Great Food Tours: Chocolate Tour of San Francisco

Had a wonderful time on this tour! Our guide, Michaelangelo, really made the history of chocolate come alive with in his characters and knowledge! My mother thoroughly enjoyed her 50^th birthday! I would def recommend this tour to someone else!

It was so much fun with Michael Angelo as our tour guide. The 2 ½ hours was perfect for a little history of SF and history on chocolates.
I highly recommend and you will have lots of chocolates to enjoy.

What a great way to spend the afternoon! We had Michaelangelo as a guide. He was quite a character and provided some great information about both chocolate and the city of San Francisco. I would go on this tour a second time!

As a native San Franciscan, I love to discover new places in my beautiful City. Derek was a stupendous tour guide, he provided stories and history from iPad presentations he would bring out occasionally along the way. The stores we stopped in were all unique and full of delicious samples. Don’t knock Ghiradelli. As a historical bit, it has to be included even though the one square of chocolate was mildly disappointing. It smelled nice inside and was a good spot for a history lesson and bathroom break. Must return to Cocobella at Westfield. I had no idea that place was there. Absolutely dreamy chocolates! Must return to all the places, actually!!!

Buyer beware. They will cancel the tour without a notice. We spent our money and time to arrive for the tour. They have your email address when you register. Why can’t they email you before you make the trip to the city. Groupon get ready to give me back my money.

I hope you get Derek as your tourguide. He and his iPad provided fun facts about chocolate and SF throughout the tour.
Oh yea, and the chocolate is delicious.

I enjoyed all seven stops of this tour! The guide Derek was very energetic and informative. I wished that the tour was longer so that I could hear more stories from him on chocolate and San Francisco :-)
My favorite stop was Spicely and I know I’ll go back to explore more soon.
All the rest of the stops from SF icon Ghirardelli to all organic New Tree to Japanese & Swiss chocolates to long counter-​full of chocolates from all over the world really satisfied my curious eyes and tummy!
Since the tour was at noon, I was wondering how chocolates can be enough to replace lunch. Actually there was so much to sample and taste, I was not hungry after the tour until early dinner.

If you are a true fan of chocolate and appreciate dark chocolate and high quality chocolates then this is not the tour to go on. The number of chocolates does not equate with the amount you pay whatsoever. Though the tour guide Derek was fun and provided a lot of history, we got the Ghirardelli chocolate sample that they pass out for free. And that counted as a location. The only places that are worth checking out are Spicely organic chocolates and Cocoa Bella in the Westfield Mall in SF. I have been for extremely better chocolate tours and paid a lot less. This is a tour for people who are just starting to learn about chocolate or who are looking for a weekend excursion for fun.

I recently went on the Chocolate tour of SF. We went to 4 different stops and along the way learned some interesting historical facts about the city. Our guide Derek was very friendly and made an effort to answer everyone’s questions without taking up too much extra time. He also seemed to really enjoy his job which is always nice to see when taking a tour with someone. Definitely would recommend this Chocolate tour for anyone that loves chocolate and wants to find hidden gems off the beaten path.
Cheers,
MJ–

Our party of 4 thoroughly enjoyed our tour with Derek! He was so knowledgeable about everything SF-​related, and I actually enjoyed learning more about all the changes that SF has undergone than eating the chocolates haha.
Derek did a great job with his research, and he was very engaging with all the hundreds of images that he walked us through on his iPad. He was also very energetic throughout the tour!
My favorite stops in the tour were Spicely Organic (got to try so many sample bits!) and CocoaBella as the chocolates there were sooo delicious — they even had chocolates from my favorite store in Switzerland. Laderach!
Would highly recommend this tour for anyone interested in the history of San Francisco!

On March 21, 2014, we took a chocolate tour in San Francisco. This was one of the best tours ever! Derek is very knowledgeable in the history of San Francisco and the chocolate companies that we toured. The tour was very relaxing and entertaining. Derek is the best tour guide ever. Lots of kudos to Derek for an awesome tour.

I’ve recently become interested in food tours, so a friend treated me to the SF Chocolate Tour for my birthday gift. We had so much fun! We sampled chocolates from six different shops:
— Fog City News (a French chocolate square)
— Spicely Organic (sample bits from nearly a dozen spiced chocolates)
— Ghiradelli (a seasonal chocolate square)
— Minamoto Kitchoan (a full sized chocolate pancake thing)
— Chocolatier Blue (2 pieces of gourmet chocolate in a cute package)
— CocoaBella (2 pieces of gourmet chocolate)
The samples were delicious, varied, and generous. It was great to discover chocolate shops that I never knew about in 25+ years of living in the SF Bay Area.
Obviously the chocolate is the reason why many people go on these types of tours, but the true highlight for me was getting to learn San Francisco (and chocolate) history from one of the most entertaining tour guides I have ever had. Derek was fantastic and I hope you are lucky enough to be on one of his tours.

