You’d be forgiven if you don’t keep track of every opening and closing at Opry Mills mall. But it may be worth your attention to swing by a new kiosk in the mall near Johnny Rockets. Colts Chocolates, the Nashville purveyor that makes the wildly popular Colts Bolts chocolate-peanut-butter puck, has new owners and plans for significant expansion — including a branded place to grab one of the treats while at the mall.
Until last month, Colts had a small retail presence in the front of its old Gulch chocolate-making factory, as well as in a few shops and other kiosks. But for 35 years, the business has largely been wholesale, also selling to other clients and making chocolates that are sold as private-label products for Crate & Barrel and other brands.
“We have two sides to the business — wholesale and retail,” says Kate Blocher, the new president of Colts Chocolates. “Now that Nashville has grown and is the hot spot that it is, we have an opportunity to gain attention with our brand.”
Blocher and her three partners — Dirk Peterson, Chris Smith and Michael Doherty — bought the company in September. The new owners believe they have an opportunity to turn the oldest specialty chocolate maker in Tennessee into a household brand. (Yes, at 107 years, Goo Goo Cluster is considerably older, but Goo Goos are mass-produced, making them a different category of confection.)
The team purchased Colts Chocolates from Mackenzie Colt, who founded the company in 1984.
“This company is so personal, it is like a second child to me,” says Colt. “After 35 years, I spent more time raising this child than my [actual] child.”
Colt says she decided to sell since she’d begun losing some of the energy required to start her day at 2 a.m. She’s now at work on a combination cookbook/memoir. Before she was a sweetheart of the confectionary industry, Colt was one of the singing-and-dancing Hee Haw Honeys on Hee Haw, the iconic music-and-comedy TV show that ran from 1969 until 1992. Before Hee Haw, she regularly performed as an opener for Buck Owens. (It was Owens who suggested she audition for Hee Haw when Barbi Benton left the show.)
Colt married at age 15 and became a mother at 16. Initially, making chocolate at home was how she expressed her creativity as a young mother, and she quips that singing and cooking were the only two things she knew how to do. After her six-year run on TV, she decided to start the chocolate business.
“I think that God had me go through those years in show business just to prepare me to sell this chocolate,” says Colt. “I honestly do not know how I did it. In the beginning, I bought tinfoil at Kroger and cut it into little squares myself [to wrap the Colts Bolts]. I did not know where to buy packaging.”
Over the years she learned, eventually figuring out how to use equipment designed for making hamburger patties to shape the Colts Bolts. The business, she says, has been fairly recession-proof. Colt says that in 2008, when other local businesses suffered, people wanted to buy an affordable sweet treat.
Colt no longer has an equity stake in the firm, but she is helping out with public appearances. “Quality control, consulting and inspiring — that’s my job now,” Colt says. The firm is still using Colt’s time-tested recipes.
The company had outgrown its Gulch location and closed the Overton Street factory in May to move into the former Piggly Wiggly grocery store at 3611 Gallatin Pike in Inglewood. The brand is taking 6,500 of the total 10,000 square feet, though the space’s two other tenants haven’t yet been announced. For now, this space will be manufacturing-only, making chocolate — and providing free, easy parking for its more than 30 employees, whom Colt says are glad to not deal with the Gulch’s parking challenges any longer.
Blocher says a retail store will eventually be added to the Inglewood location, likely by the beginning of 2020. But for now, the retail focus is the Opry Mills kiosk, plus another the company plans to open in the Mall at Green Hills in late July. In addition to the new mall-based retail kiosks, Colts will unveil a new logo and packaging this summer.
“We have confidence in what retail can be in Inglewood,” says Blocher. “We needed something more immediate. We’re trying to build a retail brand. We would love for Colts to be that classic that you remember. We want to be recognized as a piece of Nashville history.”
Blocher believes the mall kiosks will provide foot traffic “equally busy” to that of the Gulch.
“I used to get up at 2 a.m., walk my dogs at 2:30 a.m. and be there at 4 a.m. to temper the chocolate before the employees arrived,” says Colt. “There was no traffic that time of day.” She says she never wanted Colts to be a bean-to-bar chocolate company like East Nashville’s Olive & Sinclair Chocolate Co. She was happy to have someone else do what she calls “the heavy lifting” of making the chocolate itself, but says tempering the chocolate to get ready to mold was one of her favorite tasks.
Colt says she turned down many offers to sell her company over the years. She’s proud that it has been a woman-owned business, and says she thought Blocher, with her energy and vision, was the right fit to continue her life’s work.
“I was very aware of Hee Haw and watched quite a bit of it when visiting my grandparents,” says Blocher. “I am a big country music fan, so I have a lot of respect for that show as part of country music history and for the impact that it made on the television world.”
In addition to the Colts Bolts, Butter Grahams and other chocolates, gift boxes and samplers, Colts also makes desserts like whiskey-caramel brownies, chess pie and pecan pie. Single slices and whole pies will be available at the kiosks. Blocher’s favorite is the Marie McGhee’s Bumble Bee, a caramel-and-pecan sweet named after Colt’s mother. Colt has a harder time narrowing it down.
“I did not make one thing I did not love,” she says.
