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The Little Cacao Co., Toronto, Ontario (2026)

06/06/2026

...Owning your own factory... 🍫

As a Founder with a big new brand idea, you usually need to work with co-man's.

And it's hard. So hard. First, finding one that will:

🍫 Believe in your idea
🍫 Work the R&D back and forth with you
🍫 Take you from Kitchen to Pilot to small production runs
🍫 Without killing your margins or drowning you in fixed costs

Co-mans get dozens of calls a month from Founders with "the next big idea."

They choose carefully whom they'll bet on. And they charge to cover their costs for new trials. And they don't work "that fast".

So the road from "I have an idea" to "I have sales samples" is long.
Really long.

Well, after 3 years working with dozens of chocolate factories in Canada, Ecuador, Peru and back again, 10 trips to South America, I simply bought my own small craft factory in Vancouver. 🇨🇦

I had enough hours of knowledge in to know exactly what I was looking for.

And what our brand needs.

So, within 30 days of my Board sign-off on the 2026 Innovation rollout, we have FINAL recipes and packaging rolling off the pilot line.

Yup, Not Kidding ✅

Indeed, this week I was at our factory with our R&D team. 💪

✈️ Flew back with a suitcase full of sales samples.
🧳 Personalized boxes already delivered to London Drugs and Pattison, same day.
🚀 Next 3 weeks: Loblaws, Walmart, PureSource, VenturePark, Uniprix national convention.

Team LeBeau Excel Sales & Marketing are getting their samples. 🙌

Full production first week of August, as soon as our printed packaging lands.
Boom. 🔥

And yet again, we're FIRST to Market, launching a new line that NOBODY has in North America:

🍫 Pure Chocolate (not "style," not "chocolatey")
🍫 Creamy, delicious, melt-in-your-mouth
✅ No sugar added
✅ SuperFood Cacao, 100% single origin Peru
✅ Never processed with Alkali, therefore loaded with Flavanols & Antioxidants
✅ No artificial anything
✅ No sugar alcohols
✅ No Stevia aftertaste

IT IS ABOUT TIME. 🎉

Back to school will be back to health. 🇨🇦

Now, you don't need to settle for either healthy or delicious.
The same as pop has been redefined, now it's chocolate's turn.
Bring it on!

Founders. What's the one infrastructure decision that changed your speed to market? 👇
And oh, come see me:
=> Tuesday at the VenturePark Summit
or
=> Thursday at the Loblaw Companies Limited Summit

The Little Cacao Co. 🍫 Ross Chocolates
Chocolate and Vitamins Re-Imagined. The Extraordinary Goodness of the SuperFood Cacao Bean. Fair Trade. ❤️ Made in small batches 🍫🫘 With love and care 🇨🇦 Made in Canada. Canadian and Women's Owned. CQCC Certified 🌈.

06/05/2026

It takes a Village to launch a brand. But it takes an Eco-System to scale one.

Calling all Toronto friends! 🇨🇦 Tuesday is the day: Venturepark Summit.

I'll be there. And I am pumped.

I'm joining a panel with Arlene Dickinson and Ted Fleming to talk about what it takes to build and scale a Canadian brand.

Venture Park Summitpark was founded by Arlene Dickinsonne Dickinson.

And they gave me my very first "break" in 2017 with Suzie's Good Fats! Eternally grateful. Being part of Venture Park was a stepping stone to $100M in Revenues. THANK YOU.
Since 2015, they've been accelerating the potential of Canadian entrepreneurs in CPG.

🚀 With Graduates representing some of the fastest-growing companies in Canada
💰 Collectively selling over $200M annually.
🌱 Over 100 early-stage CPG brands supported
🙌 Over 85% of participants identify as a member of an equity-deserving group.

This is THE Canadian Eco-System in action. 🇨🇦 THANK YOU.
Building, scaling: Will get into it: the real stuff. The good, the ugly, the hard, the fun. The Eco-System.

Also excited to share that two of MY VERY own Eco-System partners are also attending!!

