Empowering Black Entrepreneurship: Stories of Success, Strategy & Growth
If you had a successful corporate career at Apple and FedEx, steady income, and a clear path forward, would you abandon it all because of a dream about chocolate? When Phillip Ashley Rix faced this scenario in 2007, he didn’t dismiss the vision as fleeting inspiration. He embraced it as a calling that would transform him into one of America’s most innovative chocolatiers, a James Beard Award semifinalist in 2023 and 2024 whose clients include Fortune 500 companies, Hollywood’s elite at the Emmys, Grammys, and Oscars, and luxury automotive brand Cadillac, for which he serves as the exclusive chocolatier.
Born and raised in Memphis, Tennessee, Rix grew up in what he describes as a regular middle-class Black household. His father was among a family of educators, relatives worked professional jobs and played sports. As a child, he spent time in his grandmother’s garden learning to grow and prepare food, and in his grandfather’s workshop learning to use power tools. These experiences would later inform his approach to chocolate making as both craft and art.
“I was just a regular black kid,” Rix reflects. “We weren’t rich, we weren’t poor. But thinking about it, I was real fortunate that I had parents and aunts, uncles that all poured something different into me.” This exposure, from cooking to art history to museums, created what he calls “an amalgamation of experiences” that would later manifest in his chocolate philosophy: every chocolate should tell a story.
After studying chemistry, Rix leveraged his scientific background into a corporate career that proved instrumental to building his chocolate empire. At FedEx, he mastered supply chain management and global sourcing. At Apple, he studied product design and the ritualistic unboxing experience that transforms customers into believers. “It showed me the importance of creating an exceptional product, really focusing on the excellence of the actual product, and then building everything else around it, from the packaging to the experience of opening the package,” said Rix. “That feeling you get when you get that new iPhone or when you buy that new Mac. I was like, I want to put both of those experiences together and do that with chocolate.”
Then came the dream. In 2007, while living in Baltimore and working in international trade, Rix had been contemplating how to merge his love of food with his business acumen. His initial plan was to find exceptional chocolatiers and represent their products as a sales representative, leveraging what he did well. But one night, everything changed.
At 3 AM, Rix woke from a vivid dream that felt like a directive from the universe. The imagery was Willy Wonka meets childhood memory: swimming through a mall where aisles transformed into chocolate, woven together with recollections of his mother shopping at Lord & Taylor and buying him truffles as a reward for good behavior. The realization hit him immediately: instead of representing other people’s chocolates, why not become the chocolatier himself?
Within a week, Rix had registered for a workshop in Portland, Maine, where Belgian chocolatiers and equipment makers were demonstrating techniques. He drove five hours north, the only Black person in the room, completely focused on absorbing everything he could learn. The dream hadn’t just inspired him. It had set him in motion.
What followed was an intense period of self-education. Rix looked into culinary school but discovered they didn’t teach chocolate-focused programs, and the investment wasn’t justified for learning pastry techniques he already knew. Instead, he invested in comprehensive chocolate books and spent thousands of hours studying the chemistry, formulas, and techniques of chocolate making. His background in chemistry proved invaluable in understanding ratios, viscosity, and the science of ganache.
“I wanted to learn all that I can teach myself so I can master being able to create,” Rix explained. “I want to be able to flavor them, push beyond whatever they’re putting in the books. I don’t want to just do what’s already out there.” He spent approximately three years researching before creating his first commercial chocolates, a remarkably efficient learning curve powered by what he describes as a chess-like approach to recipe development.
“I will make a dish in my head 20, 30 times, literally thinking about, if I put this much in, this is the taste,” said Rix, citing the Netflix series “Queen’s Gambit” as an analogy for his creative process. “That’s how I make chocolate. I’ll think through something like a chess match.”
