I’m going to rip this band-aid off quickly: our Rockridge store is closing. Our last day at the College Avenue location is Valentine’s Day, February 14, 2026. Our Solano Avenue store will remain open for now, though its future is uncertain. You can help by shopping in January rather than waiting for February, when everyone descends at once—our capacity is limited.
If you’ve never made it to Rockridge, now’s your last chance. Frankie is pouring her heart into one last Valentine window display. If inspired, leave the staff a love letter in the mailbox—they’d treasure it.
Thank you for your patience and support during this difficult time.
Our last day at 5854 College Avenue is February 14, 2026
Come see Frankie’s final window and leave the staff a love letter if you’re inspired.
If you’d like to know why we are closing, the story follows below:
The Brief, Wondrous Life of Xocolate & Confections
The dream was a bright, airy candy store, rivaling Wonkaland in wonder and Miette Confiserie in taste. Frankie treated it as her magnum opus of interior design, drawing on a lifetime of finely tuned attention to space and style.
Upcycled tables were covered in white penny tiles held together with Barbie-pink grout—a cool, smooth surface, the sensory equivalent of sucking on Mentos. IKEA cabinetry received custom finials and birchwood facades, softening industrial modernism into warmth and chic. Moveable walls allowed the space to expand and contract, serving as a retail shop, a collage classroom, a spoken-word stage, and a community gallery.
Frankie’s windows were legendary. From the tear-inducing Día de los Muertos altar to the Valentine’s display—a neighbor’s hand-me-down Kallax transformed into a box of giant chocolates—every installation radiated beauty. Even the intern’s origami skills contributed, pleat by oversized pleat, to the faux candy cups.
But beneath the beauty, structural problems hit us from every direction. Rockridge was meant to relieve pressure on our tiny Solano Avenue kitchen by housing packaging, cold storage, and shipping. Instead, the health department misinformed me on three separate occasions, both before and after signing the lease.
Despite new flooring, water heater, electrical work, mop sink, wall finishes, and freezers, we were allowed only to sell pre-packaged, shelf-stable confectionery—no sampling, no on-site packaging, no cold storage, no shipping. Rockridge, meant to ease strain, instead made Solano’s challenges worse.
Then came the cocoa crisis. Prices doubled, cocoa butter quadrupled, and the delicate crop revealed the true weight of climate change. I responded as any small business owner does: pulled out of wholesale, laid off half the staff, and fought to survive the season.
December, when chocolate demand spikes, requires preparing all year; in a debt-heavy position, cash that could hire extra hands went to interest payments. Shelves went bare. Exhaustion set in. A reckoning was inevitable.
Simultaneously, my mother’s health declined. I became her caregiver: nineteen days in the hospital, twelve at home, hovering at the edge of life and death. As her only child, my priorities were clear. The business may have suffered, but this pivot is one I will never regret.
The stars misaligned on this moonshot. Whether the fallout will affect Solano remains unknown. Perhaps a year-round artisan chocolate shop was never meant to work. But it existed—for the craft, the creativity, the community, and the camaraderie—and in those realms, we had wild success.
May we all land on gentler, more fruitful paths than the ones we first imagined.
Sincerely,
Malena Lopez-Maggi
Owner, The Xocolate Bar
