Someone mentioned wanting a gourmet Reeses Cup the other day and immediately I started salivating at the thought of chocolate and peanut butter. If I haven’t made it clear on the blog yet, I am a serious sucker for sweet stuff. If I had it my way, every meal would end with dessert - but with a modest amount of self control, I can usually keep it to once a day.

Anyway, the chocolate and peanut butter thoughts got me thinking about two kinds of chocolate, peanut butter goodness that I just love.

The first is Colts Bolts, basically a grown-up, gourmet version of a Reeses Cup. The inner-package designer in me screams “take the eighties portrait off the label”, (you’d know what I mean if you saw it). But, I guess that’s just the charm that comes from buying from artisan producers. Mackenzie Colt (the lovely lady on the label) was once a star on the show “Hee Haw” and then had a stint in country music. Eventually she fell into the chocolate business and I am glad she did.

In the center of a Colts Bolt you’ll happily find a custom blended, wonderfully rich peanut butter. The peanut butter is topped with fresh roasted almonds (the secret ingredient!) and then both are covered in a rich dark chocolate. They also have a milk chocolate version if you prefer. No offense to Reeses, but once you have Colts Bolts you can’t go back.

The other perfect peanut and chocolate combo comes from Koeze. Their Cream-Nut Chocolate and Peanut Butter Clusters are sorta addicting. Their award-winning peanut butter certainly sets them a part. Jeff Koeze sources good Virginia peanuts, brings them up north in 2,000 lb sacks, then blanches them to remove the skins and keep them from going rancid. He roasts and grinds them in vintage coffee roasters, then adds a bit of salt. The result is not an air-whipped sugar-filled concoction, but a natural, intense, velvety, mouthwatering sensation. That peanut butter is combined with white chocolate rolled in pecans, then covered with dark chocolate. Oh my goodness yum.

As I continue on my quest to find the best artisanal foods, I’ve realized how much I’m learning and discovering from talking to chefs. They seem to know about products that the average foodie/consumer is simply unaware of.

Last week we dined at some of the best restaurants in Boulder, The Kitchen and Frasca and discovered some wonderful artisanal producers in the process.

Gioia, Burrata - Burrata is a fresh Italian cheese, made from mozzarella and cream. The outer shell is solid mozzarella while the inside contains both mozzarella and cream, giving it a unique soft texture. Gioia’s texture and flavor was spot on. It was so fresh, so creamy, so yeilding to the palate. I now understand why they are reknowned as one of the best domestic, artisan burrata producers.

La Quercia, Pancetta - Pancetta is pork belly that has been salt cured, salted and spiced and then dried for about three months. La Quercia prepares a rolled pancetta where the meat is salted with spices, dried slightly, and then rolled, tied and put into a casing. The closed environment of the casing results in even moisture loss for the meat and allows the herbs to infuse it fully with their flavor. They make it with both the 100% Berkshire pork they get from Eden Farms and the antibiotic free pork they get from Niman Ranch and Heritage Acres. It’s absolutely fantastic.

Fra’Mani, Salame Toscano - Salame is cured sausage, that’s both fermented and air-dried. The Salame Toscano from Framani is a large salame crafted in the tradition of the Tuscan countryside. It had a deep burgundy color and a pronounced rich, salty flavor.

This week, Megan Cotler, a freelance videographer working for Current TV, has been following us around to learn more about Foodzie and TechStars in general. She’s doing a piece on the TechStars program and what it’s like for the companies involved. From what Megan tells us, the final piece will air in the fall. We are complete novices at the whole video thing (look at the camera, no… don’t look at the camera) and tried our best to just act natural. Megan was awesome and made us feel totally comfortable. I am excited to see how she pulls it all together. Here are a few shots from hangin’ with Megan and the camera.

Megan getting the scoop from me about the Boulder Farmers Market and what was so great about the peaches I was standing in a good 10-15 minute line to get. Do I always look that funny when I talk?

You may recognize this picture from the last post documenting our first sale with Matt Mullenweg from Wordpress. This time notice a sneaky camera in the bottom right corner - Megan captured our first sale on video!

That’s Megan doing some more filming, while balancing herself on a hill (it was trickier than it looks), trying to avoid slipping into the Boulder Creek. She thought the shot was worth it. Yes she’s hardcore!

Filming moved to the Seth Ellis chocolate shop (the funny-looking hairnets were required) where Rick shared his story and fed us lots of chocolate. Megan got a taste for what our job is like and enjoyed partaking in the chocolate sampling.

Sometimes you come to the end of a week and wonder, how the heck did I cram it all in?? This week has been a big one for us. A quick recap.

Monday - Launched our first Foodzie “alpha” store - Seth Ellis Chocolatier. Matt Mullenweg, Founder of Wordpress happened to be visiting TechStars and was our first customer. Thanks Matt! Of course…the Foodzie blog is powered by Wordpress.

