Shuttered Toronto chocolate shop getting a bigger and better second chance
It's been six years since prolific Toronto chef Brandon Olsen closed his chocolate business, befittingly named Chocolates X Brandon Olsen, CXBO for short.
An alumnus of celebrated Toronto establishments such as La Banane, Bar Isabel and The Black Hoof, Olsen's chocolate venture was a shoo-in to become a local favourite. Upon opening the doors of its Kensington Market shop in 2016, that's exactly what happened.
Olsen's culinary background yielded frequently unexpected yet always tasty confections in the form of visually stunning bonbons, truffles and chocolate bars.
But, in the early months of 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic dragged on, it forced no small number of local businesses and their owners into unimaginably tight situations. CXBO was no exception, and Olsen and Keenlyside shuttered the business that very same year.
Passion is a near-impossible thing to snuff out completely, and despite the heartbreak of closing CXBO, Olsen's passion for chocolatiering has remained alive.
Now, six years later, he's gearing up to open a brand-new chocolate venture in Toronto that'll see him producing sweets on a far greater scale out of a 16,000 sq. ft. production facility.
"Losing CXBO 6yrs ago was definitely a punch to the gut," Olsen writes in the caption of an Instagram post about his new venture. "But I always knew I would get back into the world of Chocolate at some point and would let that some point present itself when it was right and I was ready."
The opportunity is officially here, and it's called As We Do Chocolate Factory. Its goal is, quite simply, to create the world's best chocolate. No biggie!
A joint venture between Olsen and entrepreneur Michael Held, the pair launched a Kickstarter campaign in February 2026 in an effort to crowdsource pre-orders to launch the ambitious chocolate project.
"Canada imports most of its premium chocolate — but a new, chef-led Canadian brand is changing that," the Kickstarter reads.
"At the heart of As We Do is a simple philosophy: exceptional chocolate without pretension — chef-crafted, thoughtfully sourced, and made for everyday enjoyment."
The chocolate company lauds itself as a "bean-to-bar" venture, with every aspect of production happening in-house: quite literally from processing the beans to the final chocolate bar product.
The product lineup is simple: milk and dark-chocolate bars in varying percentages and a tight suite of flavoured bars that include Morning Black Coffee and Cinnamon Brown Butter, all produced from the company's North York factory.
There's still a way to go before As We Do is in full production mode. To date, the Kickstarter, set to close on April 23, 2026, has raised over $20,000 of its $100,000 goal. Pre-orders, which opened in late February, are expected to be fulfilled in 2027.
Still, As We Do poses a seriously sweet opportunity to turn a new page in the story of Toronto's chocolate industry, and Olsen might just be the right person to do it.
Jesse Milns
