By ops@our-hometown.com | on September 14, 2022

Do you love your job so much you forget the one you had before? It takes Ed Conroy a moment to remember what he did before he opened River City Chocolate. “I was a loan officer, I think.” That was back in 2013.

Conroy abandoned finance that year at his wedding reception, at Havana 59 in Shockoe Bottom, where he treated his guests to an array of his finest desserts, three-tiered displays of the pastries and cakes and sweets he’d first learned to make at his grandmother’s knee as a kid in Queens, New York. The restaurant’s general manager was impressed. Assuming Conroy was a professional baker he asked, “Do you own your own company?” Conroy was caught off guard.

Why don’t we tell the truth? Most of the time it’s to be pleasant. We pretend we’ll call an acquaintance again soon, or that we loved a boring party. There’s no malice. We frequently misrepresent our feelings. No one’s the wiser, and rarely are we challenged. Misrepresenting one’s ability is different. You can be caught stretching the truth.

Conroy told the restaurant manager he had his own company because he trusted his ability and talent. “I saw an opportunity,” he thought. “Maybe I can turn this into something.”

He booked his first job that night. The manager took Conroy’s desserts downstairs to a customer planning a party and sold him on Conroy’s work. Word spread. Orders from Hermitage Country Club were so big Conroy abandoned his home kitchen for a facility on Castle Rock Road in Midlothian. “We started out as a commercial account. We only did hotels, restaurants, country clubs, you know, things of that nature.” By this time he’d enlisted his mom to help. Joan Capobianco had experience he needed, 30 years as a chocolatier in Queens.

River City Chocolate was a success. “It just snowballed,” Conroy says.

He took time to blend his home techniques into professional culinary standards. He remembers Michael Varinelli, then executive chef at Hermitage Country Club as an early mentor. But because Conroy was a caterer, his name was never on his cakes and goodies. The public would never know they’d been served to President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, President Barack Obama and President Donald Trump.

“I’ve served astronauts, I’ve served Sanjay Gupta,” he says. “I’ve served Temple Grandin.” His cakes and confections have been served backstage in theater green rooms and at fancy public gatherings. It took a global pandemic for River City Chocolate to open its doors to the public.

As the pandemic ravaged the company’s commercial clients and orders dried up, the business was in jeopardy. Conroy focused on retail sales. He’d avoided them before.

“We started doing neighborhood drop-offs in Hallsley and Fox Creek and Foxcroft and all those places around here,” he says. “I was out there with a tent and a table and a cooler and a prayer, hoping that I was gonna be able to make enough money to be able to pay my rent.” He built a display counter at the shop and started selling curbside. He convinced food trucks to carry his desserts. Things were tough. He says he didn’t take a paycheck for a year. All great desserts have something in common, the baker says: “Balance. That’s the number one thing. … It’s not muddled.”

Ed Conroy gets a helping hand from his mother, Joan Capobianco. Their family recipes, including carrot cake and cheesecake, are featured on the River City Chocolate menu.

His mom credits high-quality ingredients, too: Good flour and good cream. Not substituting butter for cheaper lard. Some of River City’s recipes are family heirlooms.

Capobianco says the cheesecake recipe is more than 100 years old and that their carrot cake recipe has been passed down for 80. But there’s always room for innovation. Conroy points to a dessert called The Frankie.

“It’s a double dark chocolate chip cookie with peanut and a pie in the center of it,” Conroy explains, “It’s wrapped in a marshmallow meringue, then it’s topped with a dark chocolate ganache and a candy bacon. Salty against the sweet.” In balance.

River City sells 15 kinds of cakes, 9 types of pie, and 17 varieties of cookies, brownies and brookies. (Gluten free-options are available.) They serve cheesecake and canolis too. Milk is on the drink menu. Party sized orders are welcomed with advance notice.

Conroy has two full-time employees and a pair of part-timers at the shop and without them, he says, things wouldn’t be as tasty – or as pleasant. “Everybody that works here is family or friend. They have my best interest at heart. … Nobody’s gonna work harder for you than somebody that cares about you. I forever feel like I’m paying it forward. If I’m helping my friends and family eat, then they’re going to reciprocate.”

The pandemic also showed Conroy the power of social media. Good reviews spurred retail sales. His Facebook followers grew from 150 to 4,000. One new customer claimed they’d stalked River City Chocolate on the site. “And they were like, ‘You have 168 five-star reviews online’. And I was like, what? Really?” he exclaimed.

These days, the retail sales that kept him afloat during the pandemic don’t add much to the bottom line. But River City Chocolate will always welcome customers to the counter inside Conroy’s door. He gets choked up talking about the support and love he’s had from local customers. “It helps with the bills, but it doesn’t pay the bills. This …” – he motions to the counter – “… stays open because it kept us open.”

River City Chocolate is located at 3930-E Castle Rock Road. Phone 804-350-1384. Open Wednesday through Saturday, 11:30 a.m.-7 p.m., Sunday, noon-5 p.m.

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