Missionary Chocolates: Dr. Melissa Berry, ND

How does someone go from studying naturopathic medicine to building a chocolate company?

For Dr. Melissa Berry, the answer began with a simple act of care: creating a chocolate her mother could safely enjoy. What started as small experiments in the kitchen gradually evolved into Missionary Chocolates, a brand known for its handcrafted vegan truffles and thoughtful approach to ingredients.

Along the way, Melissa navigated doubt from others, discovered the power of community support, and learned how focusing her time on the right work could help the business grow.

Listen to her story in the latest episode of The Chocolate Pod. 🍫🎙️🎧

Discover more at www.TheChocolatePodcast.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome to the Chocolate Pod, a show about founders and innovators in the craft chocolate industry and the stories behind the chocolate they create. I'm Zach Gallinger Long, and today we're in Portland, Oregon, speaking with Dr. Melissa Berry, founder of the Missionary Chocolate. Melissa's journey into chocolate is anything but conventional. She's a naturopathic doctor who began making chocolates while she was still studying naturopathic medicine. What started as an effort to create a treat her mother could enjoy, despite several food allergies, soon turned into something much bigger. Over time, Missionary Chocolates grew from a small booth at a local farmer's market into a beloved chocolate company with a loyal following. Along the way, Melissa has combined her background in medicine with a passion for flavor, creating chocolates that emphasize quality ingredients and thoughtful sourcing. In this episode, you'll hear how Melissa blends medicine and chocolate. Why community has played an important role in the growth of her company and what she has learned over nearly two decades of building a business from the ground up. All that and more coming up in this week's episode of The Chocolate Pot.

SPEAKER_00 1:07

Calling all chocolate lovers and flavor adventurers, the sweetest weekend of the year is back. Mark your calendars for March 6th, 7th, and 8th, and make your way to the Ashland Hills Hotel for the 22nd annual Oregon Chocolate Festival. Indulgence awaits!

SPEAKER_02 1:23

In Portland, Oregon, there's a chocolate shop where you'll find shelves lined with handcrafted vegan truffles in flavors like elderberry, strawberry, and Meyer Lemon. But one thing you might not expect to find behind the counter is a doctor. Dr. Melissa Berry spent years studying naturopathic medicine before starting the company that would eventually become Missionary Chocolates. And at first glance, that path may raise some questions. How does one go from studying medicine to making chocolate? And why? For Melissa, it started with a simple goal: creating a chocolate her mother could safely enjoy. And from there, the mission continued. Join me as we unwrap the story behind Missionary Chocolates.

SPEAKER_01 2:09

I am Dr. Melissa Berry. I'm a naturopathic physician and the founder and owner of Missionary Chocolates.

SPEAKER_02 2:15

Can you tell me the story about making truffles for your mom and how all that began?

SPEAKER_01 2:20

So I was in my third year of National College of Natural Medicine. As a student, I was a single mom of a one-year-old, and I needed to make her something that she would actually enjoy for Christmas, given that I was a broke single mom. And she has many food allergies. She is allergic to dairy. She then became celiac uh during my medical career. So I made different chocolates with different dairy-free bases to see what she would like.

SPEAKER_02 2:47

Can you tell me more about naturopathy? I'm not familiar with how that differs from other studies of medicine.

SPEAKER_01 2:52

Exactly. So I'm an ND, which is definitely different than an MD. Our basis of education is very similar for the first two years as far as we get anatomy and a physiology and the basic sciences, but the approach is very different as far as we look at all of the things that go into health from your lifestyle and your environment and your mental and emotional health. Obviously, that all plays a factor. And naturopaths are much more focused on trying to prevent diseases than to actually treat them. We can do a lot of treating, obviously, but if I had a choice between treating diabetes and preventing diabetes, we would definitely like to try to intercept people before they progress to needing, you know, very intensive medical care. More like kitchen sink medicine, things that you would use in your kitchen, garlic, ginger. All of these are things that I use and recommend frequently to people because these are sort of the building blocks of how do you achieve health every day.

SPEAKER_02 3:51

How does that intersect with chocolate?

