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Chocolate Factory Tours & Tastings

Tours are not at French Broad Chocolate Lounge in Pack Square.

All tours take place at French Broad Chocolate Factory & Cafe, 821 Riverside Drive, Asheville NC 28801 and require a reservation. Click here to load in Google Maps!

Anyone arriving 10 minutes or later from the tour start time cannot be admitted.

Please note in the ticket reservation process if you, or any guests in your party, have allergies or accessibility needs we should be aware of.

For up-to-date information regarding our current COVID-19 safety measures, click here.

Click here to load in Google Maps!

Tours are offered daily at our Chocolate Factory location and take about 45 minutes. Please arrive 10 minutes before your scheduled tour time so you can check in!

Read about our current COVID-19 safety measures here .

Cancellation

Free cancellation is offered any time five days before the booked tour date. If the cancellation request is within 24 hours of the scheduled event, no refund will be extended. A 50% refund will be extended between one and four days of the booked tour.

All tour guests will also receive a 10% off coupon that can be used in all our locations, same-day and next day only. Coupon cannot be combined with other offers.

Accessibility

We do allow certified service animals on our tours. Our factory tour is wheelchair accessible.

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Your Taste Buds Will Love This Chocolate Factory Tour In North Carolina

Robin Jarvis

More by this Author

Calling all chocolate lovers! Did you know you can take a delectable tour of a gourmet chocolate factory here in the Tar Heel State? French Broad Chocolates, a farm-to-factory and bean-to-bar chocolate maker, offers 30-minute tours twice a day – every day. For that person you know who is a freak when it comes to chocolate, this is the tour to take. Here’s what you should know:

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The new French Broad Chocolate Factory and Cafe on Riverside Drive is open seven days week. For hours and tour costs, check the tours link on the website. Both 30 and 60-minute guided tours must be scheduled in advance on the website. If you want to take a 15-minute walk through, those don’t have to be scheduled in advance.

Learn more about this chocolate factory tour in North Carolina by visiting the official website of French Broad Chocolates here .

Factory Address: 821 Riverside Drive Suite 199, Asheville, NC, 28801

To visit the source of another famous North Carolina product, keep reading here !

OnlyInYourState may earn compensation through affiliate links in this article. As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.

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We are lucky to have so many chocolatiers in the Asheville area. The hottest stop is the French Broad Chocolate Lounge in downtown and their nearby chocolate factory . And don't miss longtime favorite, The Chocolate Fetish. Check out the stops on our Chocolate Lover's Tour.

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French Broad Chocolate Lounge Factory & Cafe

Updated: Oct 7, 2023 by Max · This post may contain affiliate links · 2 Comments

I've made the road trip down to French Broad Chocolate Lounge four times over the last decade, and happily since that first trip they've added a new location! That growth is well-earned, too, because French Broad Chocolate Factory makes some of the best desserts in Asheville — as well as some of the best chocolate in the world.

One of our field trips in my university's EATS 101 class back in 2016 was even was to visit French Broad Chocolates' old factory, to taste & better understand how they produce their bean-to-bar chocolates .

I've updated this article since my last visit to French Broad Chocolate in 2022, where I went to both of their cafe spaces.

French Broad Chocolate Lounge Locations

About the first chocolate makers in asheville, taking a chocolate factory tour, what to expect at french broad chocolate lounge.

French Broad Chocolate Lounge

10 S Pack Square, Asheville, NC 28801

Hours : 11am-10pm, daily

French Broad Chocolate Factory & Café

821 Riverside Drive, Asheville, NC 28801

Hours : 11am-5pm, daily

Click HERE to book a factory tour!

When I'd last visited six years prior, French Broach Chocolate Factory had just opened a second location in downtown Asheville, and had recently opened their factory up for operations. They had just debuted their new packaging, and we were actually some of the first people to ever see it. These are the same beautiful blue boxes you see today.

Now anyone who has discussed my future with me probably already knows this, but if I were to open a chocolate cafe, I would model it after French Broad Chocolate Lounge in Asheville, NC. They have top-tier chocolate and bonbons and desserts, as well as strong relationships with the farmers they work with around the world. In the 10 years that they've been open, they've created a safe and welcoming space in downtown Asheville, and in the early years they supported other chocolate makers by selling their wares.

