Hometown Chocolatier Valerie Confections Debuts Sweet New Glendale Digs

This Saturday, and just in time for holiday shopping season, Valerie Gordon and her husband and business partner, Stan Weightman Jr., will unveil a sweet new behemoth in the form of Valerie Confections’s new 5,000-square-foot headquarters in Glendale. The 18-year-old brand’s new home base at 1936 W. Glenoaks Boulevard, which includes a retail area that’s open to the public, will house all of the baking and chocolate production, and will serve as an office and events space down the line.

It’s a huge step for the brand: Not only did Gordon recently bring on a new culinary director, Mozza Group alum Dahlia Narvaez, to run the production side of things — therefore freeing her up to focus on the brand’s creative direction — but she’s in the process of hiring more key leadership positions. Plus, the new space will allow the company to greatly expand its wholesale production capabilities. (While Gordon closed her 3360 W. First Street location in making the move to Glendale, Valerie Echo Park remains open.)

“Universal interactivity is the thing that’s most exciting to me about this new space,” Gordon says. “We’ve created a place for staff that feels stimulating, where they feel taken care of, creative, and satisfied. And we’ll be inviting people in to collaborate on events and tastings. Soon we’ll reach at least three times as many wholesale customers and launch home deliveries.”

The HQ’s retail section is stocked with an array of Valerie Confections favorites, ranging from chocolate bars and build-your-own chocolate boxes to petit fours, pies, fruit jams, house-made granola, Gordon’s cookbook Sweet, and cakes like the now-iconic Blum’s Coffee Crunch Cake. More retail selections will be available in 2023, as will coffee and espresso service using beans from AAPI-owned Sir Owlverick’s.

Done up in crisp white subway tile with concrete floors, the shop contains temperature-controlled display cases and shelving made using wood from Valerie Confections’s older locations, like its former Grand Central Market stall, plus brass and antique fixtures. Weightman designed and fashioned all of the wooden displays with designer Derek Mabra. From the retail area, customers can see into the company’s chocolate production kitchen, which sits behind a row of windows.

As for the space’s expansive kitchens, one will focus on events sometime next year, while another will be primarily for baking and mixing. The space also includes a dining room for private dinners and tastings, as well as an outdoor area outfitted with two Lettuce Grow stands for edible flowers and the like to use on cakes and pastries. There’s even three Big Green Eggs for grilling events, as Gordon is a grilling aficionado as well.

Valerie Confections’s opening hours will be Monday through Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.