The South Bend Chocolate Company: the licensed chocolate house

1991 — present · Sample Street to Lincolnway West

The founding, under a university's license: The South Bend Chocolate Company was founded on October 24, 1991, by Mark Tarner, a second-generation chocolate maker who grew up working in his father Don Tarner's Sugar 'N Spice shop. The company began under a license from the University of Notre Dame, and its first three products carry the license in their names: the Domer, the Rockne, and Nuts for ND, in the company's own telling of its story. It was incorporated in August 1994, and its factory opened on October 16, 1994, at 3300 West Sample Street, in a building that once housed the South Bend Toy Company. Franchising began in 1997.

The scale, as the business press states it: By June 2023 the Indianapolis Business Journal counted 18 locations across Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio, and described the 58,000-square-foot Sample Street factory and museum as holding "one of the largest collections of chocolate memorabilia in the world," including a 1,300-year-old Mayan chocolate pot — printed here at the strength the Journal printed it: a business paper's description, with no independent enumeration behind it. The same years carried the company's own hardest figure: a 2023 account in Northwest Indiana Business records that its sales fell 97 percent in the pandemic, and carries the company's claim to have been among the first to coat caramel corn with chocolate — a claim of priority printed here as a claim, untested against any national record. A new factory opened in July 2024 on Lincolnway West; the address itself conflicts in print — the encyclopedia entry gives 7102 Lincolnway West, the company's own story page gives "1702 Lincolnway West" — and both are printed as they stand. The company's best-known superlative, that it is "the fastest-growing chocolate company in the nation," is reported by a 2016 travel account as what the company "boasts of its status": a boast, carried in the claims entry, not a verified record.

Sources:

1. The South Bend Chocolate Company, "Our Story" (company history) — the 1991 founding and the Notre Dame license; the Domer, the Rockne, and Nuts for ND; the August 1994 incorporation; the "1702 Lincolnway West" factory address.
2. Wikipedia, "South Bend Chocolate Company," from the company's record and press coverage — founded 24 October 1991; Mark Tarner and Don Tarner's Sugar 'N Spice; the factory of 16 October 1994 at 3300 West Sample Street in the former South Bend Toy Company building; franchising from 1997; the July 2024 factory at 7102 Lincolnway West.
3. Indianapolis Business Journal (9 June 2023) — 18 locations in three states; the 58,000-square-foot factory and museum and its memorabilia collection as the Journal describes it.
4. Northwest Indiana Business (2023) — the 97 percent pandemic sales fall; the chocolate-covered caramel corn priority claim.
5. Midwest Guest (2016) — the "fastest-growing chocolate company in the nation" line, reported as the company's boast.