The Story of Christo's Confections

Told by the person who built it

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I am a chocoholic. Have been my entire life, which is funny because people who meet me tend to be surprised when I tell them I'm a chocolatier. "But you're so skinny," they say. To which I always give the same answer: all the calories I gain eating it, I burn off making it. It's a perfect system and I'm not going to question it.

Me as the Muffin Man in preschool, 2001

The longer answer to how I became a chocolatier starts in a fifth grade classroom in Hoover, Alabama, where a teacher asked a kid named Stephen what he wanted to be when he grew up, and that kid said he wanted to own a shop that sold chocolate and ice cream. I'd forgotten I said it until that same teacher showed me the video years later in high school. Watching it back, I realized I hadn't changed course at all. I'd been following the same thread the whole time without fully knowing it.

The ice cream part is still technically pending. Everything else is right on schedule.

Chocolate Entrepreneur, Age 11

In hindsight, the signs were everywhere. In sixth grade, I went to a writing camp where we were supposed to develop a business idea. You'd be surprised at some of the wild business ideas sixth graders come up with. I, for one, designed a chocolate museum, complete with giant chocolate sculptures of the Seven Wonders of the World, a hot chocolate geyser, chocolate tastings, and a chocolate river. I wasn't sure exactly how the engineering on the hot chocolate geyser was going to work out, but I was confident it would be spectacular.

Around the same time, I started buying bulk packs of fun-sized candy and, much to my parents’ chagrin, reselling the chocolate at a profit to my siblings - I'm the sixth of ten kids, so the customer base was built in - and to friends in the neighborhood. By high school, this had evolved into something that can only be described as a veritable operation. I carried a briefcase to school every day, stocked with fun-sized chocolates, suckers, and assorted candy. Between classes, I'd open it up and sell pieces for a quarter to classmates and, occasionally, to teachers who clearly also needed a pick-me-up between periods.

I ran deals and specials and even had a customer loyalty program. I tracked inventory, profit, and expenses on spreadsheets. I built a customer base and a reputation. By the time I graduated and passed the briefcase on to my freshman brother, it had funded prom and two trips to Europe. Not bad for a quarter a piece.

Culinary School, Two Tuitions, and a Full Time Job

When I got to high school, the school had just launched a dual enrollment program with Jefferson State Community College's culinary program. I signed up thinking it sounded like fun, not entirely sure where it was going. After the first class, I liked it so much that I convinced the school to expand the program so I could take courses over the summer and the following semester too. I kept going after high school, focusing on baking and pastry arts.

Me crystallizing walnut fudge in culinary school, 2018.

The course that changed everything was called Chocolate and Truffles. We learned the fundamentals of chocolate work - tempering, ganaches, enrobing, molding - and my instructor, knowing I had my eye on a chocolate shop someday, went above and beyond to share techniques and knowledge that I still draw on today. That class is the foundation of most of what I know about working with chocolate, and it's what made me realize for the first time that this wasn't just a dream. It was something I could actually do.

But I also knew that great chocolate alone doesn't make a successful business. So while I was at Jeff State le

arning to make it, I was simultaneously enrolled full time at UAB studying Business Management with a minor in Entrepreneurship. Two schools at once sounds exhausting in retrospect, and it was - I was also working a full time job, by the way - but between scholarships funding both tuitions and the Briefcase Candy Fund covering the rest, I made it work.

At an Italian chocolate shop, one of the many I visited during my times in Europe

Europe, and the Part Where the Bar Got Raised

Those scholarships also happened to cover two more trips to Europe, which I consider a strong return on investment. Wandering through Italy, I ate gelato on 39 separate occasions over the course of two weeks, keeping a detailed list of flavors and my notes on them, and somewhere between the pistachio and the stracciatella, something clicked. Tasting genuinely great European chocolate and confections showed me, in a very direct and delicious way, what was possible when quality actually mattered. It raised the bar for what I wanted to make, and that bar has stayed raised ever since.

The Long Way Around

After college, I spent time in Florida building a dessert menu for a new restaurant, and I worked an internship at Walt Disney World that was every bit as fun as it sounds. I had proposed to my now-wife, Adriana, the day before I moved to Florida for ten months, which in hindsight was ambitious timing. But I moved back to Birmingham to get married - correctly identifying her as the higher priority - and we built a life here.

For a while, chocolate took a back seat to the practical realities of starting a family. I worked in the waterworks industry for a few years to bring home a steady income, and chocolate-making was mostly reserved for family and friends around the holidays. It was enough to keep the craft alive, but not quite the chocolate shop a fifth grader had once envisioned.

Dad and me at our very first market in 2024

That changed in 2024, thanks in no small part to a loving kick in the pants from two of the most important people in my life - my wife and my mother. Sometimes you need the people who know you best to remind you what you're capable of. I formally founded Christo's Confections and named it after my dad, Christopher - a constant inspiration, an enthusiastic supporter of my dreams, and someone who to this day shows up to help at markets, brainstorm ideas, and generally make the whole thing better. At the end of 2024, I handed in my notice and made chocolate my full-time focus.

Since then, it's been a lot of work, a lot of fun, and a lot of learning. But when I think back to that kid in the fifth grade classroom with his hand up, I think he'd be pretty pleased with how it's turned out.

The hot chocolate geyser is still in the concept phase. We'll get there.

Christo's Confections - Artisan chocolates handcrafted to spread happiness,

one bite at a time.