At the ripe age of 10, Jamasen Rodriguez realized his love for chocolate. He'd spend day in and day out with his eyes glued to the Food Network, admiring the work of Jacques Torres as he indulged in the fancy confectionary goodness that is Ghirardelli. His passion for cocoa didn't just start and end with the consumption of the delicate, delicious sweets that he so admired; rather Rodriguez used his affection for chocolate as inspiration to launch his very own chocolate store, a small shop located in the heart of downtown Arbutus, Maryland, appropriately named Jama Cocoa.
Rodriguez began making chocolates his senior year of high school, discovering new recipes online and tweaking them just enough to make them his own. When he was accepted to Johns Hopkins University, he continued at his hobby, combining his enthusiasm for business with his love for chocolate to create his first of what's sure to be a long line of sweet shops. His plan: to create "the Starbucks of chocolate," and it seems as if he's well on his way to doing just that.
Jama Cocoa officially launched on Halloween this year with a grand opening that boasted mouthwatering truffles, piping hot chocolate, a unique tea created from cocoa beans, as well as a series of other chocolatey delicacies that never failed to impress customers. But that was expected, for Rodriguez has already received an impressive slew of compliments from local restaurants like 13.5% Wine Bar in Hampden and the Waterstone Bar and Grille in Mount Vernon, which sell his goods. He has also found great success with online purchases of his chocolate concoctions, which again speaks to what a brilliant artisan Rodriguez truly is.
Rodriguez was smart when starting his business, saving money by using a kitchen in his residence hall on campus to create his truffles. Soon after generating some revenue through his website sales, though, Rodriguez transferred to a space in Arbutus, the prime location for his production kitchen.
Now he's shipping off just about 15,000 handmade truffles on a monthly basis, working alongside his brother and fellow Hopkins students to ensure everything runs smoothly. The popularity of Rodriguez's business is outstanding, mainly because of the products he's creating, but also the way Rodriguez runs Jama Cocoa.
Rodriguez has a rule that his chocolates can only be sent within FedEx Ground's two-day delivery zone, which, while disappointing for those across the country, makes a whole lot of sense. "This is to allow for the end customer to have enough time to enjoy the product fresh and to limit the amount of time the chocolate is spent in FedEx warehouses or in transit," he explained to the Hub, Johns Hopkins' news network. "The boxes are packaged with coolant, but we want to limit the product's chances of deterioration as much as possible." Smart, very smart.
What's more, Rodriguez has sought to help out the local art community by partnering with talented up-and-coming artists to feature their work on Jama Cocoa's chocolate boxes. A little taste of urban culture in every delectable bite? Sounds good to me.
To date, Jama Cocoa sells six types of chocolates ranging from single-origin truffles from Ecuador to Venezuela, Peru, Colombia, Madagascar, and even Hawaii. His business is thriving. Jama Cocoa was dubbed one of the coolest college startups of 2013 by Inc. Magazine, and Rodriguez could not be happier.
His plan to takeover the chocolatier industry were only recently set in motion, but Rodriguez already has plans to open a second location in either Baltimore's Inner Harbor or in D.C.
Fingers crossed for D.C. I want a taste...