🍫 brands. Marie Pagliacci, with whom I've worked for 25+ years on a dozen tough brand projects. Strategy, branding, packaging design.And helped me bring Suzie's Good Fats/ Love Good Fats and The Little Cacao Co. to life. 🌈🙏❤️ Also, did the smashing rebranding of Three Farmers Foods and designed the phenomenal category extension of Protein Snack Mixes (on fire by the way.. 🔥 try some)

🍫 Navio Law. Legal Partner built for us Founders: Funding, M&A, Contracts, Employees, Governance. A turn-key one-shop partner firm that will grow with you (and no "billable-hour" surprises). Huge thanks to Naomi Morisawa De Koven and Justin Clory for helping me overcome all the hurdles that came my way
If you're at the VenturePark Summit on Tuesday, come find me.
There will be SAMPLES of The Little Cacao Co.
Also, I have a few precious samples of my NEW INNOVATION (still a secret).Come over to peek and taste the creaminess!
I want to hear what you're building and what you're trying to solve.

If you're building a CPG brand, you want to know these humans.

My humans.

Who else is going to be there? 👇

Founders Helping Founders -Suzie

The Little Cacao Co. Little Cacao Co. 🍫 Ross Chocolatess Chocolates. Chocolate and Vitamins Re-Imagined. The Extraordinary Goodness of the SuperFood Cacao Bean. Fair Trade. ❤️ Made in small batches 🍫🫘 With love and care 🇨🇦 Made in Canada. Canadian and Women's Owned. CQCC Certified 🌈 Ezra Cerezo See less

06/02/2026

HAPPY PRIDE.... but wait : "Is Pride still needed?"

"Don't we all have the same rights now? 🤔"

DEI has some backlash no? Especially after the last two years.

Yet my answer has always been the same for 25 years: Yes. Absolutely yes.

Nine years ago, I first posted on LinkedIn that I was a proud LGBT Founder and CEO. I remember it like it was yesterday: I was nervous.

I've been out since I'm 35. Yet, back then, many didn't know I was gay, including some Board members and Advisors. And I was raising equity rounds.

Oufff. I had never "hidden" it, but there's a difference between not hiding something and posting it on LinkedIn...

Then my start-up sponsored the Pride 5km run, and a first-ever "Love is Love" promotion across Canada in 500 stores!

And even now, I still pause every June before hitting post: Is this too personal? Too risky? Too much?

Every year I get unfollows, negative comments, questioning why it matters that I'm a woman, le***an, older Founder. "Silence" even.

Well, "rights on paper" and "living freely" are not the same thing.

The numbers are still tough. Lives are impacted daily. Only a few stats:

📊 64 UN member states still criminalize consensual same-sex acts. We still need to check before travelling.

📊 1 in 4 2SLGBTQ+ youth in Canada reported thoughts of su***de in the past year, vs 5% of cisgender heterosexual youth.

📊 In Canada, in 2024, police-reported hate crimes targeting sexual orientation were the second highest ever.

So no, this is not “over" even in Canada... 🇨🇦
So yes. Celebrating Pride and driving awareness is still needed.

🩷 For the kids who can't come out to their families or friends.
🧡 For the professionals still deciding if it's safe to be out at work.
💛 For the families who want to show up with love.

💚 For the founders, investors, retailers, and teams who want to show support

And it's why being Canadian Q***r Chamber of Commercean (CQCC) Certified matters to me. This supports a more inclusive Canadian economy.

It's visibility, supplier diversity, access, mentorship, and a reminder that Pride belongs in entrepreneurship too. 🌈

This Pride weekend, Nicki and I will head to the Village in Toronto.

This year, Toronto is turning the village car-free for the whole summer!

Part of Church Street in the heart of the Village will be closed to cars and opened up for people, patios, music, community, and love.

Walk the festival, eat, drink, cheer, take it all in. Toronto Pride is wonderful, and our parade is huge, over 1M usually 🏳️‍🌈

I will keep showing up. Love is love. 🩷❤️🧡💛💚🩵💙💜

Is Pride still "needed" in 2026? What do you think?

The Little Cacao Co.i🍫 Ross Chocolatess Chocolates. The Extraordinary Goodness of the SuperFood Cacao Bean. Fair Trade. ❤️ Made in small batches 🍫🫘 With love and care 🇨🇦 Made in Canada. Canadian and Women's Owned. 🌈.

05/30/2026

A lot of us Canadian Founders are "one-meeting-away" .. from our I-N-F-L-E-C-T-I-O-N point.

