THE LEVYS AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY
Diana Levy poses with her husband, Michael, in
their 12,000-square-foot manufacturing facility
in East Hanover.
Recipe for a successful
small business
Production became the biggest
issue for Levy. She’d been a stay-at-
home mom and worked in broad-
cast, PR and on political campaigns.
Through it all, she was driven by the
dream of owning a small business,
44
FALL 2018 MILLBURN & SHORT HILLS MAGAZINE
“IT’S MORE ABOUT BALANCE…I’M NOT
A HEALTH NUT…IT’S JUST A BETTER-
— DIANA LEVY
FOR-YOU PRODUCT.”
and with the help of her husband,
Michael, who runs a merchant bank-
ing firm and had been working
with food companies for 30 years,
plus some chocolate and confec-
tion classes, Levy managed to get
Undercover Chocolate Co. off the
ground. Undercover Chocolate Co. is
the name of her larger company that
produces the product Undercover
Quinoa.
The company started out in a
rented commercial kitchen, then
moved on to its own 2,500-square-
foot space, and now operates out of
a 12,000-square-foot kitchen in East
Hanover, with the capacity to pro-
duce 30,000 bags a day.
Current flavors include milk choc-
olate, dark chocolate and blueberries
(which are sweetened with apple
juice), dark chocolate and sea salt
(Levy’s bestseller), dark chocolate
and seeds, and milk chocolate and
currants. These flavors can be found
in select Whole Foods, Bed Bath &
Beyond, Kings Food Markets and
specialty grocery stores.
Undercover Quinoa may be pricier
and harder to find than a typical bag
of Halloween candy, but Levy says
the benefits are worth it. “For some
reason chocolate is important to me,”
she says. “I’m taking something and
keeping it super satisfying, just with
better quality ingredients.” ■
layered it with high-quality milk and
dark chocolate.
Soon after she began this venture,
two of her daughters were diagnosed
with celiac disease. Gluten was now
off the table for her girls, and it just
so happened that the Undercover
Quinoa she was developing was
gluten-free. “When I started the choc-
olate business, I wasn’t looking for
a gluten-free product, just a lighter
product that used premium chocolate
over simple, healthy ingredients,” she
says. “When my two daughters were
diagnosed, that’s when I really zeroed
in on it. It became incredibly impor-
tant going forward that all my future
products be gluten-free.”