for the auction items… you had to have a ticket # to place a bid. So, that’s only 7 people, but I’m sure they had more people setting up the event (the tables were put up by the event center in a pre-designed configuration) and decorating, plus a few for clean-up. And, most of them probably helped with getting donations. Others were asked to sell tickets, and they were signed up to sell to individual groups, people at offices, etc.

This annual event will certainly continue on in future years, and will probably bring in more and more donations as the community becomes more accustomed to the event and the cause. And, it could easily be done as an evening affair with a higher end auction and slightly higher ticket price.