Dandelion Chocolate
Dandelion makes single-origin dark chocolate from two ingredients, cocoa beans and organic cane sugar. Todd Masonis and Cameron Ring started the company in the Mission in 2010 and opened this Valencia Street counter as a cafe in January 2013.
Why go
Masonis, Ring and Alice Nystrom built the room on the old European chocolate houses. Bernachon in France was the model, where one shop makes the chocolate and the pastry behind it. Masonis calls the iced chocolate here thin and light, like tea. Their pastry chef spent two months writing those recipes. Their bars took a Good Food Award for the Costa Rica 70% in 2012 and another for the Madagascar 70% in 2013. Nystrom told KQED the first one changed their volume outright.
The Valencia shop ran out of room almost at once. Masonis spent about five years on permits and construction. A 28,105-square-foot factory opened on Alabama Street in April 2019. It can make roughly ten times the 300,000 bars a year the company was then turning out. That building has the tours, the classes and the machines. This one kept the cafe, the pastries and the retail shelf.
Order this / avoid
- Order: a drinking chocolate and a bar of the same origin, and taste one against the other.
- Order: a pastry with it.
- Avoid: coming for the factory. Walk up to the 16th Street building for tours and classes.
What locals & experts say
- Todd Masonis, co-founder, to KQED in January 2013, on why the bars taste of the bean:
A lot of chocolate companies are concerned with price and consistency. We work really hard by keeping the sugar levels the same (low) so you can taste the bean.
4 - MacKenzie Chung Fegan and Cesar Hernandez, San Francisco Chronicle, July 2026, sending Ferry Building readers this way:
you'll have to go to the Mission District for the brownie flight.
6 - The maker's own rule, from its About page:
we don't add cocoa butter, soy lecithin, vanilla, flavorings, or preservatives, all commonly used in chocolate making.
1
Good to know
- Which door: 740 Valencia. The other three San Francisco shops are the 16th Street Factory, the Ferry Building and Fillmore Street.
- Where: 740 Valencia Street, near 18th.
Verdict
could-visit — The bars travel anywhere, so buy more than one origin. The cafe is the only reason to be at this address rather than another door.