There are more pictures of our first sale on his blog. If you haven’t bought any, shame on you! But honestly, they are definitely worth a try. We are huge fans of their organic truffles.

Tuesday - More real customers. Hooray! Thanks to everyone that bought some chocolates from Seth Ellis and gave us great feedback about your experience.

Meetings with great mentors:
- Don Springer, Collective Intellect
- Jeff and Judy Herman, Fuser
- Dave Taylor, AskDaveTaylor.com

Session on Angel Funding with Howard Diamond, Tom Higley and David Hose.

Wednesday - We got started on the right foot with breakfast at The Kitchen with the Ice Box Bakery ladies (which had me craving their cookies for 3 days until I willingly gave in last night).

-Session/Field Trip to Photobucket on scaling your business
-Dinner at Frasca with Jason Mendelson (knew it would be good, but it totally exceeded all our expectations!)

Thursday - We took the advice from our first customers (yes we listen when you share!) and begin iterating on the product. These changes have been made and now our checkout process makes a little more sense.

-Chatted with Brad Feld via video chat (he’s working remotely from Homer, AK) and recruited him to be our artisan food scout in Alaska - more on his findings later!
-Session/Field Trip to Zoll Data on Bootstrapping with David Brown - very refreshing persective.

Friday - It started with a great meeting with the man behind the magic at Frasca - owner, Bobby Stuckey. He is the definition of a true foodie and is a brilliant man when it comes to food. We learned a ton.

-Met with Room 214 about some very cool potential partnerships with Foodzie
-Enjoyed a little Happy Hour of mojitos and guacamole, while meeting with one of the most passionate pork person we know, Chris Wand - who also happens to be an incredible lead mentor for us.

The weeks don’t technically “end” as an entrepreneur, in fact we are headed to the Boulder Farmers Market now to do our weekly shopping and do a video shoot with Current TV. Ahhh…the life of an entrepreneur.

Yesterday Rob and I were lucky enough to share breakfast with probably two of the nicest people we’ve met in Boulder. Allie and Jen are two pastry chefs that own Ice Box Bakery, a small artisan, all natural cookie dough company. The first time we met Allie and Jen was at the Natural Products Expo West food show in Anaheim. There are always those booths you sneak back to for extra samples (because they are so good!) and Ice Box Bakery was definitely one of those. It was so nice to reconnect with them yesterday.

Allie and Jen are both moms and wanted a quick, easy way to prepare cookies for their kids, but wanted something with natural “clean” ingredients. Most cookie doughs you find in the supermarket are packed with partially hydrogenated oils, artificial flavors and preservatives, so Allie and Jen figured they’d use their culinary talents and create an all natural cookie dough of their own.

Allie joked that people think they are doing something novel, since Toll House - packed with their preservatives - has dominated for so long, but she said, “really we are just making cookies the way you’d make them at home. Ya know, with flour, sugar, butter and eggs.” This is a trend I am seeing in food in general. People want real stuff in their food and I am definitely on that bandwagon.

I’m a big fan of their cookie dough because it’s so convenient, it’s all natural and it really does taste like homemade. When it comes to cookies, I am a sucker for the classic flavors like chocolate chip. Ice Box’s Deluxe Chocolate Chip has that nice buttery flavor and it’s packed with chocolate chunks. It also bakes to perfection - soft in the middle and crispy on the outside. Yes I want one now.

We hope Allie and Jen will start shipping direct to customers soon so they can join us on Foodzie!

We’re happy to announce that today marks the launch of our first “alpha store”! We’re honored to have Seth Ellis Chocolatier as the first artisan producer featured on Foodzie… you can check out the Seth Ellis storefront here.

You’ll notice that we’ve developed all of the core e-commerce functionality as well as the individual producer’s storefront. As we continue our development throughout the summer and into the holiday season we are going to build a marketplace, additional community features, and other ways for consumers to learn about and share the foods that they discover.

We’d love to hear your initial thoughts, so leave us some feedback in the comments!

Here are a few interesting links from my adventures in food reading this week.

Save the bees, support artisan honey producers - Last year 20 billion bees disappeared and experts still aren’t sure exactly why. But they have determined that the bees that were in the hands of artisan honey producers stuck around, while commercial producers continue to see bees vanish. So in order to help support these small producers, Food and Wine highlighted their favorite artisanal honeys of the 6 most common varieties in the US.

Genius Junk Food - Men’s Health hopes to reverse our misconceptions about 6 foods that should no longer be considered “junk”. I second Ed Levine’s comment on the items that made the list.

