Handmade in Cottonwood: How Gayle’s Chocolates Still Makes Chocolate the 1979 Way
A Verde Valley confectioner, a childhood memory, and the small-batch recipes that FOX 10 featured in its Made in Arizona series.
Watch on 12 News: Chocolate piñatas to welcome in the holidays (Gayle’s Chocolates)
In May 2026, FOX 10 Phoenix sent photojournalist Brian Kae to Cottonwood for a Made in Arizona segment on a shop that looks, at first glance, like a quiet storefront on North Main Street. What he found was nearly half a century of the same idea: premium chocolate, made by hand, from recipes that have not been rewritten since 1979.
That shop is Gayle’s Chocolates. The segment’s brief description captures the house philosophy with unusual precision: premium, handmade treats using the finest natural ingredients, created so that the owner’s original hope—to bring the magical taste of chocolate from childhood back to life—still has a working kitchen.
A neighborhood shop that began before “artisanal” was a trend
According to the company’s About page, Gayle Harte founded Gayle’s Chocolates in 1979 with a goal that remains the firm’s sentence of record: to make the best-tasting chocolate possible, and to make it with creativity and imagination. She started at home in Michigan. Demand followed. A retail shop opened in Royal Oak in 1985, and for more than three decades the company became a regional institution known for truffles, novelty molds, and custom work that later appeared with national retailers.
The company is now based in Cottonwood, Arizona. Ownership has passed from Gayle so that the recipes and proprietary confections can continue. The location changed. The method did not. As Gayle put it, and as the company still prints: “Everything is still made and packaged by hand.”
That continuity is the point of the FOX 10 visit. In an era of industrial chocolate, a Cottonwood kitchen still works in small batches, still uses natural ingredients whenever they can be sourced, and still treats chocolate as a craft rather than a commodity.
What “handmade” means in this kitchen
Truffles were among Gayle’s first creations in 1979, and they remain the shop’s signature. The current truffle list is not a short menu. It includes milk, semisweet, and bittersweet ganaches; white chocolate with vanilla; almond, pecan, cashew, and pistachio coatings; brandied Morello cherry; salted caramel; espresso and mocha; raspberry; Michigan cherry; champagne; peanut butter; and the house Video Mix—semisweet and caramel with pecans and cherries, dipped in semisweet chocolate and finished with toasted coconut and chocolate chips.
Beyond truffles, the retail floor and the online catalog lean into imagination: caramel nut clusters, almond toffee, custom logo bars, chocolate high heels, dinosaurs, horses, golf clubs, Porsche 911s, and the much-loved stuffed turkey pinatas. Visitors regularly remark on the range. One customer review on the homepage puts it plainly: there are “too many choices,” in both milk and dark chocolate, and the molded shapes turn a stop in Cottonwood into a destination rather than an errand.
The company also remains one of the few chocolatiers still willing to do fully custom work for weddings, corporate gifts, and special events, including custom logo chocolate bars in sizes from a business-card bar to a three-pound square.
Ingredients, fairness, and why the chocolate tastes the way it does
Gayle’s Chocolates uses a premium, high-cacao chocolate and all-natural flavors. Organic ingredients are used when available. Artificial preservatives are not. The FAQ is unusually specific about cacao ranges: milk chocolate typically 36–46 percent cocoa; semisweet 52–62 percent; bittersweet 63–90 percent. White chocolate, Gayle long insisted, contains no cocoa solids—only cocoa butter, sugar, and milk—which is why the company also published a separate explainer, What Is White Chocolate?.
All chocolate is sourced from certified fair-trade suppliers. In the company’s language, that means cocoa farmers are paid a premium, farming is intended to be sustainable, labor practices are expected to be fair, and child labor is not used.
The same FAQ quotes the Cleveland Clinic on cocoa flavonoids and cardiovascular research, with the necessary caveat that dark chocolate is not a license to overindulge. The argument Gayle always made was simpler: good chocolate, made cleanly, is worth eating.
From Michigan memory to an Arizona address
The move from Royal Oak to Cottonwood was covered at the time as a bittersweet sendoff after 34 years on Washington Avenue. The shop closed in Michigan in 2018; production and retail continued in Arizona. Today the store stands at 541 North Main Street, Cottonwood, Arizona 86326. Typical hours are Monday through Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., and Saturday, 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. The shop is closed on Sunday.
Orders ship across the continental United States, plus Hawaii and Alaska, with Canada handled case by case. The company cold-packs for warm weather and checks destination temperatures before chocolate leaves the building—an operational necessity in Arizona and a reassurance for anyone ordering truffles in July. Processing details live on the shipping information page.
Wholesale accounts remain open to gourmet and specialty retailers, with an established national history that has included names such as Williams Sonoma and Saks Fifth Avenue.
Why the FOX 10 story still matters
Local television segments come and go. This one is useful because it states, in public, what the company has been saying privately for decades. Gayle’s Chocolates is not a new brand inventing a heritage. It is a 1979 kitchen that changed zip codes and kept the recipes.
For visitors to the Verde Valley, the invitation is straightforward: walk into the shop on North Main, look at the molds, and taste a truffle that has been in production longer than most of the storefronts around it. For everyone else, the same chocolates leave Cottonwood by mail.
Either way, the closing line has not changed. For the love of chocolate.
Visit, order, or inquire
Shop online at gayleschocolates.com. Call 1-888-761-2626. Write through the contact page. Follow the shop on Instagram. Watch the FOX 10 feature Gayle’s Chocolate | Made in Arizona.
Resource Links
Primary sources used in this article. These links may be placed at the foot of the published post.
- Gayle’s Chocolates — official website
- About Gayle’s Chocolates
- FOX 10 Phoenix: Gayle’s Chocolate | Made in Arizona (Brian Kae, posted May 6, 2026)
- Truffle flavors
- FAQs — ingredients, fair trade, custom work, shelf life
- What Is White Chocolate?
- Custom logo chocolate bars
- Shipping information
- Contact Gayle’s Chocolates
- Gayle’s Chocolates on Instagram
- Detroit Jewish News — Bittersweet Sendoff (2018 relocation coverage)
- Eater Detroit — Royal Oak shop departure notice (2018)
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Meta description: FOX 10 featured Gayle’s Chocolates in Made in Arizona. Here is the Cottonwood shop’s story, from 1979 recipes to handmade truffles, fair-trade cacao, and nationwide shipping.
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