In 2012, Rix launched Phillip Ashley Chocolates in Memphis. His early work caught attention for unconventional flavor profiles that no one else dared attempt: collard greens, fried chicken, barbecue, French blue cheese, and soul food inspired collections that people still request weekly. His “Perfect Turtle” earned a spot on Oprah’s Favorite Things list in 2020, creating a surge in business that required scaling to two shifts and 16 employees.
But growth brought challenges. At one point, Rix employed close to 22 people and tried to be everything to everyone, juggling retail, online, B2B, and special events simultaneously. “I failed to establish a singular culture,” he admits candidly. “I was just out selling, selling, selling. You realize, just because everyone will give you $1 doesn’t mean you should take it.” The lesson was clear: sustainable, scalable luxury requires focus and intentionality, not just growth for growth’s sake.
The strategic recalibration came from understanding his true competitive advantage. Now, Phillip Ashley Chocolates operates primarily as a B2B corporate gifting company, with collections ranging from $35 specialty boxes to custom corporate orders that can reach into the thousands depending on scale and customization. The business model mirrors the philosophy he learned at FedEx and Apple: create the category, then become king of it.
His partnerships demonstrate this strategy in action. Beyond Cadillac, he’s collaborated with Campbell’s to create soup-infused holiday truffles that generated national media attention and with Miller High Life on bar snack inspired chocolates. Each partnership showcases his ability to translate unexpected flavors into sophisticated confections while expanding brand reach. His miso sweet potato creation involves Medjool dates soaked in Mirin, roasted sweet potatoes, his house-made bourbon molasses, dark miso, cinnamon, and milk chocolate, all blended into a smooth ganache where “it is the chocolate,” not merely a filling.
This September, Rix released “For the Love of Chocolate: 80 At-Home Recipes from a Master Chocolatier’s Imagination” through Harper Celebrate, a five-year project that demystifies chocolate making for home cooks. Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, bookstores nationwide, and at phillipashley.com, the cookbook represents another strategic expansion, establishing thought leadership while creating an accessible entry point to the Phillip Ashley brand.
“I didn’t want to just put a catalog of recipes in a book,” said Rix. “It’s really telling the story of my upbringing in Memphis, my upbringing around my family, the southern culture that has been a big influence on my style of cooking and ultimately my approach to chocolate making.”
The commitment to quality remains non-negotiable even as commodity costs fluctuate. Rix sources cocoa from West Africa, and foreseeing the rising cost of couverture, the high-quality chocolate that forms the foundation of fine confections, has built direct relationships with cocoa growers and processors in Ghana to create his own supply chain. As wholesale chocolate prices have nearly doubled from $14 to $20.87 per pound in recent years, this strategic positioning allows him to maintain quality without compromise.
His Mount Rushmore of chocolate includes West African cocoa, which supplies 70% of the world’s commercial cocoa, for its superior quality. He names legendary chocolatier Jacques Torres, who earned France’s Meilleur Ouvrier de France medal at 26 and wrote the foreword to his cookbook. He adds Godiva for introducing him to fine chocolate.
Without hesitation, he includes Phillip Ashley Chocolates itself. “I used to be super modest about stuff like this, but I got to put us on there,” he says. “We are definitely doing things that nobody even dreams of.”
The business continues to evolve with precision. During peak seasons (fourth quarter holidays, Valentine’s Day, and Mother’s Day) the company focuses on direct-to-consumer retail with curated collections. The rest of the year, Rix and his team actively pursue relationships with insurance companies, law firms, and media companies seeking meaningful ways to thank clients and close deals. “I would tell my first customers, have your guys use our chocolates as a door opener and a deal closer,” Rix explains. “That’s still true today.”
From a midnight revelation in Baltimore to becoming the exclusive chocolatier for a luxury automotive brand, Rix’s journey embodies the Memphis “grit and grind” mentality he credits as foundational to his success. His story proves that expertise can be cultivated when driven by passion, discipline, and strategic thinking, and that the most innovative luxury brands don’t always come from traditional European houses or culinary schools. They sometimes come from a chemistry student with vivid dreams, corporate experience, and the audacity to architect a category where none existed before.
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