16-05-2025
San Francisco's Next Great Chocolatier Has Arrived
Mark Lieuw is storing an oven in his mom's basement. It's the same oven that San Francisco chocolate institution Jade Chocolate used at its soon-to-close Chinatown location. He threw his back out moving it. There's a tempering machine in the basement, too. It's from Carol Gancia's Kokak Chocolates; Gancia announced in April that she was closing her retail location to focus on her online business. In a sense, the basement has become a monument to the city's chocolatiers — a passing of the torch, or rather equipment, from one generation of chocolatiers to the next.
Lieuw had a rigorous run in fine dining. Pastry chef at Saison, the Wild (formerly Gozu), Sorrel. He cooked on the savory side at now-closed Meadowood. Now, like so many Bay Area luminaries before him, he's on the startup grind. Lieuw struck out on his own in December 2024 and opened Stay Sweet SF. The 10-by-10-foot cave at his mom's house is now Stay Sweet SF headquarters. 'She would always tell me to stop working so hard for someone else's dream and invest in my own,' Lieuw says.
Selling seven kinds of bars, Lieuw's roster paints a sweet and creamy tapestry of San Francisco life and its many flavors. His shiitake mushroom chocolate bar is one of his most popular; a Karl the Fog bar tastes like a coffee caramel medley with notes as deep as a San Francisco fog bank. He uses farmers' market produce in his chocolate. For Chinese New Year, he bought mandarins at the Ferry Building for an orange marmalade bar. 'What I want to create more than ever is a very California, San Francisco product,' Lieuw says. 'I don't see that in chocolate right now.'
But the timing is just as critical to Lieuw's moment as his skill. Beyond Jade and Kokak, Santa Clara's Charlotte Truffles is going on 'indefinite hiatus.' Numerous other players in the Bay have been impacted by the highest cocoa prices in more than 60 years, per Confectionary News. To be fair, the colorful and exquisite treats at Topogato are getting the star treatment at owner Simon Brown's first permanent location on Geary Boulevard. But thanks to a somewhat stale San Francisco chocolate game — for reasons not within confectioners' control by and large — Stay Sweet SF is a rare, hopeful light.
It was thanks to that Sorrel stint that he nabbed one of Stay Sweet SF's first big breaks. The florist across the street from Sorrel, Fleurt, offered him space for a Valentine's Day pop-up. Between 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. he sold 10 boxes of chocolate — one of which happened to go to a San Francisco Chronicle food critic. Mackenzie Chung-Fegan's write-up rhapsodized on Lieuw's strawberries-and-cream and raspberry-pink peppercorn-marshmallow bonbons, and dropped two days before February 14. In his words, the attention sent him on 'quite the rollercoaster.'
It's an auspicious time for chocolate in San Francisco. The history of sweet gold ingots in the Bay is long-standing, with Domingo Ghirardelli launching the country's longest-running factory in the country in 1852. Since then, there's been 1996's Scharffen Berger Chocolate Maker in Berkeley (acquired by Hershey in the '00s), Tcho's tech-focused birth in 2005, and Dandelion Chocolate in 2012. Smaller players entered the ring — the Lieu sisters with wine country's Socola Chocolatier in 2001, Malena Lopez-Maggi churning out plant-based goodies in the East Bay at the Xocolate Bar since 2006.
Jade and Kokak's closings are a reminder that the San Francisco business climate has changed dramatically since the late 19th-century Gold Rush. To be fair, Jade's Mindy Fong wants to focus on family, and Gancia is focusing on her health. But operating a restaurant, cafe, and certainly a sweets shop can seem impossible in 2025 San Francisco. A few blocks from Kokak on Castro Street, the former Dogo Love retail space is on the market for just over $5,000 a month.
That sweet history, and precarious present, is the context Lieuw steps into. He was born and raised in the city. He graduated college in San Francisco with a degree in biology and minors in math and chemistry. He wanted to be a pediatrician and even worked at UCSF for awhile before taking a year off. He enrolled at Le Cordon Bleu in 2012 after his mom suggested he try his hand at cooking. 'I never looked back,' Lieuw says.
He joined the opening team at Pier 5's Coqueta, and headed there after finishing his culinary school classes each day. On his days off, he'd pick up shifts at Atelier Crenn. For an externship, he found a way into Eleven Madison Park in New York. (It was the only restaurant that got back to him of eight places he emailed.) Before returning to San Francisco, he crossed working at Le Bernardin and Nomad off his list to be on the safe side.
His first Stay Sweet SF pop-ups were at Pacifica's Craftsman Coffee in May 2024. He'd use the kitchen at whatever swanky restaurant he was at to make the bars, then drive south to sell his sweets. Golden Goat Coffee in SoMa and Breadbelly in Outer Richmond have been supporters and venues, too. Cottage business licensing allows him to work from his family's house and continue growing the nascent brand. There's no rush to take on a big rent payment that a landlord could hike into oblivion just yet.
That said, of course, he dreams of opening a storefront someday. He envisions a small shop in Chinatown to appeal to tourists. For now, he's going day by day. He just finalized his logo and branding, which nods to Chinese knots meant to invoke good luck. At the beginning of April, he cleaned up at the annual San Francisco Chocolate Salon. He took home six out of nine People's Choice Awards at the Golden Gate Park event in addition to two golds from the judges.
'Everybody always tells me I do good work,' Lieuw says. 'But there's always that fear in the back of your mind. You're like 'Can I do this? Is this really working? Is this happening?''
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