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Brigadeiro is much more than chocolate for Renata Stoica – it is a special part of her culture, from serving as her childhood livelihood to inspiring a passionate business reflecting her life’s story.
“It’s a comfort food for me,” she said. “(It’s) a sweet that brings a little bit of home or a warmth.”
She and her husband Andrei Stoica, who now live in San Carlos, founded tinyB chocolate in August 2014 out of their home kitchen in San Francisco. tinyB specializes in brigadeiro, a Brazilian treat commonly served at birthday parties, weddings, cafes, bakeries and restaurants. It’s made from condensed milk, chocolate, butter and cream, can be served as a truffle or a spread and comes in many different flavors.
“Everywhere you go (in Brazil) there’s brigadeiro,” Renata Stoica said.
Her brigadeiro journey began well before establishing tinyB chocolate – it started when she was 12 years old living in Itatiba, Brazil. The eldest of three daughters, she helped her mom produce brigadeiros to support her family, a career her mother chose after leaving her husband due to his infidelity.
“Working with my mom for many, many years was really intense,” Renata Stoica said. “I learned a lot, but I never saw that chocolate was going to be in my life again, or that I could make that as a career. In fact, I wanted nothing to do with chocolate, but I love brigadeiro.”
Years later, she graduated from medical school with a nursing degree and moved to Brazil’s capital, São Paulo, working as a nurse for a few years. But in 2009, she lost her job, the man she thought would be her husband broke up with her and she lost her home’s lease.
“I (said), ‘I had no job, no boyfriend, no place to live. So what else? What’s next?’” Renata Stoica recalled.
So she traveled to Machu Picchu in Peru, where she met a traveler from San Francisco who encouraged her to visit the city. The next month, she was on a plane to San Francisco to study English.
“I came knowing no one, and when I got here, I’m like, ‘Oh my God, I speak less English than I thought I could,’” she said.
While initially planning to stay only three months in San Francisco, she ended up staying for nine. She made friends with other Brazilians, graduated her English course, nannied to make ends meet and met her future husband at a birthday party in Palo Alto.
“He didn’t speak any Portuguese (and) my English was really so-so,” she said. “We spent a good chunk of the night talking and trying to talk.”
Andrei Stoica, a tech entrepreneur, had traveled a lot for work and empathized with the language barrier Renata Stoica was feeling.
“It was really obvious from the beginning that there was a connection,” Andrei Stoica said. “I remember thinking, ‘Wow, this is someone I can really trust. This is a good person.’”
On Valentine’s Day, Renata and Andrei Stoica had their first date: a mass pillow fight at Embarcadero Plaza in San Francisco. And while the pair took awhile to find each other at the beginning of the date – Renata called to say she was at the Subway, which Andrei interpreted to mean the BART station when really she meant the sandwich shop – they still have a photo from that day.
“We didn’t know what it was, but we just wanted to be together,” Renata Stoica said.
Just four months after their first date, Renata Stoica’s visa ran out and she had to move back to Brazil. The couple dated long distance for six months before Andrei sold his startup and moved to Brazil. Eight months later, he proposed in a row boat in the gardens of Versailles, and the couple continued to live together in Brazil for two years before moving to San Francisco to start a family.
After dabbling as a photographer, Renata Stoica wasn’t sure what her next career move would be. That’s when she realized she could introduce a big part of her culture, brigadeiro, to a new audience. She began testing out new recipes that would appeal to an American palate, namely less sweet than traditional brigadeiros.
“I didn’t see (brigadeiro) as something valuable when I was in Brazil, but when I was here in Silicon Valley, where everyone is having new ideas, I was like, ‘I want to share brigadeiro with the people that live here. I think people need to know about brigadeiro,’” she said.
So she and her husband went full time on the project, making brigadeiros at home and then out of a shared kitchen. In 2018, an executive assistant at a large company emailed tinyB chocolate, inquiring if they could do corporate classes and events. The demo went well and tinyB became heavily involved in team-building experiences. By 2019, about 70% of tinyB’s business was team-building experiences for tech and biotech companies in the area, said Andrei Stoica.
Then in 2019, the Stoicas built their own factory store in a former office space in South San Francisco. But just a month after their grand opening in February 2020, they had to shut down because of the pandemic and all business halted for two months. And while initially they thought it was the end for tinyB chocolate, their business actually ended up growing substantially during the pandemic.
“Everybody (was) stuck at home and itching and going stir crazy, climbing the walls, and (virtual) team building is a huge thing,” he said. “Who doesn’t want to eat chocolate when they’re stressed sitting inside in the face of Covid?”
Now operating out of their new factory store, they had the room to mass produce team-building kits for shipping worldwide.
“We’ve got over 84,000 of these kits that we’ve shipped to over 52 countries,” Andrei Stoica said. “We’ve done over 3,200 events. And so that business boomed. We doubled in 2020. We doubled again in 2021.”
And in 2022, tinyB chocolate was listed in the Inc 5000, a list of the fastest-growing companies in America.
“It was this bust to boom thing,” Andrei Stoica said.
Now tinyB chocolate is embarking on its newest chapter: On Dec. 2, the business will open its first brick-and-mortar store in downtown San Mateo, featuring a gift shop and a private room for team building, birthday parties and other events.
“I say it was meant to be because the name of this street is B,” Renata Stoica said. “tinyB chocolate is now on B Street in San Mateo.”
Within the gift shop, customers will be able to create customized gift boxes with brigadeiro flavors like almond, pistachio, coconut, coffee, cookies n’ cream, passion fruit, strawberry lemonade and orange. The shop will also sell LavaCookies, gluten-free cookies stuffed with brigadeiro in flavors like double chocolate, snickerdoodle salted caramel, chocolate pistachio and chocolate passion fruit.
“What I really envision is a very pleasant place to go and to find good chocolate and beautiful things, but not too big, just cozy enough for someone to go there,” Renata Stoica said.
In the private event space, the Stoicas are excited to host birthday parties and team-building events, where both children and adults can learn how to make their own brigadeiro and eat as many as they like. Vegan options are also available for events and general sale.
“Our kids love brigadeiro,” Renata Stoica said. “They are 6 and 8, and they asked us, ‘When we grow up, we will still have tinyB?’ ‘I think so, why?’ They want to take over tinyB. They want to be the CEO.”
tinyB chocolate, 411 S B St., San Mateo; 415-854-0344, Instagram: @tinybchocolate. Beginning Dec. 2, open Monday to Friday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
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