Dallas is losing one of its best.
Kate Weiser Chocolate announced yesterday that it is closing after 12 years, citing the seasonal nature of the business, rising labor costs, and the financial weight of keeping an artisan operation running in an increasingly difficult economy. Today, April 15, is the last day to place an online order. The Trinity Groves and NorthPark Center locations will stay open until the last chocolate is sold.
Weiser started in Dallas making chocolates at Chocolate Secrets in Highland Park, developing the hand-painted style that would become her signature. In 2014 she launched her own company as part of the Trinity Groves incubator program, and within months the chocolates were everywhere — in gift bags, on holiday tables, at weddings. By the end of that first year, Dessert Professional Magazine had named her one of the top ten chocolatiers in North America. She was 12 months into the business.
What made Kate Weiser different wasn’t just the quality, though that was never in question. It was the idea that a box of chocolates could be genuinely beautiful. Each bonbon was hand-painted, vivid and precise, the kind of thing you held up before you ate it. The shop became the answer to every “what do I bring” question in Dallas, and customers built real loyalty around it — the kind where people came back every Christmas, every birthday, every time they needed to say something without saying it.
Carl the Snowman — the hand-painted chocolate snowman hot cocoa bomb filled with marshmallows — became the most imitated product in Dallas food gift history. Oprah put it on her Favorite Things list in 2025. You probably already knew someone who gave it or received it.
By the time it closes, Kate Weiser Chocolate will have been the longest-running tenant at Trinity Groves, outlasting every other original occupant of that complex. That’s not nothing. That’s twelve years of a chef doing exactly what she set out to do.
Weiser said in her announcement that she plans to support her team first — she’s already been working to secure jobs for her staff — and then rest before figuring out what comes next. “I’m looking forward to applying those lessons to the next chapter,” she wrote, “and building something memorable again in the future.” Dallas should take that at face value. She has done it before.
If you want to get there before it’s over, Trinity Groves is at 3011 Gulden Lane and NorthPark is at 8687 N. Central Expressway. Go soon. And one more thing — Carl the Snowman isn’t gone forever. Kate arranged for one final Christmas run through Central Market this holiday season. A proper send-off.
