Locally Made Chocolate… A Business with a Mission to Feed the Hungry…
Antebellum Chocolates began officially in 2015 by James Stefanakos. James’s mother was a director of a gourmet cooking school so James grew up knowing what good chocolate was but after he moved to the Aiken area couldn’t find any good/quality chocolate so decided to make his own. During the summer of 2015 he began selling his chocolates at the Aiken County Farmers Market, with the mission of “Buy a Bar Feed a Child” with part of the proceeds from each bar going toward Golden Harvest Food Bank’s BackPack program. To date his contributions have provided 4 over 13,500 backpack meals to at-risk children. In addition to the Aiken area, they are now donating backpack meals to at-risk children in Pennsylvania, Arkansas and Columbia, SC.
We all want to support local, and James does a great job of that using as many local ingredients as possible. As a participant at the Aiken County Farmers Market buys from other vendors at the farmers market like Colston Honey Bee Farm in Bamberg for his honey and Buona Caffe Artisan Roasted Coffee in Augusta for his ground coffee beans. The artwork on his bars is all from his children.
He also offers classes and parties at his shop where you can make your own bars. Become a chocolatier for a night by creating your own chocolate bars and designing one-of-a kind labels, with the opportunity to design your bar from over 10 specialty ingredients. Throughout the class you’ll learn the history of chocolate and learn the science of how it’s made.
You can pick up Antebellum Bars at the Aiken County Farmers Market, out of his shop, online, and anywhere else he can set up shop.