Over the next four weeks, thousands of meetings will happen across the Canadian CPG ecosystem:

🚀 Venturepark Summit June 9th
🏪 Loblaw Companies Limited Annual Summit June 11th
🛒 Walmart Canada Annual Summit June 23rd
📦 Puresource Natural Products Distributor - A NOW Health Group Company Annual Meeting. June 16
💊 Uniprix Annual Meeting. June 15

Then come September :
🍫 LeBeau Excel Sales & Marketing Annual meeting. Sept 23-24
🍫 Canadian Health Food Association East Must-Attend Trade show Sept 24-27

Thousands of products will be sampled. Gazillion 15-second pitches and many will land. Deals will get done.

Sure, many of those meetings won't lead to "anything," maybe not right now.

We often hear about the 10-year overnight success story with Start-ups.

And about that famous "Inflection Point." The "suddenly is everywhere".

Nothing sudden about it. It's the Founders pounding that pavement for years.

And then the right building blocks start falling into place.
Then, that one trigger that drives the "inflection point". Often, it can be one person, too, who literally changes the course of your company. Just that one person, at the right time.
Boom: You see pallets and pallets, then ad campaigns, and the rest is history.

One by one, they add up: A new listing. A new investor. A new customer. A new partnership. A new chapter. A new Advisor. A new networking opportunity. A new Marketing, Sales, Ops or Finance fractional that can literally change the course of their company.
That's the fascinating thing about entrepreneurship.

This was rarely the case when I was in the 5 big CPG Multinationals.

Yet it's the norm now for my last 9 years as a Founder.

Years of work can sometimes be unlocked by a single meeting.
Good luck to everyone presenting, sampling, pitching and building over the next month. 🇨🇦🙌 I will be at all of the above. Go get 'em🚀

Drop in the comments any and all of the Events I've missed.

The Little Cacao Co. 🍫 Ross ChocolatesChocolatesss Chocolates. Chocolate and Vitamins Re-Imagined. The Extraordinary Goodness of the SuperFood Cacao Bean. Fair Trade. ❤️ Made in small batches 🍫🫘 With love and care 🇨🇦 Made in Canada. Canadian and Women's Owned. CQCC Certified 🌈. Founders Helping Founders -Suzie Ezra Cerezo Suzie Yorke

05/29/2026

I posted here and asked for your help: my social family answered!

On Monday, Blair Durling walked into our factory as the new Director of Operations/Factory. 🍫🇨🇦 Boom.

My social media family came through. I owe you one. Big "Thank you".

A bit about Blair:
✅ Twenty years at Maple Leaf Foods
✅ Lush Cosmetics North America
✅ Parallel 49 Brewing
✅ Built, fixed, and scaled real manufacturing operations, led teams, drove operational efficiencies, set up and optimized S&OP a bunch of times, a whiz with databases, ERPs and Excel!

He's joining our team, on-site in Port Coquitlam, BC
🍫 At our craft chocolate factory
🍫 Carefully producing our two brands: The Little Cacao Co. and Ross Chocolates, a 30-year legacy brand for the diabetic chocolate community
🍫 BRC audit: Done. Health Canada Certification: Done. Costco Audit: Done. 💪
🍫 Healthy Planet, Walmart Canada, Sobeys, Safeway, Well.ca, Amazon, Whole Foods, Tao and the list grows daily!

And we scale:
🍫 S&OP to scale and process efficiencies
🍫 Exciting news: we're launching 8 new SKUs of Innovation, rolling out in August. 👀 Stay tuned!
🍫 And soon setting up Claude throughout as we build the whole enterprise for automation!

To our brokers, distributors, partners, early adopters and supporters: thank you for all your support.

To Blair: Welcome to the family. Let's go. 🙌🇨🇦
I'm flying to Vancouver next week! Excited!

The Little Cacao Co.e Little Cacao Co. 🍫 Ross Chocolates Suzie Yorke Ezra Cerezo. Chocolate and Vitamins Re-Imagined. The Extraordinary Goodness of the SuperFood Cacao Bean. Fair Trade. ❤️ Made in small batches 🍫🫘 With love and care 🇨🇦 Made in Canada. Canadian and Women's Owned. CQCC Certified 🌈.

05/10/2026

Two days only! Treasure hunt at Costco 25% off. Saturday & Sunday only.

Pure chocolate with 0g of sugar added. Diabetic-friendly. Creamy, melt-in-your-mouth mini cups. With Super Food Cacao beans from Peru. Gluten Free.

Chocolate that feels like a treat without guilt. Rich, satisfying Mini Cups of pure chocolate made with +12g of protein, and +9g of fibre per serving of 4 mini cups. No sugar added. No sugar alcohols.

