Freshbox Blog

Meet T. Bears: Partner

Valentine’s Day is right around the corner and so for our partner profile this week, we’re highlighting our favorite source of chocolate-covered sweets, T. Bears Chocolatier and Florist.  Over the course of our partnership, they’ve faithfully provided us with thousands of hand-dipped Oreos, made using a special recipe just for Freshbox.  We look forward to visiting the shop because T. Bears’ generous owner, Dallas, usually sends us out the door with a few of his delicious new chocolate creations to try on the way home.  This locally-owned, family-operated chocolate and flower shop has managed to survive both the bad economy and an accident this past year in which two cars crashed through their storefront.  We’re proud to continue supporting them, and appreciative of their dedication to providing us with a quality product.  Read on to learn about what T. Bears has in store for Valentine’s Day, and what unique food item they plan to cover in chocolate next.

How long has T. Bears Florist & Chocolatier existed?  Can you describe how you got started?
This is our 6th year.  Before that, I was living in Hawaii and my family asked me to come back to Ohio.  We started out as T. Bears Florist and Gifts, selling flowers in Lancaster at a little kiosk in the mall.  When we moved to City Center, we took over the old Harry London candy store and the equipment was still there.  I’m a retired executive chef, so we decided to start selling chocolates and added Chocolatier to our name.  When City Center closed, we moved to our current location at the corner of Rich and Third.  We’re still family-owned and operated.

What does a typical day look like at T. Bears?
Our store opens at 8am and closes at 7pm.  We make 75 to 100 pounds of chocolate items fresh every day and arrange and deliver around 50 flower bouquets.  We’re open 6 days a week but if you place an order on Saturday, we’ll deliver on Sunday because the mommies deserve flowers on Sunday just as much as any other day.

What are T. Bears’ best-selling products?
Buckeyes and turtle doves (caramel, walnuts, and pecans dipped in milk chocolate).  We sell a lot of flower arrangements too.  People can pick them up at our stores or order them through Teleflora, a nation-wide online flower company.  If you live in Michigan and want flowers delivered to a hospital in Ohio, your florist can send us the order through Teleflora and we’ll deliver the flowers right to the hospital for you.

Will you offer any specials for Valentine’s Day?
We sure will.  We’ve got a 2lb heart-shaped box of assorted hand-dipped chocolates for $29.95, and don’t forget those roses to go with it.

How did your partnership with Freshbox come about?
Joe came in and wanted to buy a locally-made product to include with his lunches.  He came up with the idea for the mint Oreo and it’s just gone from there.  Now we buy every package of mint Oreos that we can find.  Since we can’t find them wholesale, we go to the grocery stores.   We’ve gone as far as Cleveland to buy the mint Oreos.  You can find regular Oreos anywhere, but not these.

Freshbox note: It was in fact the entire team at LSSCO that chose the Mint Oreo after sampling a whole slew of T. Bears treats.

We get rave reviews for our T. Bears Oreos all the time.  Did you have any idea that they would be so popular?
Actually, if you want to know the truth, yes I did.  When Joe suggested the mint Oreo, I said, oh they’re going to go crazy for those.  We take pride in the fact that when Freshbox orders the Oreos, those cookies get dipped right then and there.  They’re made fresh every time, and we don’t make them for any other business, only Freshbox.  Also, we enhance the chocolate – not even Freshbox knows what we put in there to make it tastes like it does.  Its Freshbox’s own private flavor.

What are you excited about right now?  Can we expect to see any new products coming out in the near future?
I’m excited that we just opened a store in New Albany about six months ago; we really like the location and we’ve hired on a wedding consultant since we specialize in weddings.

Also, we’re thinking of branching out into chocolate-covered ants or something with a couple of different kinds of bugs, like a chocolate-covered bug cluster.  Bugs cost more than almonds, and we’ll have to order them from a specialty company in California, but I’ve had chocolate-covered ants and grasshoppers and they were pretty tasty – crunchy and salty.

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