Tulsa Chocolate Shop Staying Busy With Valentine's Day Orders

The day before Valentine's Day is one of the busiest times of the year for chocolate shops.

Co-owner of Glacier Chocolate, Katie Hutto, calls it their Super Bowl.

"We have extra people coming into work, working weekends as well, just getting ready for this holiday of love," she said.

The preparation begins in November. Hutto said, "We are prepping for Valentine's Day ahead of Christmas, so we start looking at numbers, kind of making projections."

Glacier makes a variety of truffles and heart-shaped desserts, but none are more popular this time of year than its chocolate-dipped strawberries.

"It is hard to say exactly how many, but we do thousands and thousands of them so quite a few," said Hutto.

Head chocolatier Rosi Martinez is the quarterback of the operation.

"We dipped around like 1,000 strawberries so far and we still have to dip 600 today, probably 1,000 tomorrow," Martinez added.

She said the key is to get the chocolate just right.

"You have to make sure our chocolate is tempered; all of our tanks need to be tempered," Martinez continued saying, "We have milk chocolate, dark chocolate, and white chocolate."

Tempering is the process of slowly heating and then cooling chocolate to give it a smooth finish. The strawberries are then dipped by hand with Martinez and her team putting the same care and technique into each one.

"We make sure the strawberries are dry, we do not want to get any water in our tanks," she said. "Then we grab them by the stem, dip, pull out, and just wait for them to dry and we just drizzle them."

It is a time-consuming process, but Hutto said that is what sets Glacier apart from some of the other chocolate shops. "There are a lot of chocolatiers that will not do it because they do not love it, but we love the strawberries and we just think there is something so elegant about them and there is nothing that tastes better," she added.

Glacier is still accepting chocolate-dipped strawberry orders at both of its stores.

To place an order, drop by or call (539)-424-5992 for the Utica Square location or (918)-701-3786 for the south Tulsa location.

Glacier also sells build-your-own and pre-packaged boxes of its truffles. The two locations are at 1902 Utica Square and 10051 S Yale Ave.