My Wife and I were ending our little mini vacay to San Francisco and thought this would be a good way to wrap up our trip. We opted for a Sunday trip at 2pm. I used the live chat system to confirm when and where to meet. They were helpful and were very prompt in answering my questions. We stopped off early at the airport to drop off our car and took the BART to the meet up point. Since it was mid day with no car we roamed around downtown SF for about a couple of hours and waited for the tour to begin.
Now for the 1 star review…
3:30pm rolls up… no tour guide… 3:45 rolls up still no tour guide… i jump back on the live chat and they tell me there should be someone there… few minutes later… oh i am sorry they have cancelled your tour. We apologize that we didn’t inform you earlier…
I asked to be contacted by their company and they said For sure we will contact you for this inconvenience. 3 weeks later no reply no contact.
I’m sure the tour would have been great if it had happened but the customer service is crap. I was asked if i would recommend this anyone. well to be honest… unless you want to deal with a company who doesn’t take care of thier inconveninced customers. I would say move on… find something better to do. They are bad news…

I would do this again every weekend if possible. I went on a tour with my girlfriends this last weekend and Derek was our tour guide. 100 stars to him! He’s informative, sweet, funny, helpful and takes great pictures! The chocolate was AMAZING! Every single stop was DELISH! We had so much fun! I definitely recommend this tour to anyone and everyone!

A friend and I recently did a Chocolate Tour with Michaelangelo. He was very animated and made the experience fun! Learned about some history of chocolate as well!
NewTree was my favorite chocolate shop by far. Wishing Ghirardelli gave more samples, thinking that management should swap out this place for another smaller chocolate shop.
Happy I got to experience the chocolatey side of the city! The cupcake tour is next on my list!

I had a really nice experience with the tour,
First of all I have to say that I would not find it if it wasn’t Groupon, my wife found it and as she loves chocolate we were really inclined to try and I have to say that was better than I expected.

Michelangelo the tour guide showed us really nice chocolate shops and he made the tour really pleasant and funny.
You’ll get to try different kind of chocolates, but what I was not expecting was a Japanese sweet store that was the best to me. Chocolate in different formats and tastes I could not imagine and the realization that chocolate is not what I thought it was but something better than that.

I went on the tour today to try something different. Our guide Michaelangelo was knowledgeable and entertaining. You get lots of samples of chocolate. It’s a nice walk around the city too that ends at the mall.