The list is amusing and even in some cases informative. I mean, pork rinds? Really? If pork rinds are on the list, shouldn’t bacon, country ham, and prosciutto make the list? - Ed Levine

How the heck do I cook Squash Blossoms? - Ever since I had squash blossoms for the first time at Jean Georges in NY, I’ve wanted to use them in a dish of my own. I’ve just been a bit baffled of how to use the delicate flowers and preserve their aroma and flavor. Armed with this recipe from Serious Eats for a Zucchini Blossom Frittata, and blossoms from the market, I am ready to prepare my very own squash blossom dish.

Gilroy Garlic Festival - Have you ever tried garlic ice cream? Yeah, me either - but if you want to find out what it’s like and taste just about anything else with garlic, there is no better place than in Gilroy, CA. If you’re in the area this upcoming weekend, check out the 30th annual Gilroy Garlic Festival.

Summer’s bounty is officially here and it’s been helping me to satisfy those cravings I have all year long for fresh tomatoes, sweet cherries and tender greens like chard and butter lettuce. But because I spent 18 years of my life growing up in Maryland, summertime also makes me crave something I can’t find in the land-locked state of Colorado and that’s a good ol’ pile of Old Bay covered, steamed…Maryland Blue Crabs.

In Maryland, steamed crabs are the delicacy of summer. Anyone with good taste can appreciate a true Maryland crab cake (mostly lump crab meat, little to no filler…that’s a debate for a different day), but it takes a true Marylander or what I’d call an “adventurous outsider” to enjoy the sport of pickin’ crabs.

The setup is simple. You start with a newspaper-wrapped picnic table and simply dump the steamed crabs in the center of the table. Of course you need mallets, cold beer, a roll of paper towels, a bowl of lemon water, clean hands (that are prepared to be covered in Old Bay), and lots of time. It takes a good 15-20 minutes to pick just one crab, I think with a net result of about 1 oz of crab meat (yes upon this realization, this is when most “outsiders” bail). So yes, it seems kind of crazy to pay a heck of a lot of money, to get a pile of crabs that you then have to pick yourself, for a relatively small amount of meat and of course the added bonus of crab shell battle wounds on your fingertips. But I love every minute of it.

If you’re a true Marylander like me that has now ended up in some other part of the country and long for tender lump crab meat and Old Bay on your fingers and lips here are a few places that will ship Maryland Crabs - fully steamed - across the country.

Tarbay Seafood

The Crab Place

Southern Connection Seafood

Foodzie along with the other nine TechStars teams were featured in the Boulder County Business Report today, check it out here.

A little while back I wrote a post about how I sent Tony, the CEO of Zappos, a direct message on Twitter looking for a little advice on customer service for Foodzie.

To my surprise, not only did Tony reply - but said he was more than happy to help. He put me in touch with Jane Judd, who manages their customer loyalty program. Jane and I had a pretty intense game of phone tag going until we finally connected Monday. We spent about an hour talking about what makes for a successful e-commerce business and killer customer service. So, in the spirit of Zappos (they are transparent and open about nearly everything with their business), I thought I would share the valuable insights Jane shared with me.

1. Build a business on repeat customers - These customers are dependable, loyal and help to grow the business. Make sure this number is consistently growing. Currently 72% of Zappos’ customers are the kind that keep on comin’ back.

2. Don’t underestimate word-of-mouth marketing online - This is no big shocker, many of us know how virally things can spread online. But Jane said most companies aren’t tapping it to it’s fullest potential. Use this to your advantage.

3. Don’t compete on price - For a long time Zappos tried coupons and promotions to drive more sales, but it only brought them one-time customers. They decided to cut out the deals and focus on offering the best selection of shoes and top-notch customer service. This strategy brought them repeat customers, which helped them to grow the business.

4. Look at customer service as an investment not an expense - This is pretty self-explanatory, but most companies don’t get it. A good chunk of the money Zappos makes goes right back into their customer loyalty program.

5. Start small and stay focused - Lot’s of companies fret about small revenues up front when they first launch and get off track trying to make that happen fast. Success isn’t always overnight, in fact it rarely is. Zappos has been in business for nearly 10 years - it took them awhile to get where they are today.

6. Be open, don’t worry about competition - Jane said Tony felt like way too many traditional retailers tried to protect their “secrets” and thus has little transparency. The culture at Zappos is just the opposite; they will share just about everything but financial statements with anyone - even their competitors. This strategy allows them to do what’s best for the customer. When a customer calls looking for shoes Zappos doesn’t carry, Zappos reps search online for other sites where they can buy the shoe and pass along the info to the customer - very cool.

7. Stay active managing company culture - Zappos’ culture is what really helps them stand apart. Culture fit is the most important thing they look for when hiring new people.

8. Be wary of so-called “experts” - Zappos spent a lot of money working with consultants to improve the business. In the end, they realized that their gut instinct was usually right and they just needed to look to themselves for the answer. Tony believes that you’re the only one that truly knows what’s right for your business.