If you’re looking for a way to help a local business while also thanking our local health care providers on the front lines of the coronavirus fight, Joe Chocolate Co. can help.

Sam Tanner is one of the brains behind Joe Chocolate Co., a Seattle-based company that infuses coffee into chocolate. It’s a business that started in 2017 out of Tanner’s final project for his entrepreneurial course at the University of Washington. After graduation, the business took off.

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But now, thanks to the coronavirus outbreak, it’s struggling. Tanner had to close the doors at his Pike Place Market shop temporarily. He’s now turning that struggle into a way to help hardworking hospital staff.

Helping healthcare workers

Tanner is shipping cartons of his chocolate to hospitals, urgent care, clinics, and testing sites all over the Greater Seattle area.

“We started thinking about how did we wanna have a bigger impact?” Tanner told the Jason Rantz Show on KTTH. “What did we want to do that could actually benefit the community as opposed to just trying to make it through this pandemic for ourselves. But really think about what is our business good at that?”

“So I had dropped off some chocolate to a friend of mine who works at the emergency clinic in Ballard,” Tanner said. “I just dropped off some chocolate to them, and I saw the nurse’s eyes light up when I walked in. Two guys were sitting there, screening people, and they’re like “Oh my gosh, what’s this?’ I was like, ‘Chocolate. You know we’ve got tons of it. It’s kind of what we do, but I just have too much of it at the moment, it’s not moving very quickly. So I figured you could use it more than we can.'”

The nurses’ response? “I would love to take that off your hands.”

And the idea was born.

Sending the coffee-chocolate

For $54, you can help send chocolate to hospitals. That’s the wholesale price, plus shipping, so they can “keep the lights on at JOE while giving our customers far more power in each dollar to support doctors, nurses, and healthcare faculty.”

Because they closed their shop at a time when cruise ships drop off tourists they rely on to stay in business, they are hoping you can help them out by getting their product out there, while also helping front line workers.

You can pick from a list of hospitals or let Tanner pick on your behalf. From CHI Franciscan Bonney Lake and Providence Monroe, to Virginia Mason Bainbridge Island to Kaiser Silverdale, there are a lot of options.

If you want to purchase a box of 25 1-oz bags of chocolate for them (or for you) click here and do some good.

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Listen to the Jason Rantz Show weekday afternoons from 3-6 p.m. on KTTH 770 AM (or HD Radio 97.3 FM HD-Channel 3). Subscribe to the podcast here. Follow @JasonRantz on Twitter.

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