From a basement in rural Ontario to an award-winning chocolate brand found across Canada, Erica’s journey with Hummingbird Chocolate is anything but typical.
In this episode, we discuss Erica’s path from working alongside farmers in Afghanistan — where she met her husband Drew and deepened her passion for ethical agriculture — to putting down roots in Ottawa and unexpectedly stepping into entrepreneurship. What began as an experiment making chocolate in their Almonte basement soon became a leap of faith and a full-time business.
Our conversation explores the realities of scaling while staying true to values, the moments that made the success feel real, and the deeper “why” behind every bar. At its core, our episode is about building something meaningful — one bite at a time.
In this episode, we dive into: 👇✨
🍫 Learning the intricacies of making the perfect chocolate bar, well before YouTube and TikTok tutorials and their respective platforms existed
🤯 Erica shares the thrilling adventure of wholesaling Hummingbird chocolate, expanding their team, achieving viral success on social media, and the importance of taste consistency
⚠️ We openly discuss the
differences between larger chocolate companies such as Hershey's , while diving into Hummingbird’s respective ideal customers
🙌🏼 Erica explains how she and the team identifies which organizations and charities to support, while maintaining boundaries and limitations with the multiple requests they receive daily