Owner of "Brugge" in Redmond Finds Her Element With Chocolate

Take a love of travel, a historical connection to fine confections and an entrepreneurial spirit. Blend well.

Yield: Brugge, a successful year-old Redmond chocolate shop that uses the finest that Europe has to offer for inspiration, training and ingredients.

, which Susan Walukiewicz opened in early 2010 at 15946 Redmond Way, next to the HSBC branch, sells European style truffles with a wide variety of flavors, such as cardamom pistachio and strawberry balsamic. Right now, the top two sellers in the store are fleur de sel caramels and lemon cellas, a white chocolate truffle recipe that Walukiewicz originated herself.

Walukiewicz says that she is really in her element when working on a new recipe.

“I think about a recipe creation and get excited about it,” she says, adding that many of the business’ creations are inspired by customer requests, such as a bananas foster truffle that was requested by a customer.

This delicious journey all began when Walukiewicz retired from Microsoft in 2005 and started thinking about what she would like to do next. Having developed a love of chocolate by working in a chocolate store as a teen, Walukiewicz said she considered buying into an established candy franchise, but couldn’t find a good fit for her.

In the meantime, she was doing a lot of traveling to France, Belgium, Spain, and other European countries, where she was drawn to the work of fine chocolatiers and studied the design of their shops. She decided that she wanted to bring that experience home to Redmond.

Walukiewicz began studying at the Barry Callebaut Chicago Chocolate Academy in 2007 with master chocolatiers from France, Canada, and Belgium while beginning to plan for her store.

She said studying at the academy has been invaluable, not only for learning techniques for chocolate making, but as a way to decide what equipment would serve the store best. Walukiewicz said she made a few errors in the beginning, such as trying to save a little cost on ganache trays, only to find that if they are not top notch, they are often not truly level and result in more waste.

Now, she says, “Our kitchen, in terms of equipment really mimics the academy.”

Brugge’s system for making truffles is now nearly perfected, with even the last, smaller row of leftover confection cut and turned into sample sizes when each new batch of truffles is made.

“I was experimenting with recipes for the strawberry balsamic and turned one sheet into bars,” that sold out rapidly in the shop, Walukiewicz said.

Using good equipment and ingredients also helps keep waste down to an absolute minimum, she said, which is essential for a business that buys fine imported ingredients for its products.

Looking to Grow

After a very successful first year that also provided a healthy learning curve, Walukiewicz said she and her team of five part-time employees have developed a good system that will allow the shop's production to grow enough to handle a burgeoning corporate gift market, as well as expanding events catering.

“We have a lot more ‘grab-and-go’ items now,” she says, so high traffic holidays are not so overwhelming, and customers have more options.

“I’d love to see a 20 percent increase this year,” Walukiewicz said, adding that catering now makes up about 15 percent of the company’s business.

Brugge is offering chocolate-making classes and catering barrel tasting events, as well as selling specialty baskets that pair truffles with port wines.

“We’ve added a ton of port, and have had a phenomenal response,” Walukiewicz said.