Queer, Filipina-Owned Kokak Chocolate Shop Celebrates Third Anniversary And New Pastry Program

Carol Gancia is the self-taught Filipina chocolatier behind Kokak Chocolates in San Francisco’s vibrant Castro District. Opened in June 2020, Kokak is celebrating three years of crafting small-batch single origin heirloom chocolates in countless flavors that celebrate the talented founder’s Filipino and broader Asian heritage.

“‘Kokak’ means ribbit in Filipino,”explains Gancia. “I chose a name that sounds like an exclamation point. I want people to be excited about the brand and to start a conversation with me about my Filipino culture and heritage. As immigrants, we are taught to blend in. I want to be seen and heard as a Filipino immigrant, a LGBTQ community member and a woman. My business is so close to my heart, it has to reflect who I am with Pride.”

Gancia immigrated from Manila, Phillipines to San Francisco in 2004 and soon thereafter launched her own video production company, Ripplemakers, Inc. It was through her work in video production various culinary shows including KQED’s Check Please! Bay Area that she realized her calling in the delicious world of chocolate.

“The idea of starting a chocolate shop was born from years of searching for work that reflects the next chapter in my life,” Gancia recalls. “I had an exciting career as a television and video producer, creating content, and telling stories about people I met from all over the world who taught me so much in life.”

“While I’m still curious about the world around me, I also have a deep desire to renew ties with people I care about — loved ones near and far,” she continues. “Chocolate does a good job of letting people know they matter.”

To date, Gancia has developed over 50 truffle recipe flavors and 40 collections, with each piece and design telling a unique story. For her single origin dark chocolates, she uses the Arriba Naciónal, a rare cacao variety, known to be the oldest in the world and the most prized by chocolatiers globally. Currently, the Kokak menu showcases a celebration of Pride Month, with highlights including Rainbow Love Truffle Collection featuring heirloom chocolate in hazelnut praline and kalamansi flavors; the Say It Louder Pride Collection and Assorted Pastry Box available for in-store, pick-up or delivery through June 30.

This month also marks the launch of Gancia’s pastries which include decadent chocolate chip cookies, heirloom chocolate orange cookies, classic chocolate brownies and a rich “Black is Beautiful” chocolate cupcakes.

Also on the menu is a version of champorado — a sweet and salty premium chocolate porridge made of sweet pillowy rice topped with bubu arare (Japanese rice crackers), creamy grated coconut and condensed milk. This originated from Mexican traders who introduced a chocolate drink to the Philippines, which eventually became champorado, a testament of friendship between Filipinos and Mexicans during the Acapulco-Manila galleon trade in the 1500’s.

We chatted with Kokak Chocolates founder Carol Gancia on how her career as a chocolatier began, how she comes up with her unique chocolate flavors, and what’s to come. Here’s what she had to say.

How did Kokak start? Talk about your career background in journalism, tv production… etc. and how that led you to the world of chocolate.

I started a business as a video producer 20 years ago and built a career in broadcast journalism, television production and promotional video production. I worked as a journalist for an investigative news program in the Philippines and a TV documentary series. Eight years after running my own video production company with my best friend, Angelina Cantada, I moved to San Francisco.

I joined two television shows at KQED, a PBS station in San Francisco, producing for Check Please, Bay Area, a restaurant television show, and Jacques Pepin: More Fast Food My Way, a French cooking show. Throughout all these jobs, I continued to run my San Francisco-based video production business on the side until I decided to launch it again full time.

My greatest passion in life is learning. It is my deepest motivation for the entrepreneurial paths I pursue. I definitely still love crafting a story while filming, writing and video editing. I am eager to start a new path that will introduce me to a new world with great potential for growth, discovery and the pursuit of new skills and challenges.

Growing up did you ever think you’d start a chocolate company? How has your experience been as a business owner? What are some of the unforeseen challenges you’ve come across and how have you worked to overcome them.

Growing up, I had the fortune of being gifted bittersweet, liquor and other exceptional European chocolates by my uncle from as young as eight years old. My whole family loved chocolates and still do. Little did I know, all these chocolate memories with my family would take me on this journey of starting a chocolate shop in San Francisco.

I knew what I wanted to be as a child. I wanted to write, to be a journalist and to create. Back then, I thought I was only allowed to be one thing. As children, we don’t always know how long life can be and what meandering paths we can explore for our personal growth. I always had many different interests, which bothered my grandma. I remember her telling me, “A rolling stone gathers no moss.” Moss or no moss, I couldn’t help being myself — an explorer with an insatiable hunger to learn.

