Owned by Los Gatans Elaine and Chris Hutchins, Cocoa Bon has a home office in Los Gatos with a staff of six handling a lively chocolate business. It started just six years ago when Elaine began stirring up chocolaty concoctions in her kitchen after work as a graphic designer. What has happened since then is a Cinderella story of business success, and it's still unfolding.

"Elaine found that all she could get in the stores were Hershey bars and big blocks of chocolate," says Chris. What she wanted was a chocolate shop of her own. So she took chocolate-making classes and started experimenting, using friends as critics. They raved. In her kitchen, she experimented with recipes. In a back bedroom, she packaged samples and mailed them to family-owned boutique stores. The orders started coming in. They came in such volume that she quit her job and moved the operation to what once was a small school gym on University Avenue. "We had to bring in floor heaters," Chris recalls. "There was no heat in the place." But the product took off.

A milestone occurred, Chris says, when the Park Hyatt Hotel in Tokyo called to say they wanted to make Cocoa Bon their official hotel chocolate. Someone had given them a sample. Then Food Network discovered them at the former Oakville Grocery. Its raves attracted the attention of Al Roker, who came and did a story about it on his Roker on the Road TV series last spring. The TV show was spotted by the president of W Hotels, Ross Kline. He decided to make Cocoa Bon his hotel chain's official chocolate. Next, he plans next to introduce it in the W-owned Westin Hotel chain.

But the international exposure is worrisome to Chris, who quit his job in high-tech marketing a year and a half ago to help in the business that has since moved to Victory Lane. "We want to keep this a family business, focusing on the Bay Area with a small number of retail outlets," he says. Smaller means he can keep control of the product and its all-natural ingredients. "I don't want to be trucking ingredients to Maine," he says, pointing out that wider distribution involves pressure from retailers to include artificial ingredients with a longer shelf life than the eight months the pure ingredients allow and a cheaper price tag.

True to their determination to remain local, the Hutchinses' first retail outlet opened in Westfield Valley Fair recently. They introduced a new flavor containing dark chocolate made by Guittards, chocolatiers in Burlingame since 1859. It is 72 percent cacao. Sales doubled on the first day. "We almost sold out over the weekend with 500 tins!" Of course, they offer non-stop sampling of the anti-oxidant-rich confection.

In Los Gatos, 2.58-ounce tins are available for $2.99 at Whole Foods Market in three flavors--dark chocolate mint, almond chocolate toffee and dark chocolate cherry. They also are on the pillow in truffle tins at the Los Gatos Hotel and in the gift shop at Courtside Tennis Club.

Chris and Elaine, both 39, were high school sweethearts at San Jose's Lynbrook High School, class of '84. While they attended different colleges, the attraction remained. Just two months ago, their son Graham was born--with a sweet tooth, it's presumed.

Cocoa Bon, 140 Victory Lane in Los Gatos, can be reached at 408.395.0180 or at cocoabon.com.