SPEAKER_01 3:53

For me, given that I started my company literally standing at a farmer's market booth with my little guy underneath the table, he took his very first steps at the Buckman Farmer's Market. To be in the environment of a community farmer's market and to be still in medical school and creating my recipes based on what I was seeing. You know, the raspberries were in season, beautiful herbs, the peppers, all of these things. The idea at the farmers market is like a pharmacy right there. And meeting people in the community and knowing my background and my mom and her food allergies, it just really coalesced into that people felt like I was somebody that they could really trust and that they knew that I was extremely aware and careful of ingredients and sourcing and that our products were going to be safe for them to eat no matter what diet or orientation they had.

SPEAKER_02 4:45

At what point did it go from feeling like this is something smaller to like this is a developing business?

SPEAKER_01 4:51

Well, I have to say that winning a pretty major award, our very first year in business, this is the Northwest Chocolate Festival in 2008. We had only been in business since February. And in September, I won first place at this festival. And it was so overwhelming to be in this room with all these really big, you know, there's guys with like chef hats. And here I am, a girl with a tray of chocolates, and I don't even think I had business cards yet. And to win an award like that definitely changed the trajectory of how I looked at the business because for me it was just a present from my mom and a way to make some money while I was still in medical school. I had not even graduated as a doctor yet when I was making chocolates. And I continued to practice medicine for six years, but it was increasingly a strange reality that making chocolate and talking about medicine was actually more impactful in my own life and financially than sitting in an office trying to get people to be interested in natural medicine. It was a pretty big disconnect. It took a while for me to accept that that's how my life was gonna go. But I have to say that being a mom, being able to participate in my son's life in a different way than constantly being in an office, that was game-changing too, and really important for not only our relationship, but my ability to just have some control over my own life.

SPEAKER_02 6:13

Melissa's path didn't lead in a direction most people might have expected. In fact, it didn't lead in a direction she expected either. After years studying naturopathic medicine and preparing for a specific career, the work that appeared in front of her wasn't the kind she had originally set out to pursue. But that didn't mean the time she spent studying was wasted. The knowledge she gained along the way became invaluable in shaping the approach she brought to the work that she loved. And there's the lesson. Sometimes the direction of our life ends up being different than the one we thought we planned. And that's not necessarily a problem. In fact, it can be a sign that we're paying attention to the opportunities along the way. Melissa's story is a good reminder that it's healthy to stay open to these moments. The path you start on doesn't have to be the one you stay on. And you never know where that new direction might lead. You mentioned that award. What won that award?

SPEAKER_01 7:10

Meyer lemon is the very first jovel I ever made. Our chocolates are coconut milk based. My mom strongly dislikes coconut milk. She doesn't like coconut-flavored anything. So I put lemon oil in it to sort of hide the coconut. And also, she grew up in California, so Meyer lemons were just everywhere. Would run out and pick lemons for her all the time. Never bought a lemon until I moved to Oregon. So that was some of our heritage in California. I brought my Meyer lemon tree with me when I came from California. There was a lot of orange chocolate around, but I never saw anything lemon and chocolate, and people were blown away.

SPEAKER_02 7:42

So when you are deciding on chocolates, whether it was when you first started or now, how do you judge what's gonna be good?

SPEAKER_01 7:49

All the recipes are mostly my own. Some of our chocolatiers have come up with some of them as well, but certainly all the ones in the beginning because I probably should have been a chef. I love combining nutrition and flavor because everything we eat is contributing to our overall health in some way or another. And then to make it taste good. My mom called us super vegetarians as kids because vegan wasn't even a word. So I grew up with carob and some pretty not awesome natural foods, you know, veggie meats. Those aren't even, those should not be on the market. So for me to be a mom and to be a doctor and look at what was on the market as far as natural foods, um, there really clearly was a big gap between things that weren't actually good for you and that actually tasted good. And that's why I always called my mom a closet seased candy eater. She would get one box of seas candy and cut it in like nine pieces because she loves sweeter, milkier, you know, lighter chocolates. And I just wanted to make something for my mom that she actually enjoyed eating that then didn't cause her digestive issues later.

SPEAKER_02 8:51

So, what do you use to sweeten your chocolate?

SPEAKER_01 8:54

Well, there's there's sugar in the chocolate, it's cane sugar of the regular line. But then we also have the monk fruit stevia line, which I'm really excited about. It's a combination of pure monk fruit and pure stevia, no sugar alcohols at all. So that's a line that's keto paleo-diabetic friendly.

SPEAKER_02 9:11

Let's talk briefly about the name. Um, can you tell me more of that story?

