Gift giving in the workplace can be tricky. The gift needs to strike a delicate balance between showing that you value and appreciate someone’s efforts without making the whole experience feel transactional. The gesture needs to feel warm and genuine, as well as consistent, reasonable, high-quality, and inspired, all at the same time.
Why chocolate belongs at the top of the gift list
Presenting an employee or client with a gift as a thoughtful professional welcome or celebration of their achievement should feel both personal and inclusive in the workplace, spotlighting an individual’s success while sparking support and camaraderie within the office. While a logo-branded item can be a very effective tool for making a bold visual impression, the branded keepsake object can lack the immediate joy that comes from unwrapping a beautiful, consumable, and delicious little container of luxury.
A gorgeous box of chocolates can do all of this: It can be opened and savored on the spot or saved for later, alone or with teammates or associates. It’s still a material item, but it offers a special, spontaneous experience, one which can also easily be shared with the recipient’s colleagues. Extending a tray of luxurious bonbons out to someone at work is the absolute best way to break the ice with anyone you’ve been meaning to introduce yourself to in the office kitchen or boardroom. Whether it’s an intern, the CEO, or a potential new client, very few people in the office can resist the delight of being presented with a gleaming piece of chocolate artwork and getting together to enjoy this little break in the day.
The details that separate a good chocolate gift from a great one
Chocolate begins with cacao beans, and the very best chocolate begins with the very best cacao beans. At andSons Chocolatier, we work with Valrhona, a B-Corp premium French chocolate manufacturer who sources ethical and sustainable cacao directly from premium farms. We carefully process our chocolate, along with additional ingredients, to craft confections that offer smooth, indulgent texture and flavor with every pleasurable bite.
As a second-generation Beverly Hills chocolatier, our products are inspired by the incredible ingredients that are local to Southern California. While our flagship location has been in the heart of Beverly Hills since our mother opened the family business in 1983, our chocolates are made in our dedicated kitchen in Los Angeles’s Arts District. Chef Sandy Tran, formerly the Executive Pastry Chef at the three-Michelin-starred French Laundry in Napa Valley, helms the andSons Chocolatiers’ culinary team. Our confections are crafted by hand and feature seasonal produce from the Santa Monica Farmers Market, organic dairy from Clover Sonoma and other specialty ingredients. To top it all off, each collection of bonbons is adorned with hand-painted detailing to celebrate seasons, holidays, occasions, and special artist collaborations, before being carefully packaged into presentation-ready, artist-designed boxes, ready to be opened as a felicitous surprise.
Timing recognition to the moments that matter most
While it may seem like a natural point in the calendar to send corporate gifts timed to year-end holidays, your gift is much more impactful when it’s tied to an employee- or company-specific milestone or to no discernable milestone at all.
Celebrating a team’s success, or an employee’s personal landmark event within the company, by sending a thoughtful gift feels genuine and intentional, since key gifting points are determined by a company’s or employee’s own timeline. Having your gifting strategy guided by these internal markers is a great way to strengthen long-term working relationships, since sharing gifts this way creates more emotional ties: People, and not businesses, receive these emotional investments and keep and enjoy these reminders.
And employees—particularly support staff—deserve to be cherished as much as your clients and vendors do, since they invest so much of their time into your business. We can even create gifting flow plans to acknowledge each employee’s biggest moments as they progress through the company. Every member of your team will know that they can look forward to celebrating their next big moment with a very special, luxurious treat.
Giving gifts that improve the recipient’s experience, rather than serve your direct objectives, helps the working relationship continue to evolve with a natural, strengthening intention of reciprocity. When someone feels seen and appreciated over time, they want to return that gift.
Scaling employee gifting, from one office to a distributed team
Let us organize your company’s gifting for you. Our dedicated account team creates an efficient and thorough gifting plan for your audience, based on your timeline and gifting goals. This in-house service includes anything from drafting a personal message to accompany each box, to conceptualizing a range of gifting tiers within one organization, to executing delivery-date plans.