French Broad Chocolate is one of my favorite makers because their beliefs are displayed right there for anyone to see and eat in their products. They value sustainability for cacao farmers, chocolate makers, and the environment, resulting in a delicious product which all are proud to contribute to. The happy triangle of farmer-maker-consumer is all taken care of, no one more than the others, reminding me cheerfully of my first chocolate teacher, Sunita from Happy Chocolate Experiences .

To begin the chocolate tour, we met up with Dan, one of founders of French Broad Chocolate, at 10am in his factory on Buxton Avenue. Though the building is nondescript, it turned out to hold immense treasures. A display case full of truffles greets you when you walk in, along with the intoxicating scent of melted chocolate and roasting cacao. Dan was very nice, taking a couple of hours of his time to tell us the (romantic & reckless) story of how he ended up, a dozen years later, as a chocolate maker in North Carolina.

You can read about it on their website , though I think that Dan probably tells it best. But let's just say that it starts with a drive in a school bus down to Costa Rica and ends with two kids and metric tons of chocolate. Sounds dreamy, eh?

We were walked through each step of chocolate making, literally, and at the end we had the opportunity to buy some of their chocolate in its brand new packaging! They were actually having a release party later in the day, celebrating the "storybook-like packaging," something they had been working on for quite some time.

They wanted to reveal the romantic origins of their company, as well as create something that was worth more than just the paper it was printed on. Now you can visit French Broad Chocolate Lounge at one of their two locations, and now we'll dig into what you can expect.

Both the lounge and the factory sell all of French Broad Chocolate's core products: chocolate bars, bonbons, truffles, brownies, cacao nibs , chocolate drinks, coffees, chocolate-scented products, and more. Most visitors come into the café to rest and refresh after walking around Asheville, so the menu of drinks and pastries has only expanded over the years. Two things that have remained consistent best-sellers for a reason are their brownies and their liquid truffles.

Each of their brownies is large, the size of a piece of cake, and dense but creamy. The Nibby Salted Caramel is a family favorite, which we tend to order with a simple latte. A more classic pairing would be their Bhudda Liquid Truffle, which is a thick, vegan-friendly chocolate drink mean to be sipped rather than slurped.

A newer addition is their selection of ice creams, which are delicious during the summertime, but tend to fall out of favor with the cooler autumns in Asheville. My trick to still enjoy a scoop or two in the winter is to order an affogato— a delectable Italian concoction made of one scoop of ice cream topped with a hot shot of espresso.

More Chocolate Guides and Insights

Reader Interactions

November 20, 2019 at 8:32 am

As a chocolate lover, this is definitely a place I need to visit. Thanks for sharing!

November 20, 2019 at 4:34 pm

For sure, Harriet!

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French Broad Chocolate Lounge

FRENCH BROAD CHOCOLATE LOUNGE, Asheville - Downtown Asheville - Menu, Prices & Restaurant Reviews - Tripadvisor

Red Wine & Chocolate Tasting

Discover why chocolate and red wine are a match made in heaven! Featuring locally produced artisan chocolates from French Broad Chocolate, and an opportunity to taste and experience the tactile attribute of a raw cacao bean, this tasting provides information about wine production at Biltmore and its effects upon the finished product.

Minimum age of 21 to attend tasting.

Limited Capacity: 20 Guests per Tasting

Hours of Operation

Directions & parking, help center.

In Asheville, a Black Heritage Trail Ushers In a Whole New Economy

(Bloomberg) -- It’s a blue-skied Friday in April in downtown Asheville, North Carolina, and the rising echo of voices in the brewery-packed South Slope district hints at the looming lunch rush. I spot silhouettes strolling across Banks and Coxe avenues, where a newly installed information panel framed in etched metal recounts how this trendy part of town was once a vibrant Black neighborhood called Southside. 

The panel, which offers a brief history of the area’s urban renewal projects throughout the 1950s and ’60s, is one of 20 that make up Asheville’s 1-mile-long  Black Cultural Heritage Trail . Unveiled in December, the trail’s markers are placed in prominent tourism spots across what were three historically Black neighborhoods: Downtown, Southside and the River Area.

