Owner of Clinton chocolate factory says he won’t open store as planned
Although the sign on the building next to the Norfolk Southern railroad tracks on Eagle Bend Road proclaim this as the Lirio Chocolate Factory Store, the “store” part of the business never actually opened, and now the owner says it will never open. (photo:G. Chambers Williams III )
Chris Kopek, who opened his chocolate factory in the building at 419 Eagle Bend Road in summer 2021, said his full-time job as an IT security consultant has prevented him from moving ahead with plans to open a chocolate factory store at the site.
Kopek had said in November 2022 that he planned to have the chocolate showroom open to the public by Valentine’s Day 2023, after he had a construction crew working for several weeks to remodel the building’s interior to accommodate it.
“There’s nothing going on now,” he said Monday.
“My main job has ramped up so much that I don’t have time for the chocolate business.
“I’m still manufacturing chocolate at that location, but I can only go out there very early or late in the day.
“As for the showroom, I don’t think it will ever happen,” he said. “I might get out of the chocolate business completely. I don’t have the time anymore.”
Kopek said he still has about 10,000 pounds of cocoa beans he needs to use up before he closes the business altogether, and that could take a while.
“Honestly, it could be two months to a year-and-a-half,” he said. “I’m still selling online and in some local stores. But unless something changes with my other job, I will continue to make chocolate until I run out of beans, but I won’t be buying any more. My website is still up (liriochocolate.com).”
After that, he plans to rent out the building or sell it, he said.
In August 2021, he purchased the building next to Real Dry Cleaners in the downtown area along the Norfolk Southern railroad tracks just east of the Market Street bridge, catercorner to the Clinton railroad depot on the other side of the tracks.
Kopek said then that he was renovating the building and would eventually open a retail store to sell the gourmet chocolate bars he now sells mostly online and at coffee shops and other retail outlets.
He began making chocolate at a facility in Knoxville in 2018, but decided to buy the building here and relocate the business to Clinton, he said.
It was closer to where he lived in Hardin Valley, but he said he also decided on the move because real estate here is more affordable, and the downtown Clinton scene is “perfect for what I’m trying to do.”
But in the past year he and his wife, Emily, who is a physician’s assistant, moved to a home that’s farther away from Clinton, making this location less convenient, Kopek said.
He uses coffee bean roasters to roast the cocoa beans to make his chocolate from scratch.
Shelves in one room are stacked with sacks and buckets full of cocoa beans he imports from several countries whose climates are conducive to growing the beans, including Vietnam, Tanzania, Sierra Leone, Trinidad, Nicaragua, Peru and Fiji, among others, he said.
“The beans come mostly from areas near the Equator,” Kopek said.
His biggest roaster can process 25 pounds of cocoa beans in about 30 minutes, he said.
He then cracks them open to turn them into cocoa “nibs,” which are then refined by being stone-ground for about 24 hours to create a cocoa powder for making the chocolate.
His chocolate bars, bearing the Lirio Chocolate brand, come in a variety of types, ranging from dark chocolate to milk chocolate to horchata white chocolate, which is made with rice puffs, cinnamon and brown sugar, Kopek said.
The dark chocolate comes in various levels of cocoa that range from sweet to almost bitter (with a high percentage of pure cocoa).
He said he also makes a “decadent” hot-chocolate drink mix.
Kopek got into the chocolate business after visiting a chocolate shop in Asheville, North Carolina, and trying some of its dark chocolate, which he said was much better than anything he had every bought in a retail store.
Real Dry Cleaners, meanwhile, went out of business in November, following the death of its owner earlier in 2023.
That building is now vacant.