The recipient’s gift experience begins with the arrival of the package via our white-glove delivery service. Since introducing our delivery service in 2003, we’ve perfected the art of handling chocolate, even during the warm months when we use our cold shipping process to ensure that every bonbon arrives in optimal condition and with a polished presentation, ready to eat and share immediately. They arrive looking exactly as intended.
We ship nationwide, as well as to Canada and other select international destinations. Hand delivery within Los Angeles is also available. Our services include end-to-end tracking and delivery notifications to keep you in the loop every step of the way. A great gift is always appreciated, but it is particularly cherished when it delivers a wonderful sense of occasion and pure happiness in your recipient’s hands at just the right moment. Learn more about our nationwide shipping guarantee.
Why andSons Chocolatiers raises the bar on employee gifting
At andSons Chocolatier, we’ve had wonderful collaborations with our clients, resulting in unique gifts that rise to perfectly meet any of their very special occasions.
Your organization’s biggest moments can present singular opportunities to connect the gift recipient to the brand, creating a luscious luxury—and authentic—experience. Our high-quality, custom-printed boxes, ribbons, inserts, tissue, and gift cards provide space for logo integration, delivering an unforgettable brand impression and touchpoint for engagement. And our first-class product makes each recipient feel treasured. It’s a small yet thoughtful way of showing your gratitude to the people who make your business successful. It also nurtures a culture of appreciation and generosity within your team.
We’ve customized our first-class chocolates and a range of treats for employees of some of the world’s most instantly recognizable brands, including Cartier, Ralph Lauren, and Nike. We also love to collaborate with niche and emerging makers, hospitality groups, and entertainment companies to celebrate their stakeholders and communities. These boxed presentations create an offhand, thoughtful, multi-sensory celebration—one that begins with an elevated visual first impression and ends on the sweetest note.
See the full range of gifting tiers, from onboarding to milestones, in our Corporate Gifting collection.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are chocolate gifts appropriate for a professional recognition program?
Chocolates make a wonderful choice for professional recognition. They are endlessly customizable for each recipient, can easily scale to multiple gifting tiers, and encourage sharing in celebration of a moment, whether it’s an individual’s or organization’s success.
What is a good employee appreciation gift?
While companies have traditionally chosen branded keepsake items to commemorate an employee’s dedication to the organization, gifting luxury chocolate is an opportunity to offer a more personalized, celebratory, and, well, more fun, token of appreciation for your company’s greatest asset—the people who keep it running every day.
How often should companies send employee appreciation gifts?
While gifting timelines vary according to a company’s own scheduling needs, appreciation for your associates and team members feels much more personal and thoughtful when it’s timed with a company’s or employee’s own landmark moments and anniversaries, rather than popular holidays or simply at year’s end.
Should employee appreciation gifts be branded with the company logo?
Tying a company’s logo into a gifting presentation can serve as a nice memento of a shared success. It’s an attentive detail on your generous gesture. However, any employee gift should feel like a gift specific to its recipient, and not an advertisement for your business.
Can employee appreciation gifts be personalized for a large team?
Yes, andSons Chocolatier's in-house account team is dedicated to making each gift feel personal to its recipient. Our design team offers support for creating customizing packaging to best meet your company’s—and employees’—moments, whether they commemorate onboardings, birthdays, the completion of a project, or to simply show your appreciation.
How do you send appreciation gifts to remote employees?
Let us coordinate all your delivery-date and multi-address shipping needs. We handle individual fulfillment by hand delivery within Los Angeles and via temperature-controlled and -monitored cold-chain nationwide shipping and to Canada and other select international destinations. We also provide end-to-end tracking and delivery notifications, ensuring that each box arrives right on time, in any weather conditions, and offers a consistent consumer experience. It’s a considerate way of sharing a company-wide moment, no matter where your team members may be located.