The smell of raw chocolate immediately hits your nose upon entering through the front door of Xocloatl Chocolate in Atlanta’s Mechanicsville neighborhood. The small business, which employs 19 people, including the owners Matt Weyandt and Elaine Read, calls the once historic all-Black neighborhood home to its factory and tasting room. Set among a cluster of low slung brick buildings, this was once home to small mechanic shops.
Small business is the foundation of Mechanicsville, and Xocolatl Chocolate is one of those small businesses that has been birthed out of a newer Mecanicsville. Small business is also the foundation of commerce in Georgia, which has over one million registered small businesses, according to date from the U.S. Small Business Administration. Tariffs on countries that produce goods being used by small businesses in Georgia can negatively affect the business ecosystem.
“99 percent of the businesses in Georgia are small businesses,” Georgia Sentaor Raphael Warnock said while seated next to Weyandt and Read on Tuesday morning. “Congress could put forward a more coherent tariff policy if it chose to do so, and so far my Republican colleagues have ceded all of their power and authority to the Executive Branch.”
The first Black Senator in the history of the state dropped by Xocolatl Chocolate to speak with Weyandt, Read, and their staff about how tariffs affect their bottomline. Xocolatl does business with several foreign cocoa farmers in countries such as the Dominican Republic, Peru, Uganda, and Tanzania. All of these small countries have traditionally paid tariffs in order to do business in the United States. However, effective immediately, those tariffs have grown as high as 15% in some cases. In the case of Nicarauga, that tariff is now nearly 20%.
Warnock believes the Trump administration’s negligence in regard to the tariffs, he called it a “reckless and unorganized tariff program” is hurting small businesses in Georgia.
“There’s a tendency to look at big corporations, and certainly they play a role in our economy, but small businesses really are the lifeblood of the Georgia economy,” Warnock told The Atlanta Voice. “Businesses like this, they don’t have a lot of margin. They are not sitting on a large amount of capitol that they can wait to see what’s on the other slide of a 90-day pause.”
The 90-day pause on tariffs, which originally was scheduled to end in July for many countries, and on August 14 for China, was extended. For many small businesses like Xocolatl Chocolate, it’s been a waiting game. An expensive waiting game, according to Weyandt and Read.
“It’s tough for us to buy product that we may not use,” Read said of the cocoa beans, sugar, and packaging equipment the company uses on a daily basis in order to fill retail and wholesale orders. During his visit to the factory, Warnock took part in some of the process of breaking down cocoa beans. He stepped up on a stool and pur the beans into a big grinder, before stepping down and pouring the sugar into a large mixer.
Berhane Weldegebreg, an experienced roaster and longtime employee with Xocolatl, was there to assist him. In another smaller room, Jacquell Grier, a packager at Xocolatl, carefully and skillfully wrapped the chocolate bars into the colorful paper from which they belong. Both Grier and Weldegebreg are employed at Xocolatl because the business decided to raise prices
Asked if he wanted to try taking over for Grier, Warnock immediately recognized her skills and declined.
“I can’t even wrap my Christmas gifts,” he joked. “This is a tough job, but somebody;’s got to do it.”
Small businesses do not employ the majority of workers in Georgia and around the country, but for people like Grier and Weldegebreg, they allow them to use unique skillsets to feed their families. Where else will a packager get to impact a business as much as Grier does at Xocolatl?
Asked if the 90-day pause on the tariffs helped them at all, Weyandt and Read said it doesn’t.
“Our cocoa prices have gone up over the years,” said Weyandt, who said the business gets busier in the fall and winter seasons and thus has to buy more cocoa in order to accommodate the orders they have coming in.
Read said Weynadt has had many sleepless night over how much cocoa to order. Warnock’s visit will undoubtedly put a spotlight on this local business, but there are many more that are confronting the same issues as Xocolatl. What’s next for small business and the tariffs that they face will be up to the current administration.