The project is part of a wider, government-funded effort costing nearly $2 million. The goal: to honor the significant Black legacy that exists in this burgeoning mountain town, otherwise known for its art scene, breweries and scenic nature areas. More important, it’s a way to ensure that Asheville doesn’t inadvertently exclude its Black communities from the area’s record-breaking tourism boom, which brought in 12.5 million visitors and $2.9 billion in 2024.

“A lot of folks don’t realize the National Housing Act of 1934 really was instrumental with redlining,” says community advocate Joseph Fox, referring to the discriminatory practice of outlining neighborhoods with Black residents and public housing as undesirable and more at risk of  bank loan defaults, while green zones were desirable areas where White people had access to loans and to better school systems. Fox has mentored Black entrepreneurs for decades and sat on the trail’s 21-member advisory committee.

Together, we stroll the neighborhood’s leafy sidewalks lined with vibrant murals and red brick buildings that have been turned into cool coffee shops, pubs and restaurants. “The National Housing Act of 1934 literally destroyed thousands of homes and businesses right where we’re standing,” Fox continues, noting it opened the door for designating Black-owned homes and residences as “blighted” and for taking over  their neighborhoods.

That was also the beginning of the decline of Black-owned businesses in downtown Asheville—a problem that persists today.

All this history could really sober up the area’s brewerygoers, I think to myself. But the trail’s purpose isn’t to dwell on stories of a devastating past nor to sweep them aside.

“A project like the Black Cultural Heritage Trail means connecting visitors and guests with Black-owned businesses here,” says Victoria Isley, chief executive officer of Explore Asheville Convention & Visitors Bureau. According to its most recent report , tourism revenue may have jumped $1 billion since 2016, but Black-owned businesses have largely been left behind. 

Over the past three years, Isley has allocated $1 million to advertise the destination, including the trail, specifically in Black-owned media brands.

I see the fruits of that while walking the trail with Fox. It’s not, as the name might imply, a single-purpose-built pathway. Instead, it’s a series of disparate walking routes that can be stitched together or explored individually.  

By the time I leave South Slope and the brewery district, we’ve walked half of the trail’s total length. Ready to give our legs a rest, we decided to drive between two sections; it’s just a few minutes by car to the River Arts District, formerly the River Area neighborhood, where we park at coffee bar Grind AVL, the only Black-owned cafe in Asheville.

Housed in a deep-red building tucked amid a row of neon-hued art studios, Grind AVL’s menu sports creative drinks like caramel apple chai lattes and strawberry lavender lemonades. The cafe’s founder, J Hackett, Fox tells me, was one of his mentees and is now paying it forward. These days, Hackett is spearheading one of the city’s most exciting Black business incubators,  Black Wall Street AVL , which coaches Black startup founders in tourism entrepreneurship. 

Over coffee, Fox tells me that a second phase of the heritage trail will add murals and sculptures. “That will help stimulate conversations more,” he says.

A former department chair of business administration at Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College, Fox has been one of Black Asheville’s loudest advocates. As chair of the Buncombe Community Remembrance Project in 2019, he oversaw the creation of a memorial to three young men who were lynched in the area after the Civil War; he also sits on the Nina Simone Steering Committee in nearby Tryon, which aims to restore the artist’s onetime home and convert it into a historical site.

As we continue on the trail, I learn of individuals—from Black business leaders and doctors to hospitality workers, past and present—who rose above adversity to build Asheville’s thriving communities. Some, like Simone, are familiar. Others are new to me. America’s first Black pulmonologist, John Wakefield Walker, was from Asheville and opened the first clinic for Black people here in 1915. Following his legacy, Black residents built a half dozen more hospitals here that they financed through crowdfunding. 

NO VISIT TO ASHEVILLE WOULD BE COMPLETE without a stroll down Biltmore Avenue, which most tourists traverse to reach the Asheville Art Museum or the iconic French Broad Chocolate Lounge, a decadent bakery. I follow it instead to Eagle and South Market streets to revisit an area known as “the Block,” to find the modern-day incarnates of the Black-owned beauty parlors, drugstores and diners that once thrived here.

What remains of the Block today is largely limited to the Young Men’s Institute Cultural Center , one of America’s oldest Black cultural hubs and a place where Black youth could find training and employment to stay off the streets. Standing across from the two-story, 1893 English Tudor- style building feels like a step back in time. But it’s also a view of the future: The YMI—part of the heritage trail—is reopening this summer with fully upgraded facilities. The hope is that it will boost the presence of Black entrepreneurs by providing them with more space and visibility. 

