Enzo, a chipmunk who often appears on SOMA Chocolatemaker’s award-winning bean-to-bar chocolate packaging, is also their brand ambassador and frequent Instagram guest. Thanks to Puglia almonds, Piedmont hazelnuts and other offerings, Enzo became a regular visitor to SOMA owners’ Cynthia Leung and David Castellan’s treehouse home in Toronto, Canada (which they share with their unemployed cats, Cooper and Sharky). The pair of feline muses also inspire images on their packaging and are shown on instagram “working” amongst shipping material.

While Castellan is a former pastry chef who brings his Italian heritage into their confections, Leung is the artistic force behind the playful atmospheric watercolors that decorate their chocolate boxes.

Named after the ancient elixir that Aldous Huxley refashioned as a government-issued feel good drug in his dystopian novel Brave New World, SOMA is one of the pioneers of the craft, bean-to-bar chocolate movement. To highlight the unique, natural taste of single-origin cacao back in 2003 when they started, they had to make some of the machinery they needed and work with growers willing to sell to their small scale production operation.

Leung credits her late father for teaching her how to paint and think creatively. Her dad was an engineer but also an artist who taught traditional Chinese brush painting to kids. “My dad always believed art was important – it has the power to inspire, uplift and be used as a portal into new worlds,” she explained.

He also inspired her love of tiny creatures and nature. When her dad found a birch branch in the forest near his house, he gave his prized discovery to Leung and she knew just what to do with it. She and David made a mold out of the branch and created a fanciful, foot-long chocolate confection filled with nostalgic, childhood memories of PB&J, but in this case elevated with gianduja (a luxurious combination of hazelnut paste and chocolate) and sour cherry jelly.

Packaging is only part of the reason people buy SOMA chocolates. “Their packaging is whimsical, their product is excellent and our staff highly recommends it…it’s like hitting a trifecta,” says Delaurenti Food & Wine co-owner Nate Plutko, who is also the store’s grocery buyer. The store still hand stickers the prices on items, he noted, so the products shine and are not obscured by signage.

SOMA is one of 40 or so small, bean-to-bar makers from all over the world (from Nicaragua to New Zealand and Singapore to Sweden) featured on a dedicated double-sided bookcase at the back of the store near the deli. Plutko admits he does not have an official count of the brands they carry, but they are preparing to buy even more for the upcoming holiday season.

Delaurenti Food & Wine, known for its local and imported speciality foods, is celebrating its 80th year at Pike Place Market (with the current ownership at the helm for the past 25).