Sweet Dreams Come True: Good Girl Chocolate Expands Production with Financing from TEDC Creative Capital

Table of Contents:

Health Needs Turn into a Wakeup Call
A Love for Chocolate—A Search for Clean Ingredients
Speeding to Meet a Celebrity-Level Order
Tasty Treats Meet Practical Business Building Challenges
Community Financing to the Rescue When Opportunity Knocks
Growth Now Shines Bright on the Horizon—Thanks to TEDC

From being on blood pressure medications from a young age to transforming her health and showing off her chocolate creations backstage at the Grammys, Dr. Tabatha Carr, ND, has seen exciting success as founder/owner of Good Girl Chocolate. After overcoming numerous challenges and catching the attention of some impressive retailers, her delicious, guilt-free, Oklahoma City-based gourmet chocolate business was able to increase production with help from TEDC Creative Capital.

Health Needs Turn into a Wakeup Call

When you ask Dr. Carr about her “why” for starting Good Girl Chocolate, she takes you back to when she was just sixteen years old—the year she was put on blood pressure medications. Although she was already struggling with her weight and her health, the news still came as a shock. She asked her doctor, “Why are you putting me on this pill?” 

The doctor answered, “So you don’t have a stroke by the time you’re thirty.”

Over the years, Dr. Carr experienced the ups and downs of losing and regaining weight and the issues that came with it. By the time she was thirty, she found herself on three blood pressure pills and was diagnosed as prediabetic. She also dealt with panic attacks and hormonal problems that threatened her ability to have children. “That was my wake-up call,” she says, “because the women in my family all had hysterectomies by the time they were forty.”

Dr. Carr decided to make serious changes in her life to preserve her health. “I ended up changing my relationship with food, and I lost over eighty pounds,” she says. “I was able to get off of all of my blood pressure medication. And I ended up going back to school to study naturopathy because I wanted to help other women who were going through the same things that I was going through.”

A Love for Chocolate—A Search for Clean Ingredients

Once a naturopathic doctor specializing in women’s health, Dr. Carr set her sights on a new goal. She enjoyed losing weight but saw a clear need in the marketplace that wasn’t being met for people in her shoes. “I couldn’t find anything to satisfy my sweet tooth that aligned with my healthy lifestyle,” she says. “There wasn’t a gourmet chocolate that I could indulge in.”

Experimenting in her kitchen, Dr. Carr created a recipe for tasty, clean-ingredient chocolate that embodied her wellness goals. Her sweet treats are dairy-free, gluten-free, soy-free, non-GMO, and made with organic ingredients. “We source our organic cocoa beans from Ecuador,” she says. “It’s made with coconut sugar and clean, wholesome ingredients. It’s called Good Girl Chocolate because you can eat it every single day, and still say you’ve been good.”

Good Girl Chocolate made its first sale in 2018. At the time, the business used a co-packer to package the chocolate products, which Dr. Carr began selling at a kiosk in Oklahoma City’s Penn Square Mall. However, when their arrangement with the co-packer fell through, Good Girl Chocolate no longer had a way to sell its products.

“We were only open two months,” she says, “but the experience gave us an opportunity to get feedback from folks. They absolutely loved the chocolate.”

Good Girl Chocolate had tested its mettle in the marketplace and confirmed it had a viable product that people wanted to buy. Their challenge was finding a company willing to make and package their chocolate. The problem? Their size. “We were so small that we couldn’t go to a huge co-packer,” she says. “At that time, you needed thousands of dollars and a huge customer base, because they only made thousands of pounds at one time.”

Speeding to Meet a Celebrity-Level Order

With a loyal but small customer base and a delicious product that no one would package, Dr. Carr faced a significant roadblock. But then her network rose up to offer a path forward that she never would have imagined. Someone she knew connected her with the production team at the 2019 Grammys.

They tasted her chocolates and loved them, and then they invited her to the gifting suite. There, she could meet the performers and presenters at the Grammys while showcasing and giving away her products. It was an enormous opportunity, and Dr. Carr jumped at it—even though it created more challenges to overcome.

“I had to figure out how to get them chocolate,” she says. Unlike many other manufacturers, Good Girl Chocolate operates as a “bean-to-bar factory,” meaning it makes its chocolate from scratch. To handle such a large order, Dr. Carr purchased a grinder to make her chocolate herself. “And we did it,” she says. “We were there at the Grammys in 2019.”

Tasty Treats with a Promising Trajectory

After being a hit at the Grammy’s and getting rave reviews in the press, Good Girl Chocolate officially opened in 2021. But Dr. Carr didn’t take her foot off the gas, she knew this was just the beginning of what her business could achieve. In constant pursuit of success, she set her sights on expanding into new markets.

In further pursuit of serving her business, Dr. Carr participated in the Whole Foods Market Local and Emerging Accelerator Program (LEAP) during the fall of 2022 where she ultimately won the pitch competition. With continued validation of its product and proprietor, Good Girl Chocolate kept up the impressive pace and launched in the Tulsa International Airport, Mother Road Market, and Whole Foods in 2023.

Community Financing to the Rescue When Opportunity Knocks

Riding a wave of success, QVC invited Good Girl Chocolate to be the first of its kind and sell its chocolate to the public on national television. “We premiered on QVC as the first plant-based chocolate to ever go live on their channel in history,” says Dr. Carr.

Preparing to go live with plenty of bars to ship meant expanding the factory’s operations, all while she was in the process of moving the business’s location. In order to increase production, the chocolatier needed a larger grinder that could nearly triple its output. It was a huge challenge—but help was at hand, and TEDC Creative Capital stepped in to make a difference.

Dr. Carr was first introduced to TEDC while participating in the ACT House business accelerator program for Black and Latino-led startups. “I was introduced to TEDC because my advisors through the ACT House saw my financial need,” she says.

Working with the TEDC team was a breeze for Good Girl Chocolate. “Honestly, they’re like family,” says Dr. Carr. “I consider them part of my team. I love the fact that they love and see the potential in Good Girl Chocolate. When something exciting happens, I call them and they celebrate with me. Those things are very important to me.”

Growth Now Shines Bright on the Horizon—Thanks to TEDC

With TEDC’s nontraditional financing options, Good Girl Chocolate could purchase the equipment needed to increase production and fulfill orders for its many retailers. The process to make it happen was easy, says Dr. Carr, and now she can concentrate on her future plans.

“My goal is to continue to grow Good Girl Chocolate,” she says. “Everyone needs to know about Good Girl Chocolate, our mission, and how wonderful the chocolate is. It’s totally delicious. And it’s guilt-free.”

TEDC Creative Capital is a community development financial institution (CDFI) that serves entrepreneurial ventures, start-ups, and growing businesses in Oklahoma. Through non-traditional capital, funding vehicles, and practical educational opportunities, TEDC helps local business owners gain the essential business building blocks to sustain and expand their small businesses. Learn more about how TEDC’s caring, experienced team can help your small business thrive.