This Week at Rotary

A Taste of Salem: Colleen Norvé on Harbor Sweets

This week the club enjoyed a talk as sweet as its subject, as Colleen Norvé, President of Harbor Sweets, shared the story behind one of Salem's most beloved institutions, a chocolate company whose history is woven right into the character of our city.

Harbor Sweets began in 1973, when Benneville "Ben" Strohecker left the corporate world and set out with a single, ambitious goal: to make the best chocolates in the world. Working from his home kitchen in Marblehead, he did his homework in the most delightful way imaginable by asking candy experts what one chocolate they'd choose if they could have only one for the rest of their lives. The answer came back again and again: almond buttercrunch toffee.

That toffee became the foundation of the company's signature creation, and its origin is pure happy accident. While experimenting in his basement, Ben ran out of dark chocolate and reached for white instead to coat the buttercrunch. His son took one look and said, "Dad, that looks like a sailboat" and the Sweet Sloop was born. Today that sailboat-shaped confection, with its white chocolate sails, dark chocolate hull, and pecan "spindrift" along the sides, is a taste of Salem that residents proudly share with visitors and that guests remember long after they leave. Not long after those early days, the company moved to the brick factory on the Salem waterfront, where its chocolates are still handcrafted today using copper kettles, wooden spoons, and the finest ingredients.

As Colleen explained, the Strohecker family's connection to chocolate stretches back well before Harbor Sweets. Ben's grandfather, Robert L. Strohecker, was an early promoter of chocolate Easter rabbits, so much so that he became known as the "Father" of the Easter bunny business. A photograph from around 1890 shows him beside a five-foot-tall chocolate rabbit he helped create at the Luden's factory in Pennsylvania. More than a century later, Harbor Sweets honored him with the Robert L. Strohecker Chocolate Rabbit, carrying a family tradition into a new generation.

Colleen walked the club through several of the company's collections, each rooted in place and meaning. The Nautical Collection captures the beauty of coastal New England with locally produced cream, butter, and wildflower honey. Salt & Ayre pays tribute to the spices and flavors that Salem's maritime trade once brought to these shores, pairing classic truffles with sea salt chocolates. And Gather, a flight of dark chocolates featuring local wildflower honey, was created to draw attention to the plight of honeybees with a portion of sales supporting the Pollinator Partnership.

She was also candid about the headwinds facing chocolate makers everywhere. With roughly 75% of the world's cocoa grown in West Africa, a combination of severe weather, disease, and climate pressures drove cocoa prices to a 47-year high near $10,000 per metric ton in late 2024. Those costs continue to ripple through the industry.

Through it all, Harbor Sweets remains deeply rooted here at home. Now a women-led business employing nearly 100 people, it is one of the largest employers in Salem's culturally vibrant Point Neighborhood, and has grown to three retail locations in Salem, Beverly, and, most recently, Boston, where the shop is named the SS Sweet Sloop after Ben's own sailboat. Colleen described the daily joy of the work in fitting terms, likening a day at the factory to a Willy Wonka experience you get to have every day of the week.

We're grateful to Colleen for a talk that celebrated local craftsmanship, our region's maritime roots, and a product that has become synonymous with Massachusetts pride. It's a reminder that some of the best of Salem is made right here by hand, and with heart. Yes, Bill Henning, Colleen did bring samples, and yes, they were delicious.