A Billings woman’s sweet venture is growing.
Anne Giuliano, owner of Blind Cat Chocolate, has plans to open a new chocolate facility on Lake Elmo Drive in coming months.
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Guiliano has spent more than 25 years in the medical field and currently works at home as a remote radiologist.
Chocolate making started as a hobby two years ago after she and her husband, Jim, took a farm tour while on a trip to Hawaii.
“I bought a chocolate melanger and some molds, and I thought, who knows, I don’t even know if I am going to like making chocolate,” Giuliano says.
It turns out she did—and so did the people she gave her creations to try.
“I just started giving it away because I wasn’t going to eat (it) all. Then after a while people started coming back and saying, hey you know that chocolate you gave me, I want to buy some. I want to give it as a gift,” she says.
And that’s how Blind Cat Chocolate was born.
“The business Blind Cat Chocolate is named after my soul kitty—she was a kitten we found on the side of the road when we were driving cross country.”
She and her husband are big supporters of animal rescue organizations where they donate the net profits.
“And this is actually a really nice creative outlet for me. I love coming up with the different flavor combinations. They are all super unique,” Anne says.
She uses some ingredients you might not expect in some of her chocolates.
“Not every chocolate is a hit. I have had some that are like one and done not going to make it again,” she says.
The experimenting has paid off.
She’s had some incredible success for someone who is still new to chocolate making. Two of her dark chocolates took home a gold and silver award from the prestigious Academy of Chocolate competition—winning over 1,400 products from 50 countries.
Giuliano has been making chocolate in a concession trailer outside her house that they have turned into a kitchen and then packaging the chocolate inside the home, but soon she’ll be moving into a new facility that is being remodeled as a chocolate facility.
“Personally, I will never pull a salary from this, but I would like to grow a business that is big enough where we can employ people. I’m going to do classes. We’ll do bean-to-bar classes. Tasting. Date nights. Those type of events,” she says.
She hopes to have it ready to go later this month—making a sweet dream come true.
