Gwendolyn Koren's grandmother's maiden name was Hershey. Yes, that Hershey.
But today, the distant descendent of Milton Hershey himself is trying to upend the dairy-defined, over-refined chocolate industry that his empire practically rules.
"We have a really milked-down idea of what chocolate is," Koren says.
She wanted to offer something more pure, more local, and more delicious.
In 2023, Koren launched Inspire Motion Chocolates, a line of dairy-free dark chocolate sweetened with raw honey from Spokane-area honey farms. The decadent, guilt-less morsels aim to change your life and change the world of cocoa. By ditching inflammatory ingredients, using only compostable packaging and taking advantage of unique local honey flavors, Koren offers customers sweet treats that are good for body, soul and planet.
"We know inspiration as that drive to do something, to be something or to change something, but 'inspire' is also 'breathes,'" she says. "And then 'motion' is your mobility, yes, your ability to feel good and move and be active in your life, as well as the motion of those changes in your psychology and your spirit. And in the bigger picture, with the packaging and the food ingredients, I want motion in the industry."
Trios of small, flower-shaped chocolates can be found in and around Spokane at various price points (between $4.50 and $7) in places like Method Juice Cafe, My Fresh Basket, Garland Mercantile, Garden Spot Market and Floral, and Outlaw BBQ's pastry case. If you're a bride at Glover Mansion, you'll find a custom box of Inspire Motion chocolates in your bridal suite for free. You can compost the packaging completely — the only remnants might be the chocolate smudges on your fingertips.
Koren cut dairy out of her diet for nutritional reasons as a late teen. When she was pregnant with her first son, she started experimenting with a paleo chocolate recipe, something that would satisfy her sweet tooth without flooding her gut with cream.
She perfected a recipe with just cocoa powder, coconut oil, salt and raw honey that she and her bodybuilder husband loved. She bought flower molds just to make the tiny treats prettier for her family.
Since they're so minimally processed, the chocolates don't hold up the way a Snickers does. They need to be refrigerated, and they're prone to gathering moisture. And they're very much actually chocolate. The straight cocoa powder isn't softened with milk, and although the raw honey plays perfectly with the bitter cocoa, it doesn't cover it up. The flavors Koren adds are just as unapologetically strong and unique — lemon coconut, lavender, strawberry, orange or cayenne, plus classics like almond butter or peanut butter.
If you like dark chocolate and untouched, uninhibited flavor, you'll love these tempting treats. As friends gradually snitched more and more from Koren's stash of chocolates, they started asking if she would sell some sweet little florets to them, too.
"I heard it so many times, like, 'This is the best chocolate that I've ever had,'" Koren says. "I was flattered, but I was also not interested. I had a little kid, and I'm really involved with my children. I do all the education at home. I want to be a present person and parent. But when my [second son] was born, I started thinking more seriously about what I wanted to do."
If Koren took the chocolate idea seriously, she knew she would stick with her dairy-free recipe. Plus, using honey as a sweetener makes the chocolate a lower glycemic food and a better option for people managing diabetes.
But if Koren was going to put something on the shelf, she didn't want to contribute to the plastic-forward packaging that dominates grocery stores and landfills.
"I wanted to make sure that I was still giving people something convenient that they can just grab off the shelf, but it's totally compostable," she says. "The label is compostable. The ink is compostable. The package is compostable, and it's backyard compostable, too. You could bury this little package that you find in groceries and stores around town, and you can put it in your backyard and it'll decay completely."
This spring, Koren is releasing Easter-inspired candies like big bunnies filled with coconut whip, tiny chicks and eggs nestled in purple paper "nests," and small pairs of bunny ears and bunny butts in eight different flavors.
"People love Easter candy, and they usually buy really low quality Easter candy," she says. "So I'm challenging people to buy high quality Easter candy."
On her chocolates' boxes, Koren adds little blurbs like, "Chocolate should be a pleasure, and not a guilty one," or "Challenge the norm." But labeling food "good" or "bad," "normal" or "weird," "guilty" or "clean" can sometimes lead to a whole host of unhelpful thoughts about food.
"I think everybody has some sort of struggle with their relationship with food, because we've been inundated with so many different ideas our whole lives," Koren says. "I definitely want people to have a healthy relationship with food. But it's a very personal thing. Everybody has to take that into their own hands. How are they going to stop stressing out about food so much and be able to relax a little bit? There's a difference between stressing about it and being aware of it."
Koren graduated from massage school and spent years learning about the biomechanics of the body. She and her whole family are passionate about fitness, health and nutrition. But she doesn't fixate on restrictions.
"We crave sweets when we actually need protein," she says. "But sweets are important. It's fun. It's just part of life. So I don't think that anybody should be denied that because of an allergen or if they're counting their macros. Wherever they are in nutrition, the potential for having a sweet should still be there."
Nutrition is a journey, Koren says, just like running a business is. Koren has big dreams for where Inspire Motion Chocolates could end up, eventually wanting her own name to be mentioned in the same breath as Hershey.
"My big vision with this is that I slowly expand to different cities, different states and different countries. In the 30-year plan, it's everywhere, but there's a kitchen in every locale that is sourcing honey from a local farmer. The chocolate will come out tasting different every time because of the flora or fauna, and it will be that much more special." ♦
Follow Inspire Motion Chocolates on Instagram @inspiremotionchocolates, and message Koren there for special orders.
