Vanessa Renard - Finest Chocolate
My wife and I have always considered ourselves a bit of chocolate connoisseurs. The first thing I ever bought for my wife was a box of chocolates. Since, we have splurged almost weekly on boxes of pralines and single-origin bean-to-bar tablets. A square of chocolate before bed with tea has become an almost nightly occurrence.
Belgium’s reputation for chocolate precedes itself. Where one finds the word “Belgian” often times “chocolate” is not far behind. Belgian chocolate is synonymous all over the world with quality. Moving here, the wife and I became chocolate obsessed. On a mission to try every chocolate shop and chocolatier in Brussels, my first experience with Vanessa Renard and her small chocolate workshop on Avenue de la Chasse in Etterbeek would have been sometime back in 2019–the year I moved to Brussels.
There was so much we didn’t know about chocolate then. We learned quickly to avoid the chains, and to seek out small, independent chocolatiers if quality was to be a priority. Vanessa was one of the first, true chocolate shops my wife and I discovered in Brussels. At the beginning, it seemed like we had uncovered a hidden gem. Her shop had only opened the year before, and although she had some press before winning the G&M prize, the way I had discovered Vanessa Renard Finest Chocolate was by combing through Google Maps.
We bought small boxes of pralines, two of each, one for my wife, one for myself–there’s no biting off half and sharing the other half in this household! The following Christmases, I sent my mother and sister in the United States tablets and pralines from Vanessa’s. We cried when one of our close friends gave birth to their daughter, stricken with a one-in-a-million birth defect, and so not knowing what to do, we bought them chocolates because they were sad. We bought ourselves chocolates because we were sad. The chocolates were Vanessa’s chocolates.
When I came in a couple months later to grab my wife a little sweet treat when she wasn’t feeling well, Vanessa not only recognized me, but remembered my name. It was the most flattering experience! It was the first time since moving to Brussels that I’d felt like a regular, like a local.
For the past two years, amidst COVID regulations, my wife and I picked up two of Vanessa’s advent calendars. We don’t have kids. We bought it for ourselves. We did so with a small request, would it be possible to make the calendars identical? Each day the same chocolate in both boxes? Vanessa was happy to oblige.
“The mood of the lady…” I paused for dramatic effect as I pulled the advent calendars out of my backpack to show my wife, like Moses with his tablets “…was good!” I announced joyously. The inside joke had come from a review I had read off Google over a year prior. The review read:
choclates are fantastic and tasty .but customer service depends on mood of lady . sometime she is very nice . but sometimes she behaves "absurd" . or may be she has communication problem in english language ?
[sic], of course.
This past April, a friend of mine came to visit from the United States. As per usual, I insisted we go to Vanessa’s so he could pick up some chocolate for his wife. Egg season was in full swing. We certainly weren’t the only customers there, and after waiting our turn, my friend placed his order and bought himself a large box of pralines. I got myself a small bag of eggs for my wife and I to share. On the way out I saw Vanessa.
“Having fun?” I asked, alluding to booming business, and the seemingly endless stream of chocolate fiends like myself eagerly anticipating their place at the counter.
“You know what’s not fun?” she asked me rhetorically in English, not a sliver of humor in her tone, “unhappy people complaining that we are out of their eggs. No, I’m not having fun.” It wasn’t clear at that time, with her face mask, just how overworked Vanessa had become.
Not long after she posted a screenshot on her Instagram of a private message she’d received through Facebook. In it, a woman detailed her experience with a chocolate chick she’d bought which had broken after leaving the shop. “RIP ma poule,” she wrote. She continued, piling on with her dissatisfaction of the price of Vanessa’s chocolates, the student at the counter who, according to her, didn’t know anything, and how there was no sign of gratitude nor freebie after the woman had spent 50€ in the shop. The woman ended the message saying that she was going to tell G&M about her dissatisfaction. “Je vais également faire suivre ma mésaventure a gualt &milaut [sic], Passez également de belles fêtes de Pâques!” Have a great Easter too!
