Founded in 2006, Lang’s Chocolates LLC is a family owned and operated manufacturer of handcrafted fine chocolate confections sold at their retail location in downtown Williamsport, PA, as well as, sold and shipped to a worldwide customer base via their online storefront. Father and son, Robert and William Lang (Master Chocolatier) create and oversee the gourmet products, ensuring the highest quality ingredients are used in production.
Over the past two years, the company has been expanding into providing their own products, such as chocolate chips, as ingredients to other manufacturers of food products. This led to a substantial opportunity to increase company revenues by opening new markets in the US and worldwide as an ingredient manufacturer/supplier.
Due to regulations and standards that are required and requested as conditions of doing business with this market and to fully develop and execute on this substantial new market opportunity, Lang’s Chocolates was required to develop a Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point Plan (HACCP) and become SQF (Safe Quality Food) trained and certified, as recognized by the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI), and ultimately required by the Food & Drug Administration’s (FDA) Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) by 2021.
The company reached out to IMC, who was able to partner with Lang’s and an exceptional third-party consultant to successfully prepare them for the audit, ultimately resulting in the highest SQF 9.0 certification rating of “Excellent”. The company is currently 1 of only 37 confectionary companies to achieve this level of certification in Pennsylvania. This also allowed the company to execute a planned 6300 square foot expansion into a new manufacturing facility and resulted in more than $500,000 in new ingredient market sales (and growing), as well as the creation of several new jobs.
Robert Lang enthusiastically credits the skill and experience of the SQF consultant, Martin Ziegler, with their successful certification efforts. “His background and knowledge were so relevant, and his delivery set a solid foundation upon which we could build for our re-certification as well.”