Next door, I pop into the Black-owned gallery  Noir Collective AVL , where Guyanese-American artist Tara Singh  is showing colorful, bold paintings of female faces and shapes, partly inspired by Frida Kahlo. As we chat, she laments that the heritage trail focuses on past history rather than future potential. 

“I understand you can’t erase history,” she tells me. “But what are the action steps towards creating something new?”

“Asheville is trying,” says DeWayne Barton, my tour guide the next morning, crediting the city for its significant efforts to benefit Black communities, including a reparations commission established in 2020. 

As we walk down Burton Street, where he offers historical tours through his company Hood Huggers International , he tells me about how in the early 2000s this area had been torn apart by drugs and redlining. All that seems like a distant past now—until Barton tells me that the North Carolina Department of Transportation is still considering building a third roadway through the now-idyllic neighborhood, potentially razing a fresh set of Black-owned homes.   

Barton is working toward an alternate reality for Burton Street. He’s already secured a space where, in partnership with the local nongovernmental organization Asheville Creative Arts, he plans to create Blue Note Junction , a cultural center and retail space for BIPOC-owned businesses, named after a famous music club that once stood here. He dreams that one day it’ll be a cornerstone of a profitable Black-owned tourism industry—as iconic as Asheville’s most famous attraction, the 8,000-acre Biltmore estate. 

About the Biltmore: On my last day, I buy a $105 ticket and make a beeline for the 15-acre azalea garden. Amid early fuchsia blooms, I spot an information panel similar to the ones I’d seen on the Black Heritage Trail, though it’s more dated. There’s a tribute to estate superintendent Chauncey Beadle and his “azalea chasers.” 

But alas, nowhere in the text does Sylvester Owens’ name appear, the Black man who completed these gardens in the 1960s after his mentor Beadle passed.

Change is slow, as Fox said to me in Southside. But at least it’s clearly underway. 

Where to Stay in Asheville

Zelda Dearest

Tucked away on a residential street near the bustling South Slope brewery district and Biltmore Avenue, boutique hotel Zelda Dearest opened in October. It has 20 rooms and suites spread across three restored red brick mansions with green trimmings, wrap around porches and spacious courtyards.  Rooms from $349.

The Radical

Set in the River Arts District, with views of the French Broad River, the Radical took over a factory building that sat empty for 12 years, covering it in vibrant murals and filling it with 70 street art-inspired rooms. The common areas are a smorgasbord of furniture colors and textures—bright purple chandeliers, yellow velvet couches and patterned rugs, while a rooftop bar offers tranquil sunset views. Rooms from $332.

Where to Eat in Asheville

Good Hot Fish

Chef Ashleigh Shanti was a Top Chef contestant before opening up her own dinerlike restaurant in South Slope, the only Black-owned eatery in this brewery district. Her specialty: “good hot fish” sandwiches made with the catch of the day, an homage to old-school fish camp restaurants of the South.

Golden Hour at the Radical

Reservations are definitely required at this popular new chophouse where Asheville’s Jacob Sessoms serves Southern tapas—shellfish beignets, mushroom skewers—in an edgy-chic warehouse.

In 2022, the James Beard Foundation named Indian street food restaurant Chai Pani the most outstanding restaurant in America—propelling Asheville onto many food lovers’ bucket lists. Highlights here include the crunchy okra fries, the “uttapams” or savory crepes, and the butter chicken. On May 21, it will reopen in a larger space in South Slope’s brewery district; in the 1920s it was Asheville’s Black skating rink.

What to See and Do in Asheville

The Black Asheville Experience

A website rather than a shop, this directory complements the Black Cultural Heritage Trail and lists the city’s Black-owned businesses.

The River Arts District 

You could spend days hopping through the warehouse-size, multistory buildings that double as retail collectives in the district. Among them,  Pink Dog Creative  sells paintings, photography, stained glass and textiles from more than 33 artists, many of national repute.

Leaf Global Arts

If you’re looking for experiences and not things, head to this nonprofit organization’s HQ on the Block for a one-hour West African drumming lesson with master drummer Adama Dembele ($15 per person). It’s one of many multicultural events and workshops on the weekly schedule at this vibrant, kid-friendly community hub. 

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