"Voilà, ce que je reçois personnellement depuis un an,” Vanessa posted alongside the screenshot. (Here are the personal messages I’ve received for the last year.) “La chocolaterie va changer de fonctionnement dans les prochains mois car mon état mental et physique ne me permet plus d’y faire face.” (The chocolate shop will change the way it operates in the next months because my mental and physical state doesn’t allow me to face it anymore.) She ended the post thanking her loyal customers who understood the situation, and specifically called out G&M. “Merci à tous mes clients fidèles qui connaissent ma situation, et pas au système @gaultmillaubelgium”.
In the following Instagram story, she posted her response to the client’s personal message, signing off with: “Excellent week-end pascal, merci d'ajouter votre goutte dans cet océan où je me noie.” Thank you for adding your drop in this ocean where I drown.
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After completing her studies in management Vanessa Renard ended up in the financial sector in customer marketing at BNP. In her job in customer marketing, she worked with startups and young entrepreneurs, looking to start their own businesses. Vanessa took the skills used in customer marketing–building business plans, targeting customers–and applied them to her own business. Although there wasn’t a single moment she can remember that prompted her career change, she was always trying to learn new things along the way.
She was heavily interested in nutrition, food, and diary studies, taking night courses in herbalism. She describes herself as a gourmand, someone who loves all things food. She was always taking evening courses to learn more and expand upon her knowledge.
“Bakery was too strict,” she says, “I don’t like that you have to, a hundred gram of this, a hundred gram of that,” she jokes while making spooning movements. “Maybe chocolate?” she considered. She was initially drawn to the visuals and the versatility of the possible flavor combinations, so she enrolled in a chocolate course in 2016.
“So wait,” I clarify, “you didn’t start making chocolate until 2016?”
“No, but I eat before,” she laughs.
After doing a stage at a small chocolate factory in Walloon Brabant, more of a one man workshop without a storefront or point of sale, and at Van Dender in Dilbeek, she found herself more attracted to the chocolate shop feel.
“When I opened, it was a little shop,” she says, “I like Etterbeek.” When she was a little girl, she lived in the same commune she works in today, and went to school at Paradis des Enfants, between Pétillon and Thieffry, less than a kilometer and a half away from where you can find her chocolate shop today. After classes, she would frequent a small family-run librairie where, as she puts it, she would get, “un bonbon pour un euro!” It was locals, families with children who would come. It was this idea, the librairie next to her school, that she based her own chocolate shop on. She wanted to be the neighborhood chocolate shop and make something she liked, “without the impression of working,” she adds.
The important thing for Vanessa was that she wanted to do something she was passionate about. “I had my business plan,” she tells me looking back, “and if it doesn’t work in one year, I can do half time here and half time in a supermarket, or another shop to pay the rent.”
I can’t help but laugh as she recounts this to me, as so much of this original plan has changed in the past year.
Seeing the layout of Vanessa’s shop, it’s easy to see how those early ideas materialized. The entire shop isn't much bigger than the librairie she described from her childhood. The window display is neatly curated. A large wooden cutout of her namesake, a fox, is eye-catching. When you enter through the door, you immediately find yourself at the counter. A glass top safeguards the available pralines out on display. If you were to turn around, a small set of shelves on the wall, and one freestanding, displays tablets and packaged chocolates. For Easter it would be here you’d find chocolate bunnies; for Christmas, chocolate St. Nicks. To the left hand side of the counter, as you're facing it, are glass doors—the entrance to the workshop. It’s here where Vanessa produces everything. Through these windows one can often see Vanessa tempering chocolate, filling molds, or sorting pralines.
“In the beginning it was the goal to open by myself, and work only by myself, alone, to sell and to make chocolate,” she describes. She didn’t want to manage people, she wanted to make chocolate. “It was easier to see if people came, and [for them] to see that I was working.” She says the idea was that people would therefore understand if it took her a minute to come to the counter.
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Every fall, Gault&Millau hosts an event where they reveal the country's best chocolatiers by region. The Monday following the publishing of this article, the new Chocolatier of the Year for Brussels will have been announced, and, prior to the event, the winner-to-be will not have been informed that they were to be honored with an award. The winner will learn their fate on the night of the ceremony and not earlier.
