You really can’t go wrong with chocolate on Valentine’s Day. Peterbrooke Chocolatier has you covered this year!
The chocolate shop is offering some seasonal goodies that you can grab for your sweetheart before Thursday. While stores will be offering staples like chocolate covered popcorn, chocolate dipped Oreos and gelato, they will also be doing something extra special for Valentines Day.
Each year the store has a specialty stuffed item for the holiday. This year, they’ve created a giant heart filled with chocolate covered popcorn.
Linda Crout is the general manager and head chocolatier of the downtown Peterbrooke store located at 100 West Bay Street. She says that they’ve been prepping for Valentines Day for months.
“Christmas and Valentines Day are hand down our two biggest days of the year,” Crout says. “Right after Christmas ended we got to work prepping for Valentines Day. It takes a lot of work.”
And the work shows.
Her entire store is a sea of red and pink wrapped ribbon. Elaborately themed gift baskets line the shelves, along with favorites such as decadent truffles, hand-made caramels and cherry cordials. Specialties such as chocolate covered cookies, pretzels, scratch-made marshmallows, potato chips and strawberries are hand-dipped daily in shops.
Crout says that the downtown store alone will sell around 4,000 chocolate covered strawberries for the holiday.
“The chocolate covered strawberries are always popular,’ Crout says. “My recommendation is to get your order in early because it can get pretty backed up sometimes.”
Over the course of 2018, Peterbrooke sold more than 108,600 pounds of chocolate covered popcorn – that’s more than 289,000 six-ounce bags of the brand’s most popular item! Additionally, Peterbrooke hand dipped 46,757 strawberries for Valentines Day in 2018
Founded in 1983 in in Jacksonville’s historic San Marco neighborhood, the brand now has more than 20 locations throughout the Southeast, including Florida, Alabama and Georgia.