SPEAKER_01 9:15

So my mom's parents were both MDs. They met in medical school in the 30s, and they ended up working in Thailand before it was even Thailand. It was still Siam. They worked in Ecuador, they took medical supplies basically anywhere they could. My grandfather set up uh medical clinics in Mexico for many, many years, and uh so I named it after them because I am the only grandkid that became a doctor. It's an amazing honor to carry on that tradition. Even though I'm doing it in a vehicle of chocolate, people are so interested in why a doctor is making chocolate and why these are the superior quality that they are. It's because I care so much and because I've never ever stinted on the ingredients. I've never put fillers in our chocolates or anything to cut costs.

SPEAKER_02 10:00

And was it in 2008 that you opened your retail store?

SPEAKER_01 10:03

We did not open a retail store until the beginning of 2012. And we're doing still five farmers markets a week at that point. Farmers markets have been my primary outreach, especially in the beginning, because it was somewhere that I could afford to be, you know, for that amount of square footage to be in the community, to be part of that system where people are coming to a farmer's market. They're already interested in food. They're already interested in equality and they're already interested in supporting their community just by the fact that they showed up. And then to realize I'm a naturopath and that I use all these wonderful things that come from the farmers market, the lavender, the peppermint oil, the raspberries, the peppers. You know, I just love connecting with the other farmers and makers and trying to utilize their products because the basic idea of the circular economy is so important. And our farmers market excels in supporting local businesses and giving us a platform to reach our community.

SPEAKER_02 11:02

That's something I've heard. It's like a theme that I'm noticing in the companies that I interview is the sense of community. Obviously, we want to help our customers, but I also get this sense that when it comes to the ingredients, buying local, even if it's marketing dollars that you're spending, trying to keep that within your local market. I've picked up on that theme. And I I really like that.

SPEAKER_01 11:34

He gave me that ability to start using his products, and you know, it's clearly benefited him. His name's on our label. But those kinds of relationships, those collaborations, I think if people don't take advantage of those, it's one of the most precious things that I get to do.

SPEAKER_02 11:50

I think that's a really great approach when starting out is thinking of what do I have at my disposal? What's a win-win situation that we can both help each other. I love that. That's a really good approach that you took there. Now, do you think you did that intentionally?

SPEAKER_01 12:02

It's organic. You get to know people and they get to know you and they see your passion for what you're doing. I still am completely enthusiastic about this company and that we've survived this long because we're 18 years old. It's been a lot of years and a lot of learning. I never took business classes, I never went to culinary school. I learned so many things on the fly and especially about business management and having employees and how to get things out on time. And there's so much to learn, and people have been very generous with me and very kind. And I've also been willing to admit I failed or I'm learning or that wasn't the best way to do it. I'm gonna figure out another way. That's some of the hardest things to do because you're kind of a public figure on some level and you're supposed to have it all figured out. I realized that my transparency and my ability to say I'm sorry is one of the things that probably set us apart that I never was intentionally doing either. But it's just being real and saying, I don't have it all together. I don't know what I'm doing, I'm still learning. And people connect with that and then they want to support you because they see you're really human and you really are somebody who cares about what they're doing. And you can't pretend like you know it all.

SPEAKER_02 13:15

Yeah, that's so important. Having that sense of humility and knowing when I need help with things. How do you decide what somebody else needs to own and what you need to retain?

SPEAKER_01 13:24

Well, that's pretty simple. I'm really bad at math. I quickly realized that I needed a good CPA because I was trying to file my own taxes, I was trying to pay my own things, and me just having to admit, this is not my skill set, this is not my strength. I need a professional because especially when you're poor and you're a single mom and you're trying to keep it together, you do. You want to obsess about everything. And I was watching videos and trying to learn everything and trying to do it all and badly, and to admit, hey, I've got to pull somebody. And thankfully, again, there's people that would work for me pro bono. And my first CPAs were definitely people that were traded lots of chocolate. I babysat. I found people that were willing to trade me things that I could do well for things that I couldn't do.

