Sump Coffee's Flynn Edgerton makes chocolate with passion and pragmatism

Age: 29

Title: Wholesale production manager, Sump Coffee

Why watch him: He makes chocolate with passion and pragmatism

Sump Coffee was incorporated as a coffee and chocolate company in 2011, but apart from a few small-scale experiments, it never produced or sold chocolate regularly until 2023. So, what changed? Meet Flynn Edgerton.

Edgerton came to Sump after serving as head chocolate maker at local chocolatier Honeymoon Chocolates. Before that, he trained in the apprenticeship program of San Francisco's famed Dandelion Chocolate. Sump co-owner Scott Carey was excited the minute he read Edgerton’s resume: He knew he could be the key to finally producing bean-to-bar chocolate at Sump. But Carey also knew that if Edgerton was going to make a chocolate program possible, he’d have to build on everything he learned at Dandelion and Honeymoon and level up his skills even more.

 

 

“He’s very balanced,” Carey said. “I think that’s important – especially in this business. … You can enter the market with a lot of euphoria and fanfare and Instagram followers, but that doesn’t mean the economics you set up are going to keep you going for 10 years.”

A lot of mornings, Edgerton is at the shop even before Carey arrives. He’s a problem-solver, and his instincts for processing and flavor development reflect Carey’s own. It’s clear they see themselves in each other.

“Scott’s like me: He’s very opinionated and he trusts himself first,” Edgerton said. “The more I’ve been able to prove myself in this role, the more he warms up and trusts me.”

Carey trusts Edgerton not only for his skill, but also his pragmatism. Edgerton is a realist when it comes to chocolate’s notoriously unprofitable nature. It’s what makes Carey think Edgerton could build his own successful business eventually, though that won’t be for a while.

“The setting at Sump is the best-case scenario for trying to build a bean-to-bar arm of a business,” Edgerton said. “It’s really difficult to even break even in a chocolate company, but to take a specialty business and add another specialty product makes a ton of sense.”

And don’t let the practicality fool you. Get Edgerton talking about the chocolate-making process and numbers give way to magic. If his enthusiasm and dedication weren’t already evident, the man is getting tattoos: first a cacao flower, then coffee cherries.

“He’s in it,” Carey said. “It’s like putting your partner’s name on you – he’s making a statement.”