Starting a chocolate business in San Francisco is both fun and a great challenge. Kokak Chocolates gives me a high. I enjoy it so much. It also keeps me on my toes. I am an experienced business owner with a 20-year track record but businesses can be as different as night and day. The business model for my video production agency speaks a different language from how a chocolate shop ticks. After 17 years of running my video production business, I found myself scared and clueless again.

Understanding who you are selling to, where they are and how to connect with them are often some of the challenges of a starting business owner. This is on top of figuring out recipes, labor, ingredients, packaging, rent, equipment and social media. I found myself overwhelmed a lot during the first couple of years.

As a small business owner, you are in charge of everything. I started the business, looking forward to the joy of making chocolates and sharing them with customers. I found myself doing more work to keep my business alive and thriving through the pandemic, post-pandemic and recession years — marketing, sales, recruitment, budgeting and employee management.

It’s during challenging times when you will be thankful that you are doing what you love. Kokak Chocolates brings me so much joy that I almost don’t mind the hardships.

You’ve developed 50 truffle recipe flavors and 40 collections — what are some of your favorites? What are some of the most unique flavors you’ve come up with?

One of my favorites is our Kalamansi chocolate truffle, shelled in 70% single origin dark chocolate and filled with kalamansi chocolate ganache. Kalamansi is a Philippine citrus fruit with a flavor profile between an orange and a lime. Chocolate is a memory and kalamansi is about my mom making kalamansi juice for me– hot to soothe me when I’m not feeling well, and cold to keep me cool during the summer.

I also love our hazelnut praline truffles. It’s a classic and reminds me of all those European chocolates I had as a kid.

Out of all the bars we have at the shop, I love sharing the story behind our Umami bar, a ramen-inspired single origin white chocolate bar with toasted sesame seeds, shichimi togarashi, candied ginger, seaweed and Japanese rice crackers. I used to make these three-layered cookies with a thin layer of what is now our Umami bar. It did not come out the way I had hoped one time and so I reused the white chocolate layer and made it into a bar. Our Umami bar became our second bestselling bar in 2022. It’s so popular that I cannot keep up with making it.

What is your creative process like and how do you come up with new flavors?

My creative process starts with a concept for the chocolate season. Once the concept is set, I create a prototype of both flavor and design to reflect the seasonal chocolate theme and get feedback from my teammates. Once we are happy with the new creation, we design the packaging and start producing the products.

Birthing new flavors come from inspired life experiences in the Philippine islands and California. It’s about climbing up a tree to get a guava fruit, enjoying fresh mangoes on weekends with family and driving with friends to Laguna, a province south of Manila, Philippines to enjoy a homemade coconut pie. In California, I learned so much about food from other cultures and embraced Japanese umami, French and Italian flavors. I am still discovering food from other cultures and can’t wait to introduce new flavors that share the story of life in the Central American, Mediterranean and African regions of the world.

You plan on adding pastry items to your menu, talk about what those are and what your cafe will be like.

We are celebrating another year at Kokak Chocolates with a reservations-only Drag Brunch this June. We will be introducing our pastries and lunch items at the shop soon. Some of my pastry favorites are “Black is Beautiful” chocolate ganache-filled cupcakes and our Classic Brownies with white chocolate drizzle and cocoa nibs. We will also continue to offer our Cacao Porridge with classic and seasonal topping options.

Our brunch menu features a Filipino rice porridge called Arroz Caldo with vegetarian options, Filipino Empanada, Tamago Sando and more. We are planning on launching Kokak Chocolates as a cafe by summer although we are already taking steps to transition by offering weekend brunches in June.

How is Kokak celebrating Pride month and why is celebrating this (diversity, inclusion… etc.) so important to the brand?

We are celebrating Pride month along with our third year as a brick-and-mortar shop by supporting LGBTQIA+ causes and launching a reservations-only Drag Brunch. This will be the first AAPI drag brunch experience with live performances and a whole lot of sass hosted by Mx Kiki Krunch, featuring Xtina Agitera, Ehra Amaya, Lady P Galore & Nutasha Quintine. The events range from $100-120 per person with a prix fixe menu featuring a Filipino-inspired chocolate brunch made by Gancia.

We are proud of what we have accomplished as an LGBTQIA+ business despite all the challenges in the last three years. We would like Kokak Chocolates Cafe to be a welcoming place for everyone, especially the Asian LGBTQ+ community and Filipino queers, who are looking for a place they can call “home” in San Francisco.

Click this link to find out more details!