SPEAKER_02 14:09

I think this is something that a lot of us can relate to. There are times when we all feel the pressure to get everything done ourselves. But the truth is we all have limited bandwidth and we don't have to do it all on our own. There's a difference between how we spend our time and how we invest our time. When we spend time on something, we're focused on getting the task across the finish line. It needs to be done, so we do it. Hopefully we do it well enough because if we don't, it will come back around and demand even more of our time. But when we invest our time, we focus on activities where our efforts have the greatest impact, and the work generates dividends that continue to create value long after we finish. This kind of work often aligns more closely with our strengths, and instead of draining our energy, it actually gives some of it back. For most tasks, there is someone who is uniquely skilled, talented, and motivated to complete that work. Find those people and partner with them whenever possible. When we acknowledge that someone else may be better equipped to handle certain responsibilities, we're not just passing off a task. We're inviting someone else to invest their skills into what we're building while we invest our own time in areas where we are uniquely suited to contribute.

SPEAKER_01 15:33

Because I don't want to ask people for help. I feel like I should be able to figure it out. I'm, you know, capable and smart enough. But at the end of the day, you have to sleep and you have to take care of yourself too. And that's one of the biggest challenges that I also had to learn was when to just start saying no. And this company continues to help me refine my boundaries.

SPEAKER_02 15:54

Yeah, absolutely. You're a chocolatier, which is different than a chocolate maker. Can you help us understand the difference there?

SPEAKER_01 16:01

So a chocolate maker would be somebody that takes the cacao beans from raw and roasts them and winnows them and conches them and all that fun stuff. Like that is the process of actually making the chocolate, the raw material. We don't do any of that. We get chocolate that is made and we melt it and we add things and we create it into all these other amazing things uh flavor-wise. We are not buying beans directly and um processing them. I don't have the machinery to do that. And I really didn't have the interest in doing that because my origin in chocolate was trying to replicate what my mother loved, trying to meet her need. Because unlike many other people that start a company that was an intentional company, this was not an intentional company. This is, I'm gonna have something to do during the summer while I'm studying for my boards so that I can feed me and my kid.

SPEAKER_02 16:51

What is something that is foundational to how you run your business?

SPEAKER_01 16:55

I always wanted to be accessible. I wanted the average person to be at least buy a couple pieces because chocolate is such a luxury. It is medicine. That's the fun part about being a doctor and doing what I do is because I feel like really, when it comes down to it, there's a few things that nourish our souls and make us willing to get up out of bed another day. And sometimes for some people, it's a good piece of chocolate.

SPEAKER_02 17:20

I can hear the the passion in your voice and and how much this means to you. And that's just wonderful. What are common questions that people have when they come into your store?

SPEAKER_01 17:29

What's in it? What's the base? People are like, oh, coconut milk. I even last week had a lady email me and she just said, I seriously cannot believe that you can make coconut milk chocolates taste so good. And that's a huge honor because number one, you shouldn't be able to tell that our chocolates are vegan. You shouldn't be able to tell that that pretzel that you just ate covered in chocolate is gluten-free. If you can, then I feel like I'm not doing something correctly because there shouldn't be this huge gap between, again, things that taste good and that are actually good for you.

SPEAKER_02 18:02

When we come back in just a moment, Melissa shares what it's like to pursue an idea when many people in her life doubted her and where she found pockets of encouragement that helped her keep going. Stay with us. I'm Zach Gallinger Long, and you're listening to the Chocolate Pot.

SPEAKER_00 18:18

For one week and only on March 6th, 7th, and 8th, join us at the Ashland Hills Hotel to taste, learn, and indulge in all things chocolate and beyond. Explore the two-day marketplace with artisan chocolatiers, winemakers, and flavor crafters from across the West Coast. Savor everything from dark to decadent blends, vote for your favorite makers, and enjoy family-friendly fun, plus special events all weekend. In honor of our 22nd year, we're celebrating the women shaping the world of chocolate, from cocoa farms to chocolate shops and the communities that make it all possible. Join us in celebrating From Being to Boss, the power of chocolate. A sweet journey from being to bar awaits. Find all the details for your sweet escape at OregonChocolateFestival.com. This ad was partially funded through the use of Ashland Lodging Tax Revenues.

SPEAKER_02 19:09

Can you tell us a little bit more about some of the challenges and struggles that happened maybe behind the scenes as you were starting your business?