Vanessa says she had an idea, having received a request from Gault&Millau a few months prior to the event in September of 2021, to shoot a video of her and her shop. According to Vanessa, the video was to highlight “trends in chocolate,” or something along those lines. “You can feel something,” she recounts, “but it’s hypothetical. You say, okay, maybe, maybe not, so it’s not easy before the event.”
“I was surprised, but not surprised,” she admits. “You don’t know how to react because you have all of the chocolatiers [at the event], some, not all, have many years of experience.” She tells me there is no explanation as to why you are chosen for the award, other than that they have tried and tasted the chocolates and they had liked them. “It’s not so concrete,” she says, noting that their selection for restaurants is accompanied by a detailed and a carefully calculated scoring system. “I was surprised and a bit lost,” she admits, “and that was it.”
Within hours, photos of Vanessa holding a plaque, standing in front of a yellow background adorned with the words Gault&Millau in red, aligned in rows and columns, began to circulate on social media. Soon, all of Brussels would know that she was no longer just Vanessa Renard, chocolatier, she was Vanessa Renard: 2022 Chocolatier of the Year.
“They choose you and you can’t say no,” Vanessa says of the prize.
Within a week Vanessa was on the radio, the television, and faced with a number of inquisitive journalists from various news outlets. Along with the media also came the customers. Business boomed. Vanessa says that in that first week she had new customers from not only Brussels, but all over Belgium. Her typical number of customers tripled. To handle the influx of customers she took on interns, hired students to run the counter, and even employed the help of her boyfriend one day a week. From open to close, the shop was overrun with customers, making it difficult to find the time to actually produce chocolates.
What was once her passion quickly became simply the need to produce and meet the new demand. From the end of November, through Saint Nicholas Day to Christmas, and on to New Years and into January, the demand was relentless. Within a couple months of winning the award, Vanessa was working upwards of 80 hours a week. This continued into the spring, and with Easter being the second busiest period of the year, Vanessa found herself again overwhelmed with the demand.
“I make everything fresh, I don’t stock anything,” she explains. “It was very difficult to make on demand and to satisfy everybody. It wasn’t fun anymore. I was only producing and I had no time to speak with people that came to see me. I was burnt out.” She admits that she didn’t have time for her family, or even to enjoy Easter for herself.
“Thank you for adding your drop in this ocean where I drown?” I clarify.
“Yes, yes, I was very low,” Vanessa says with no hesitation, remorse or shame. She tells me about how she spent Easter Sunday and the following Monday in tears. She closed the shop for a week following Easter. Exhausted and burnt out, she sought advice from fellow chocolatiers, fellow women entrepreneurs, and her accountant. “The plan was to sell. I asked my accountant to imagine that scenario,” she says.
Following the closure and the social media post, Vanessa says she received an outpouring of messages in support from as far away as Canada and Africa. She ultimately decided not to sell the shop, and to change the way she approached meeting demand. “It’s craft chocolate, so there’s a production limit. When it’s out of stock, it’s out of stock,” she says. “I don’t think people understand that.”
“That was my limit,” she says of Easter, “I don’t want to do that again. If at Christmas there is a lot of production like this, I will say, okay, out of stock, come tomorrow, and that’s it.”
It’s not easy for women who run their own businesses, or in society in general. But as a woman chocolatier Vanessa faces an absurd double standard. Following the G&M ceremony, Vanessa says publications were claiming that she had only won the prize because the previous years winners had all been men, implying the award had been given not for merit, but for charity, or rather some misplaced attempt at equality. Customers she had never seen before, began speaking to her in the tu tense, as opposed to the more polite and formal vous tense.
“People think I’m younger than I am,” she says. When she first moved into the shop, she tells me, the salesmen responsible for the installation of the various chocolate machines would condescendingly ask if she’d ‘just finished her studies.’ “They would never ask a man that,” she says. Although she says she never felt imposter syndrome, it seems others had projected it upon her.
