Our Story
 

Welcome to the world of Sôcôla Chocolatier, a sister-owned-and-operated gourmet-chocolate company. Founded in Oakland in 2001, Sôcôla is proud to use only the finest local and organic ingredients to fashion its delicious, handmade truffles.

Named after the Vietnamese word for “chocolate,” Sôcôla prepares all its truffles with unique, cosmopolitan flavors, including Vietnamese coffee, green tea, Guinness stout and raspberry liqueur. Wendy and Susan Lieu, its Vietnamese-American founders, believe in combining recipes from their joint Eastern and Western heritages, as well as in directly asking people what flavors they most crave. As a result, Sôcôla truffles reflect the palates of chocolate lovers from around the globe: dairy farmers in Swiss villages, cocoa farmers in Baracoa, Cuba, and in Vietnam’s Central Highlands and American friends and family have all contributed recipe suggestions.  

That is the Sôcôla mission, and since 2001 Sôcôla has crafted its truffles with the ingredients that make humanity sacred: tradition, chocolate, and love. so handmade. so good. sôcôla.  

A sororal enterprise from the start, Sôcôla has always drawn on the twin talents of its two founders, Susan and Wendy Lieu. Wendy, the older of the two, is Sôcôla’s chief Chocolatier. A graduate of San Francisco’s Tante Marie Pastry School, Wendy began experimenting with Klutz's Cookbook for Kids at age nine and with truffles recipes at nineteen. She holds a degree in managerial economics from UC Davis and works as a consultant in San Francisco, but chocolate is where the heart is: mostly self-taught, she finds that her thoughts wander frequently now to new truffle recipes, and she’s even begun dreaming up ganache concoctions in her sleep.

By contrast, Susan couldn’t tell the difference between teaspoons and tablespoons as a child, and her early attempts at friendship bread (referred to as the Great Salt Incident of ’95) tasted like the Dead Sea. Her talents lie outside the kitchen, as a fundraiser, activist, and saleswoman. A Harvard graduate with a degree in Social Studies, Susan feels most at home when she’s stirring up fervor in people—whether for sustainable farming methods in Vietnam, international relief for refugees in Africa, or her and Wendy’s chocolates.  

When Wendy began experimenting with her great-grandmother’s chocolate recipes in 2001, she never intended for the truffles to be anything other than Christmas gifts, but her friends and family members kept asking where they could find more of them. One neighbor suggested that she try marketing and selling the chocolates, which inspired Susan to begin promoting. Weeks later, Wendy and Susan (then nineteen and sixteen years old) were featured on KSRO 1350's Pat Thurston Show. They chatted excitedly about their chocolates, took in callers, and raffled truffles, and audiences throughout Sonoma County fell in love—with the girls no less than with the truffles.

The Sôcôla dream has been alive and well ever since.  What began as a summer hobby (selling truffles at Santa Rosa’s downtown market) is today a sustainable business. We hope you enjoy them!