Chocolate, Chocolate, Chocolate

Metropolitan Build was engaged by Chocolate, Chocolate, Chocolate to convert an existing 30,000 square foot warehouse building in St. Louis into a fully functional chocolate manufacturing facility and retail store. The project required an entirely new mechanical infrastructure capable of holding precise temperature and humidity tolerances, a specialty commercial kitchen built for chocolate production, and a retail space for customers to purchase the company’s chocolate products.

Chocolate, Chocolate, Chocolate is a family-owned chocolatier that has grown into one of St. Louis’s best-known chocolate brands, shipping products worldwide. Before this project, the company produced all of its chocolate out of roughly 2,000 square feet tucked behind one of its retail shops; a tight enough space that staff regularly worked shoulder to shoulder around the equipment. Metropolitan Build was brought on to give the company a dedicated, purpose-built facility that could support both its manufacturing needs and its next chapter as a larger operation.

The existing building had previously served as a warehouse and office space for a kitchen cabinet wholesaler, with the warehouse floor used to store cabinet inventory and a showroom used for sales. The masonry structure featured concrete floors, loading docks, and a distinctive patterned concrete ceiling deck dating to the 1920s, one of the building’s most attractive original features. Metropolitan Build converted the former warehouse into the manufacturing floor and transformed the showroom into a retail space and offices, reworking the building’s electrical and mechanical systems throughout to support its new use as a working chocolate factory.

One of the project’s biggest challenges was mechanical. Chocolate production and packaging for this client required a controlled environment, with temperatures held at approximately 56°F, plus or minus one degree, and humidity kept at 40% or below. Metropolitan Build worked with a mechanical engineer and a specialty kitchen-exhaust contractor to design an air distribution system capable of holding these tolerances consistently, even with a working commercial kitchen generating heat and high ceilings in other areas of the building to move air through. Humidity controls placed throughout the facility helped keep the interconnected systems in balance, ensuring the chocolate stays stable from production through packaging and shipping.

Metropolitan Build built out a commercial kitchen purpose-designed for chocolate production, complete with a dedicated prep kitchen and cleanup area. From there, an assembly line carries finished chocolate through to packaging, where products are boxed for retail sale. The completed facility also includes an employee break room and dedicated space for packaging and distribution, giving the company a streamlined, single-site workflow from raw ingredients to finished product.

City-required ADA accessibility upgrades were introduced after construction was already underway, requiring a change order to add an accessible route connecting the retail level down to the production floor roughly five feet below. With limited linear space to work with, Metropolitan Build designed and built a switchback ramp system to meet code requirements without disrupting the building’s layout or delaying the project’s completion.

Before this project, the company’s entire chocolate output came from a single 2,000 square foot production space. The completed facility gave Chocolate, Chocolate, Chocolate more than 20,000 square feet of dedicated manufacturing space. Beyond manufacturing, the renovated facility gives visitors a firsthand look at the chocolatier process. Chocolate, Chocolate, Chocolate offers public tours of the production floor, and the retail storefront is a popular stop in the Hill neighborhood’s restaurant district for tourists and visitors from around the city.

Completed on a renovation timeline of roughly four to five months, the facility has continued to serve as both an active production plant and a public-facing destination in the years since. Now a multi-generation family business with national distribution, Chocolate, Chocolate, Chocolate ships product across the country from the St. Louis facility Metropolitan Build helped build out.