Fran Bigelow

A month in Paris in 1969 changed Fran Bigelow’s way of life and attitude toward food. She was newly married and learning to cook, having been inspired by Julia Child.

“When we got to France, I started to understand what she was talking about, paying attention to the quality of ingredients,” she says. “The strawberries, the melons were different, and then to walk into this wonderful chocolate shop on the Left Bank—it was just magical.”

Back in the U.S., the Seattle native went on a quest to find out more about chocolate. She was an accountant rearing two children and “women were not terribly welcome in the food industry then,” she says.

In San Francisco in the 1970s, she took classes at the California Culinary Academy and found it fit her personality. She had always wanted to open her own business and once she and her family moved back to Seattle, she felt ready.
Her original shop, Fran’s Patisserie & Chocolate Specialties, debuted in Seattle in 1982. No bank would give her a loan so it was cash-based. She sourced her chocolate from Canada since a superior European product was imported there for French chefs.

Customers who were ex-pats or had traveled to Europe recognized the less-sugary, high-quality difference and helped spread the word. Bigelow’s passion helped spark the artisan chocolate movement across the country. Today Bigelow has four Seattle-area boutiques plus mail order and wholesale lines of truffles, caramels, bars, and chocolate-covered nuts and fruit. President Obama is among Fran’s Chocolates fans. He would gift Gray and Smoked Salt Caramels to White House visitors.

The proliferation of fine domestic chocolate hasn’t hurt her business. “We fill a special niche, like the European model, and people have stayed loyal,” she says. “It’s a wonderful time for chocolate.”