Later it was natural that his professional life was international as well. He had a varied and interesting career as a commodities broker, which took him to both Europe and the Middle East, trading in all kinds of products.

After years of international living, Mike founded Bridge International in the United States to import and export commodities, including cocoa butter, cocoa liquor and cocoa beans for all the major players in the chocolate business.

“Commodities trading is a very volatile business,” Mike explained. “Being the middle man in international transactions, you’re very affected by currency fluctuations, the rise and fall of country’s economies, crop yields, prices. The business is constantly changing.”

Mike reached a point in his life where he wanted to develop a product that he could build. “I inherited an interest in building from my father, and we both were involved in real estate. Now I wanted to build something that would grow out of my background as a commodities trader.”

“I had gotten to know the cocoa industry, both here in the US and abroad, and I was more and more interested in it, so we trademarked ‘San Francisco Chocolate Factory’,” Mike says. “We had an intern from University of California at Berkeley doing some market research for us, and we sent her down to Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco to find out what types of things were being sold to tourists. Out of that research came the tins decorated with San Francisco icons.”

But Mike wasn’t satisfied with beautiful packaging. His experience with the cocoa industry made him very discriminating about chocolate, and quality and value of the chocolates in his tins were both important to him.

After that his imagination really took off. Of course, the Wine Country is another draw for visitors to Northern California, so the next series was Wine Lovers Chocolate. “The team at Bridge Brands stopped work early one day, and we all sat at a big table to taste different varieties of wine and 6 different dark chocolates. We came up with the perfect match for each chocolate.”

Even people who think they don’t like wine with chocolate have changed their mind with these. “We were interviewed on a San Francisco radio show and were followed by a well-known wine writer who stated that he wasn’t a fan of wine and chocolate. But when he tasted these, he admitted that they pairings worked! We had an on-air conversion!”