We entered the café of Galffis chocolate and asked the salesclerk to tell Mr Galffi that we had arrived for our appointment. While waiting, we could have a look at his café, where customers could have any coffee or tea they wanted together with all the standard chocolates made by Galffis. We could also watch videos from various exclusive resorts together with relaxing music.
Anyway, when Mr Galffi arrived, he was immediately available for an interview. Starting with the videos, they were generic for making people relax and groups of customers or companies can have workshops in the café. He uses his last name together with an s at the end, which interestingly signifies genitive in both Norwegian and Hungarian.
10 years ago, he worked for his father’s company, but he didn’t like it and he wanted to make a living from chocolate. He did this by buying cocoa by means of his salary and making chocolate at night. Next, he started selling chocolate on a Friday and on Sunday he had five times as much money as much as when he started on Friday. He reinvested the money in chocolate-making, quit his job and started making chocolate full time.
He’s a self-made man, he did all by himself in the beginning and he started from nothing. His motto is that if you have something good, someone will want to buy it.
Although he had hardly any money when he started, his attitude was that all problems are solvable, he needed to find the persons who wanted to buy his product and he needed to know how to make it. In order to learn how to make, sell and serve chocolate, he visited chocolate manufacturers.
Actually, he set himself three targets before founding a chocolate company:
1. Know the history of chocolate, where does it come from and where is it going?
2. How to make it.
3. How to sell it.
When he started selling his chocolate, his customers liked it, but they thought it was too expensive. In order to counteract their opinion, he has kept the same price for 10 years, selling more chocolate with time because he’s able to produce more.
Mr Galffi is both an artist and a director and he designs chocolates with labels for anyone as long as they are willing to buy a minimum amount of 50 kg of the special chocolate. He thinks chocolate is more than food and he wants to create feelings like: the taste of cold, sunshine, forests, Hargitha county, tourism, Romania, clean air in Transilvania or whatever his customers might prefer. In addition to designing chocolates, he’s designing labels and packages on his computer in his office about 5 minutes walk from the café.
He’s got an order from the Romanian government for which he’s making a special design. During our visit in his factory, we could see special designs for a telecom conference in Budapest, Bosch Engineering Center, Danubius Health Spa Resort and World Championships in Budapest. I must admit that I think this is pretty impressive for a young man of about 30 years of age!
Now he has 7 employees, he opened this café in 2019 and it was designed by himself and a colleague. The company has a flat organisation where everyone can do everything and the director can replace everyone (one at a time) in time of need.
All the chocolate made by this company is natural and no additives are used. He buys dried berries from producers and he uses a lot of them on his chocolates. He buys cocoa from importing companies because his company is too small to buy direct.
His company produces white, milk and dark chocolate with a cocoa content from 35% to nearly 100%.
In addition to designing chocolate, labels and packages, a lot of time is spent talking to his customers. He didn’t say anything about directing the company, though and I forgot to ask about it.
We also visited his factory, but since we arrived in the afternoon, there was no chocolate production, only a female employee who was packing chocolate.
The café is located next to a rather busy road and there is space for customers both inside and outside. Moreover, there is parking space for some cars.
I really hope he will succeed in going on designing chocolates, labels and packages, enriching the world at the same time.
