My husband and I are starting a chocolaterie. It’s been our lifelong dream and we finally have enough money to make it happen. We’re actually in our late fifties and we’ve worked hard our whole lives, me as a nurse, hubbie as a construction worker. We always wanted to create the to carry us into retirement. It was a romantic dream that we imagined as an old fashioned family business, like a French sweet shop from the thirties. We thought it would be a lovely way to grow old, making chocolate and putting smiles on kids’ faces.

We had to do everything from purchasing the hop to hiring the sign writers. Melbourne is a big city and there’s plenty of business for a quaint chocolate shop like the one we wanted to create. We bought a combined shopfront with a house attached to the back. This is exactly what we wanted for our lifestyle, to be close to work. The area is ideal, it’s in the city in an arcade with some other sweet shops and artisanal stores that sell beautiful hand crafted products. We want our chocolate to be both delicious and aesthetically pleasing, top of the line and based on ancient French recipes inherited from my husband’s grandmother.

Next step was getting the business signs. Melbourne, being such a big city, is bursting with signs and ads, it’s really a bombardment of the senses. That’s why it’s important for us to stand out. We need to get an A frame sign for the front of the shop. I think this is particularly old fashioned and nostalgic. We also need the sign companies to create window frosting with our distinctive shop name design. I haven’t thought about the design aspects too much yet but when we do hire the signwriter, I’ll ask them to create the right atmosphere: family values, delicious chocolate, and geared towards the kids.