Not ultra-processed. Just gently made in our Craft factory in Vancouver. Never mixed with the chemical Alkali (ie never “Dutch” process”). With Nibs toppings for a crunchy delight.

Gluten Free. Soy Free. Non GMO. Made in Canada/Vancouver. Women's Owned. 🏳️‍🌈

Now available at Costco.ca 🔗 https://www.costco.ca/p/-/the-little-cacao-co-protein-chocolate-mini-cups-2-338-g/4000389790?storeId=10302&partNumber=4000389790&langId=-24&catalogId=11201

Suzie Yorke

05/10/2026

Two days only! Treasure hunt at Costco 25% off. Saturday & Sunday only.

Pure chocolate with 0g of sugar added. Diabetic-friendly. Creamy, melt-in-your-mouth mini cups. With Super Food Cacao beans from Peru. Gluten Free.

Chocolate that feels like a treat without guilt. Rich, satisfying Mini Cups of pure chocolate made with +12g of protein, and +9g of fibre per serving of 4 mini cups. No sugar added. No sugar alcohols.

Not ultra-processed. Just gently made in our Craft factory in Vancouver. Never mixed with the chemical Alkali (ie never “Dutch” process”). With Nibs toppings for a crunchy delight.

Gluten Free. Soy Free. Non GMO. Made in Canada/Vancouver. Women's Owned. 🏳️‍🌈

Now available at Costco.ca 🔗 https://www.costco.ca/p/-/the-little-cacao-co-protein-chocolate-mini-cups-2-338-g/4000389790?storeId=10302&partNumber=4000389790&langId=-24&catalogId=11201

Suzie Yorke

04/29/2026

"Suzie's Claude Series". Part 2 🍫

Wow, lots of questions on my Claude post this week. I will take you along as I FULLY integrate Claude in my new chocolate company.

First, let's step back.
Sure I'm an electrical engineer from back when.

Gen X, and not "too" techy (remember, we started with "Acetate projector" presentations...) and basic excel/word.

However, I've always been obsessed with "efficiency".
From pedal strokes on the bike to "how to save time, not make mistakes."

"Automate Repeatable Steps" is in my DNA.
So I'm of course obsessed with Claude.
LLMs are built for this. Take anything repeatable and make it instant.

Anything that anyone does more than once can become a Workflow. Boom.

So man, I'm going in 200% with Claude. 👀
Today, I'm an entrepreneur. 20 years in big corporate and now 9 years of scaling up 3 companies from the ground up.

A "healthy-chocolate-obsessed" Founder who owns a factory.
Claude and soon Optimus will be omnipresent and PERFECT for companies like mine. I'm an early ADOPTER all the way.

But I'm not an AI expert...yet

Here's what I've done so far, a few weeks in.
✅ Concept testing (you saw Part 1. 2 prompts)
✅ Board deck prep. Slayed the Claude Design dragon on the weekend with Ezra Cerezo.
But oops. Out of tokens for ONE week. C'mon Claude give us more tokens. And btw, super funny. Claude does NOT know that Claude Design exists. ChatGPT does tho. Hee hee.

✅ My team of 5 is on Claude Team now. Marketing, Sales, Ops, QA. Finance.
✅ Obsidian ie Second Brain. Done. Set up.
✅ "Suzie Daily Scorecard". Claude scrapes my emails and updates my ToDos every morning at 4am. I wake up to my personal assistant Claude plan for the day. See pics below. Tone is funny but works for now.

✅ Uploading all SOPs, all "Culture / Communication/ Meeting" expectations on Teams, with help from Claude.
✅ Using Claude Co-work and Projects all the way... no exceptions. Every mini Project is a Claude Project with proper upload docs.
And oh. I've been asked to join a Founders panel at Toronto Tech Week. May 27th. How founders are using AI in their brands. Will try to make it if I'm not on a place to Vancouver.
Umm... pinch me? 🙌
More to come. Stay tuned for Part 3. 🍫

The Little Cacao Co. 🍫 Ross Chocolatesoss Chocolatesss Chocolates Chocolate and Vitamins Re-Imagined. The Extraordinary Goodness of the SuperFood Cacao Bean. Fair Trade. ❤️ Made in small batches 🍫🫘 With love and care 🇨🇦 Made in Canada. Canadian and Women's Owned. CQCC Certified 🌈.

The Little Cacao Co.

06/06/2026

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06/02/2026

05/30/2026

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04/29/2026

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