I highly enjoyed the chocolate tour. This tour is catered to the locals for those who have an interest in chocolate, but aren’t an elite connoisseur. Derek was our tour guide and he took us around SoMa and Union Square, with all shops about 5 blocks from each other. Like many, I found this deal on Groupon and it was well worth the price.
We started off at Fog City News and had an in-​depth overview of their fair traded, specially picked chocolate. Derek buys the samples for us to taste. Nothing is made here since this is a newsstand shop with an extensive magazine collection, but they sell locally made and foreignly made chocolate bars, eccentric and common, mostly pricy.
Next was Spicely. The idea of spiced chocolates sounded odd to me, but this was definitely my favorite spot. They gave us samples of teas and samples of chocolates. They have soooo many chocolate samples that you could be there for a half hour just trying little bits of deliciousness. Half the group stood outside for a history lesson while the other half went in, then switch. You don’t need to be on the tour for free samples. Many people from the tour went back here for purchasing chocolates and tea post-​tour.
We skipped SEE’S because apparently their quality has went downhill so expect to skip it, too.
Ghirardelli was next on the list and you get a free sample for entering in. You don’t need to be on a tour for free samples. Any Ghirardelli in the area will give you a free sample for entering their store. Nothing special was done at this stop; it is just more of a touristy landmark. For those wanting to check out Ghirardelli, I recommend going to Ghirardelli Square. This stop could probably be skipped for something more unique.
Next was Japanese Sweets. I recommend this too. They give you a chocolate Moon Pie to eat and they have such beautiful displays.
Finally was the exclusive Teuscher. This high-​end chocolate tour with a less-​obvious front served Grand Mariner chocolates that push the limits of how much you’d spend on a delicious treat. But boy they were good.
Artesian Designs was up next, with a very colorful display in a small store. Not bad, and beautiful to look at.
Finally we ended up in the mall at CocoaBella. They gave some odd fusion chocolate with Rosemary that I thought was a bit eccentric, but they have quite the selection.
Derek himself was energetic, knowledgeable, positive and mindful. He is obviously an experienced guide and can keep a big group together. He knows much about chocolates, the city, and other tours we should try out. He even gave offered to give us a chocolate brochure about all the places we’ve seen. He could probably recommend any kind of tour.
So why did I give four stars? I think Ghirardelli could be skipped. It would have been nice to know in advance SEE’s would be skipped, but that wasn’t a big deal. The real issue was the customer service online.
The Groupon offer instructions aren’t aligned with how to redeem the voucher. You’re instructed to look for information in the center of the voucher, but none is listed. Neither Groupon Support nor Great Food Tours support was helpful, and just kept regurgitating information that the instructions said, that didn’t align to solving the problem. So they are unresponsive, and frustrating in the sense where they give you generic uneducated responses without carefully evaluating your concerns.
Now to clarify — it’s the chat reps that seem to be poor with support with Great Food Tours. Basically this happened (summary, not exact).
Me: The Groupon says to get the numbers from the center of the ticket, but there aren’t any there. What do I enter?
Support: You enter the numbers in the center of the ticket.
Me: I just said they aren’t there.
Support: I don’t know. You should enter the numbers in the center. That’s what the instructions says.
etc. etc.
Me: Forget it.
So if you need to reach out for support, don’t contact Groupon, don’t use the chat feature, just email them. The reps on email for some reason are more helpful than chat. Chat are the reps with «American» names that obviously don’t understand English.
My only other issue is that your tour will say «Pending» after you registered online which is confusing. I was advised it says pending until you completed the tour. I thought my tour reservation was pending.
Another note is this tour is better for adults. Although people of all ages like chocolate there was a kid there, probably around 9 – 10, and he was bored out of his skull. This is mostly strolling, listening, and some chocolate sampling.
TL;DR: Derek is a great tour guide. The chocolate tour is a great tour for Bay area locals. Don’t use the chat support feature on Great Foods Tour because people are useless. Email for support, only.

Derek was an amazing tour guide. We met in front of fog city news and since it was Sunday, fog city news is closed. But, derek had samples for us to try in front of the store. All the chocolates we sampled were delicious. My favorite store is spicely! It’s so unique and the employees are so nice and let us try so many different chocolates. My favorite was the chai :) heheh I love chai. The cayenne pepper chocolate– wow! That just punched you in the face at the end but it was good. I also loved the teas we got to sample. Spicely is just amazing. It is expensive though– about $ 12 a tin. Buy 4 get the 5^th free. Boyfriend and I want to go back and spend more time there.
What was valuable about the tour was the information derek imparts– from the history of chocolate to some historical aspects of San Francisco. That’s what I love about tours! Cause I mean you can go to these chocolate stores and pay for samples and it’s be cheaper but it’s fun being with a group on a tour listening and interacting with folks.
Spend a few hours in SF, it’s a good time

«Life is too short for M&Ms.» — Male associate at Fog City News to two female customers
Lolz.
My friend and I had a great time hearing tidbits like that during the tour and having Derek as our tour guide; he is AMAZING!
We signed up for the 12:30 PM SF chocolate tour last Thursday, but we ended up running a little late coming in from the East Bay. I can get really flustered and tense when I know that I’ve kept someone waiting, so it meant a lot to receive a cheerful check-​in call from Derek who PRONOUNCED MY NAME 100% CORRECTLY. ^_​^ We ended up slipping in about 5 minutes late, but just in time to receive the first sample — Michel Cluizel (don’t ask me how to pronounce that) 72%. Wowza. Wonder how many eggs the neighborhood kids would pelt my house with if I gave those suckers out this Halloween.
I don’t want to spill all the details of the tour, though, I just want to say that I think it is a worthwhile way to spend a couple of hours in downtown SF by yourself or with your special someone (I think out of the 6 other people that were there, there were 2 couples). And this is coming from someone who has worked in the FiDi for close to a year, but had only ever set foot in ONE of the stops on this tour. It goes at a fast enough pace to keep you from getting bored, but slow enough for you to be able to browse and really have a good look around each shop.
Try it out!