There is a small campus off the beaten path in Nashville where two chocolate-themed Airbnbs sit beside a 1,500-square-foot production kitchen, and where some of the most exquisitely hand-painted chocolates in the country are being made by a small team of people. It is, as founder Evane Stoner puts it, "destination chocolate." You have to really want to find it. And once you do, you will wonder how you ever lived without it.
Poppy & Peep Chocolate, the father-daughter brand that Stoner has been building for the last 10 years, is one of Nashville's quiet culinary stories. The origin story of the creative young woman, her entrepreneurial father, and a converted one-bedroom apartment that became their first production facility reads like folklore.
Stoner's father, a man in the chimney industry, found himself at the Javits Center in New York trying to sell chimney franchises. Nobody wanted them. But he spotted a chocolate fudge concept nearby, and something clicked. He called his daughter, Evane. "I've been a creative since I was five," she says. "I made lemonade and brownies and I think anybody from my high school would tell you that I was always selling something and always just very artsy." In college, she was making and selling jewelry at fairs and festivals. The pivot to chocolate felt natural.
"We started in the chocolate industry in 2016 when we sold fudge at kiosks at Cool Springs Galleria and Opry Mills," says Stoner. "We had a hard time getting supplies from our suppliers at the time, so we decided to just become our own manufacturer of chocolate." They found a one-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment and converted it into a chocolate shop, and for three and a half years, they made everything out of 700 square feet.
Today, they operate out of a 1,500-square-foot production kitchen and, as of recently, have just closed on a building two doors down from their existing facility. The campus is growing.
Poppy & Peep is named for the relationship at its center. "We wanted something that meant dad and daughter, like father-daughter," Stoner says. Her father remains involved behind the scenes. "He's very involved in the equipment and we're getting a new facility, so he's involved in a lot of the strawberry machines and chocolate covered strawberries in that world," Stoner says. "He is much more involved than I think people would think, but he's not always on the site."
What truly sets Poppy & Peep apart in the artisan food landscape is the painting. Using the same tools and fine instruments used to create intricate nail designs, Stoner and her team paint directly onto chocolate domes with cocoa butter, creating pieces of edible art that are, simply put, extraordinary. "There's no one in town that is painting as much as we are," she says. "We're really doing a lot of painting. It's much more difficult than a box of chocolate that has just enrobed dark chocolate and things like that. So we enjoy that."
The designs range from seasonal collections to custom commissions — logos, watches, even a rendering of the Masters tournament flag. "Yes, we made some chocolate for the Masters and we've made very intricate things like Rolexes, Crowns." The cocoa butter paint has an eighteen-month shelf life, making it one of the few elements of their production that can be prepared in advance.
For the holidays, she is currently working on a collection that she hopes will blend the nostalgic warmth of traditional Christmas imagery with something that speaks to a younger, more design-forward aesthetic. "I kind of want to blend with modern and traditional," she says.
Stoner takes sourcing seriously as well. The bean-to-bar chocolate line at Poppy & Peep is sourced from Uncommon Cacao, a San Francisco-based cooperative, that Stoner says is "very transparent, traceable, and has sustainable relationships with cacao farmers." Local honeys, sugars, and edible flowers round out a sourcing philosophy that favors knowing exactly what is in the chocolate and where it came from.
In her chocolate classes, which have recently opened to the general public, Stoner teaches participants to understand the difference between a mass-market chocolate bar and a bean-to-bar product. "When you're buying a bean-to-bar chocolate bar, you really see three ingredients. It's cocoa nibs, cocoa butter and sugar, and that's pretty much it," she says. "A lot of palm oil and other things are inside of regular candy and chocolate bars because chocolate itself is so expensive, they add in oils and things like that to cut it to make it last longer."
The classes cover everything from roasting processes to chocolate and wine pairing to the multi-day art of making chocolate bonbons. There are even classes dedicated to the Mondiant — ultrathin chocolate discs adorned with toppings of the participant's choosing. It is education as entertainment, and it reflects Stoner's belief that the story of chocolate is one she loves telling.
Stoner tracks flavor trends with the same rigor she applies to design, a skill she has honed through a parallel career doing interior design for commercial developers. "Matcha is having its moment," she says. Although Poppy & Peep carried matcha bonbons in 2022 and 2023 before the trend caught up. Adaptogen chocolate, incorporating ingredients like reishi mushrooms and ashwagandha, is coming. Protein chocolate is already arriving. And she sees a continued movement toward mineral-rich functional chocolate that promises specific emotional benefits. "I think a lot of people in the industry are really getting away from single origin bars," she says, as sourcing challenges and rising cacao prices reshape what's possible for small producers.
For now, the bestsellers lean classic. The bonbons remain their signature product. Salted toffee, cookie butter, candied orange peels, and a dark chocolate strawberry bar with dehydrated strawberries and powderized strawberry round out the popularity lineup.
As for the next chapter, Stoner is clear: "I've always kept us pretty small in an intentional way because I think a lot of people get lost in the middle," she says. "I think a lot of companies also have to start making big sacrifices when they scale."
"We're just playing in the sandbox and trying to figure out what we like," Stoner says, channeling her father's philosophy. "Just kind of go for it and make it make sense later."
For destination chocolate in Nashville, Poppy & Peep is worth every bit of the effort it takes to find them. PoppyAndPeep.com
"We're really doing a lot of painting. It's much more difficult than a box of chocolate that has just enrobed dark chocolate..." Evane Stoner