The work/life balance for a woman in business often comes into question when looking upon her achievements in a way it rarely or ever does for a man. When was the last time you heard a male chocolatier be asked if he has children? Hell, when you think of the word chocolatier, do you even think of a woman?
Vanessa is the face of her own business. This means all executive and production decisions go through her. It’s her name on the marquee. With this comes the impression that every piece of chocolate that leaves that shop, be it a tablet, praline, or chocolate chick, is a Vanessa Renard chocolate. As a woman, running her own eponymous business, there seems to be this expectation of feminie hospitality, and in this regard, Vanessa is expected to project and perform in a manner that her male counterparts are not. Go and look for yourself through the Google reviews of other eponymous chocolate shops in Brussels. You won’t find a negative comment in the bunch that specifically cites the shop's proprietor like you will with reviews of Vanessa Renard Finest Chocolate.
I would ask why this is the case, but I think it’s pretty clear.
I read some of Vanessa’s negative reviews back to her, reviews that specifically reference her attitude, reviews that refer to her as bitter, and reviews that clearly talk down to her. She laughs at them, the only appropriate response. She tells me she had a review removed from Google after a customer referred to the student worker as a “hobo” for wearing torn jeans and having an “improper” hairstyle.
“It was a student,” she tells me, “She’s about 20 or 21 [years old]. The remark on the appearance is so important at this age.”
I ask her if the student had seen the review and she tells me she had it removed before the student could see it. “You don’t know the people, and they judge you on your appearance, and they say horrible things.” Vanessa says after the review she never told the student to dress differently.
It’s late August and Vanessa has returned from a long holiday. As of right now, Vanessa is feeling better, but she still doesn’t have her complete confidence back. “It’s not easy everyday to face all this stuff. You have to manage the packaging and the production. You have to manage everything, and you know that Christmas will be hard. So it’s a bit scary.”
“I will continue to have students on Saturdays, so I can see my family, and make plans for the weekend,” she says of the coming changes. “Because, the people that complain don’t care if I have a life.”
It doesn’t need to be said, and I shouldn’t have to say it but I’m going to say it anyway: the reason Vanessa Renard won G&M’s award is because she is a great chocolatier. Her knack for aesthetics is evident with the beauty of her eye-catching pralines—I mean, just look at her series of jelly vegan pralines. Her flavors, my favorites cardamom and tonka, will make you wish you had bought more than you did. And one of these times I’m going to give in to the temptation and actually pick up one of her peanut bars I see everytime in the display case. Award or no award, she still should be considered amongst the best of the best Brussels Chocolatiers.
What makes Vanessa such a great chocolatier is that she’s always learning, always doing, she’s always improving herself and her knowledge. This extended well beyond her passion for chocolate. She tells me when she’s not working she loves to craft. “I’m trying to make macrame!” she announces enthusiastically with a laugh.
“How’s that going?” I ask.
“I’m trying,” she laughs, “It’s the beginning.”
She’s a big reader. She loves to cook, to make new recipes when she can. She says she’s been doing more sports lately. If you peep her Instagram in the holiday months, you’re bound to notice her love of travel, as she shares brief glimpses into her private life, of her in Singapore, or in Thailand. “My sister constructed a pool this year,” she says laughing yet again, “so I spend a lot of time there!”
I ask her if she is looking forward to the title of Chocolatier of the Year for Brussels being passed on to someone else.
“Yes,” she says with a smile and laugh. She’s already removed the Gault&Millau stickers from the door of the shop. All that remains are the ghostlike remnants of the sticker’s adhesive. The best part she tells me, “is that they can’t choose you twice.” For Vanessa, she would like to go back to the shop being like that little librairie outside her school when she was a little girl.
Since winning the award last September, Vanessa says she hasn’t received any sort of communication from Gault&Millau. “They don’t send you any email, they don’t call you, no, they announced at the event last year it was me, and that’s it. I don’t have any more emails, any more calls. Nothing in one year! I have only the invitation for the event this September,” she tells me.
“Are you going?” I ask her.
“I don’t know,” she says with a smirk and a laugh, “I don’t know yet.”