Lily’s Sweets – Socially Conscious Treat for your Valentine to Eat!
Chocolate is one of my favorite indulgences. Yes, I am the girl that eats an entire bar of chocolate in one sitting … and relishes it! My sweet tooth can get the best of me at times (¯\_(ツ)_/¯) but, like some, I don’t feel guilty about it. I believe chocolate is good for you — and, when made from the right ingredients, Mother Nature and science agree! That’s why my latest chocolate obsession is Lily’s Sweets, an honest brand making a positive contribution to our community and collective sweet tooth. A brand that emerged because of the courage and grace of one young, sweet, hopeful cancer-surviving girl … Lily ♡
Welcome to the world of Lily’s Sweets, founded in 2011 by Cynthia Tice and Chuck Genuardi, from equal parts passion, determination, hope, and all the deliciousness of chocolate. Lily’s Sweets has quickly become a leading maker of all-natural, indulgent chocolate treats sweetened with stevia — the natural, plant-based sweetener that is virtually calorie-free. I spoke with Cynthia Tice, President and Co-Founder of Lily’s Sweets, who shared her brands and personal inspiration with us:
I love to eat and enjoy myself! I especially enjoy chocolate, but as a life-long member of the natural foods community, I have been wary of sugar and its negative effects for years. Truly, I wanted to create a chocolate that I could eat every day without worrying — and I did not want to only eat just one little piece. Using stevia has allowed our customers and myself to enjoy a hearty serving of chocolate without any added sugar; it’s a dream come true!
When we were creating Lily’s, my co-founder Chuck and I knew we wanted giving back to be in our business model. His niece Lily is a childhood cancer survivor and showed such amazing grace during her treatments (she raised $9,000 in her community to buy a new electric wheelchair for her hospital at just seven years old), we decided to make her cause our cause and it has been an incredibly rewarding to be able to help that community. We focus on donating to grass-roots organizations that benefit kids with cancer and their families such as Max Love Foundation in Orange County, CA and Hope for Henry in Washington D.C, among others.
With Valentine’s just around the corner, Lily’s Sweets created these fun, heart-shaped Valentine’s Day Chocolate Pops — rich, velvety treats made with Fairtrade cocoa, that are both gluten-free and non-GMO, and stevia-sweetened with no sugar added. (Your taste buds will never know!) The pops are available now in 40% Chocolate and Milk and 55% Dark Chocolate at select Whole Foods nationwide. (MSRP $5.99)
What drives me is the idea that there are other people like me. It’s risky to follow your dreams, especially when starting a new business but I knew that if I wanted chocolate without sugar, that wasn’t filled with crazy ingredients that require a degree in food science to even pronounce, than there had to be other people that wanted the same thing. It still brightens my day to get e-mails from customers who haven’t had sweets in years until they found Lily’s. I love spreading joy with chocolate!
My advice would be to do something that you love and be ready to work 20 times harder than you ever thought you would. Yes, it will be hard and tiring and sometimes you will be running on fumes but it will always be fun.
I would like to see all chocolate companies using Fairtrade cocoa. Customers spend a lot of money each year on chocolate and every cocoa farmer on the planet deserves a fair living wage.
Oh yeah! Lilly’s chocolate is my chocolate love affair also. This body system needs low glycemic but delicious sweets and these bars are the best!
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