SPEAKER_01 19:17

I was in a medical office being told constantly by most of the people in my inner circle that starting a chocolate company in an apartment in Southeast Portland with a kid was a really, really bad idea. Looking back, it's almost hard to understand how much negative flack I got from my family, from my then partner. There wasn't a whole lot of enthusiasm for me to start a business. And I think that if you aren't as crazy and determined and stupid, um, there's a whole lot of layers of the entrepreneurial journey that if I could encapsulate, is just that I tuned all of that out and was so stubbornly determined that I was gonna make chocolate, at least for my mom and the people that she was sharing it with, that I just basically steamrolled all of that. And I think it truly was probably the hardest part of starting this company was just not having people that were rooting for me, except for my customers. And that changed everything because I would stand at my farmer's market booth and I would hand out samples. And that's where I got that, Melissa, please don't stop doing this. Please keep making these. But for me, I guess it really established how much heart has really gone into this company and how much of myself I have been willing to share the journeys, the struggles, the evolution, the branding, the sizing. We've changed so many things over the years, and people have still been supportive and still been willing to come and buy chocolate no matter what.

SPEAKER_02 20:44

So you have been in business 18 years and you've overcome challenges along the way. So, what is next for your business?

SPEAKER_01 20:52

Trying to figure out the logistics of expanding is really our next goal because I would like to achieve some larger footprint. We're mostly sold here in the Pacific Northwest, but those challenges for me are how do we expand in any real way without compromising our quality, without figuring out how to really extend our shelf life with unnatural products? So that's the next navigation for me is how to reach our customers in New York and Arkansas and these places in the country where we're not sold unless you're buying directly from our website and how to continue assuring that our quality and our process doesn't change. I've had a couple companies approach me over the years and just say, well, if you give us all your recipes and you let us make, you know, our your chocolates, then we can expand you all over. And it's like, but at what cost? What rate are you going to be able to establish that our chocolates will last three years? I don't ever want to make a chocolate that lasts three years. That's just not what I want to do.

SPEAKER_02 21:51

You recently had the opportunity to have a store in the Portland Airport for 18 months. Can you tell us what that program was like?

SPEAKER_01 21:59

The long Term marketing and exposure definitely paid off. So many people have told us, I live here in Portland and I never even heard of you until I saw you at the airport. So we're incredibly grateful for the port to pick us as a business. We did go through an incredible amount of certifications to achieve the ability to even be considered, which again is challenging for somebody who's got a family who's running a business. How do you even achieve that? And without Josie, it never would have happened.

SPEAKER_02 22:25

And you mentioned Josie a couple times. When did she become a part of the business?

SPEAKER_01 22:29

She read about us in the Hollywood Star. They had just moved to town and uh she lives really close here to this shop and uh thankfully was in a transition period in her own life and uh started to work with me. And she is stronger in so many of the areas that I'm not. And that's really, I think, the crux of if you can identify what you're not good at and then try to get people on your team that are good at those things, and then being able to let go to finally be at the point where I felt like I did have somebody that I could trust so intrinsically to have the best interest of not only me, but my company that's made all the difference.

SPEAKER_02 23:05

Any final advice for would-be entrepreneurs who might be listening? Can you tell them what it's like to follow that passion and be on the other side of those challenges?

SPEAKER_01 23:15

You're never gonna have all the money you think you need. A huge part of this company is definitely going forward in faith. I never would have thought that this would be my primary job. I always looked at it as a secondary thing that I did outside of my medical career. And that has really changed. I love what I get to do. I love the people I get to work with, and I love the freedom of schedule that I'm able to have that would never have been possible if I had continued just practicing medicine full-time. Especially other moms and other people considering being an entrepreneur. I just say go for it and don't let anybody tell you that this isn't your best idea ever, because maybe it is.

SPEAKER_02 23:52

That was Dr. Melissa Berry, founder of Missionary Chocolates, interviewed in her store in Portland, Oregon. If you'd like to learn more about missionary chocolates or explore their handcrafted vegan truffles, you can visit them in person or online at missionarychocletes.com. And if you get the chance to visit Missionary Chocolates in person, be sure to let Melissa know you heard her on the chocolate pod. Thank you so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click the follow or subscribe button on your podcast app so you never miss an episode. And if you're interested in joining us for an upcoming chocolate event, be sure to visit thechocolat.com to see where we're headed next. From facilitating chocolate tasting to collaborating with chocolatiers. We love connecting with chocolate fans around the world, and we hope to see you soon. I'm Zach Gallinger Long, and you've been listening to the Chocolate Box.