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The license plate on Bob Bury's chocolate brown Jeep Cherokee says it all - U4EAHH.
When Bury, owner of Euphoria Chocolate Company in Eugene, Oregon, tried to think of a name for his new company, "euphoria" seemed to capture the ephemeral experience that he felt when eating chocolate.
Bury has been eating chocolate most of his life. "My grandmother worked for a chocolate company in San Francisco," he says. "My mother was a baker and hand-dipped chocolates at home for friends and family."
It was Bury's mother who taught him how to bake. When he was growing up, she used to stick a chunk of chocolate in his lunch pail instead of a cup cake. "Whenever my family went to a potluck, we always brought the dessert," he recalls.
A husky six-footer with a serious countenance that conceals his dry sense of humor, Bury graduated from San Jose State in California with a degree in economics in 1969. Unsure of what career path to follow, he tried working as a mechanic in a garage. He soon discovered that working in a world of metal and auto grease just didn't fulfill his creative urges.
Soon, Bury began moonlighting by making desserts at: a restaurant next to the garage. The restaurant was the first beneficiary of his luscious chocolate treats. It wasn't long before he realized that what he really wanted to do was to open a chocolate shop.
Bury, with his wife Sue Subbot, opened Euphoria Chocolate Company on December 31,1980. "We opened it on that day in order to write off all the equipment we had purchased on our 1980 income taxes," he says.
In business nearly 20 years now, Bury's idea has paid off. Gross revenue for 1997 was around $2 million. Retail sales account for 85 percent of revenue with wholesale accounts bringing in the remaining 15 percent.
A growing population in Eugene, currently 120,00, has done much to boost Euphoria's sales. Potential customers in Eugene's metropolitan area number 250,000, and job opportunities from major employers such as the University of Oregon, state...