D’Amore-McKim Student Startup Offers Up Ultimate Snacking Solution
A new line of handcrafted, high-protein, low-fat chocolates has sprung up from a brand new D’Amore-McKim alumni startup, that offers a “snacking solution for those looking for a healthy treat to sate their hunger between meals.”
Health by Chocolate Bakery, co-founded by Jaida Mercurio and Ara Josefsson, who currently works in marketing at Boston health tech company Wellable, produces dark and white chocolate from organic coconut flakes, chia seeds, cinnamon, and whey protein. The result is a sweet and healthy snack with a macronutrient profile: “seven grams of protein, one gram of fat, one gram of carbohydrate.” The chocolates are available in three flavors—apple pie, birthday cake, and chocolate almond.
In addition to the duo’s partnership with IDEA, Northeastern’s student-run venture accelerator, Josefsson and Mercurio believe their DMSB classroom experience has been integral to the success of Health by Chocolate. A second-year marketing and interactive media combined major, Mercurio says her accounting class helped her apply concepts like costs of goods sold to her work with HBC.
Josefsson learned “how to best validate a product and scale it upward” from his service marketing and business strategy courses. He elaborated in a recent interview with News@Northeastern, saying “What I learned is that successful ideas provide long-term solutions to problems that impact a large number of people.”
Although Health by Chocolate—a gentle jab at “death by chocolate,” if you didn’t catch it—has generated a fair bit of online chatter, its founders are itching to level up. At the moment, they hope to expand to “cookies, muffins, and seasonal varieties of the bite-size candies, including gingerbread for the winter and pumpkin pie for the fall.”
About the Author
Jonathan Pfeffer
Jonathan Pfeffer joined the Clear Admit and MetroMBA teams in 2015 after spending several years as an arts/culture writer, editor, and radio producer. In addition to his role as contributing writer at MetroMBA and contributing editor at Clear Admit, he is co-founder and lead producer of the Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast. He holds a BA in Film/Video, Ethnomusicology, and Media Studies from Oberlin College.
