Chocoholics can now get their chocolate fix anytime, anywhere, by using the Choco-locate iPhone app to find the chocolate shop closest to them wherever they happen to be in Ottawa.
The app was designed and created by Lalita Krishna, a Toronto-based filmmaker, who said she got the inspiration for the app while making a documentary about the origins of chocolate, called Semisweet.
“It was the immediacy of being able to search for good chocolate, or just getting that chocolate fix when you need it, and a mobile app was the obvious choice for people to find the closest chocolate shop to get that fix,” says Krishna.
Ottawa was chosen by Choco-locate team member, Hillary McCarrel, to be the most recent city to launch the app. She’s responsible for interviewing all the chocolatiers featured on the app that will help foster the growing chocolate community in the city.
The Ottawa shops featured on the app are strictly local businesses, owned by entrepreneurs or artisan chocolatiers, explains McCarrel. “Camino is a great example of this and one of the many reasons we added Ottawa to the app.”
Camino, an Ottawa-based fair-trade and organic chocolate manufacturer, is one of the 11 Ottawa-based stores featured on the app. Camino’s head office, located on Florence Street, organizes the distribution of Camino chocolate products to natural health food retailers in Ottawa.
“We are reaching out to other people that we would probably not reach on a regular basis, and at the same time it was a perfect venue to talk about our company, who we are, what we do, and what we believe in,” says Mélanie Broguet, marketing and communications manager.
“I think the people who are looking at the app are the ones actively looking to find fair-trade products and know where to buy them,” says Roxanne Donnelly, store manager of the Herb and Spice Shop on Bank Street, a natural health food store that has been a long-time retailer of Camino chocolate products.
In 2010, Ottawa City Hall’s information technology sub-committee ran a contest called Apps4Ottawa. The contest encouraged participants to come up with ideas and design apps for the iPhone that would allow Ottawa citizens to make use of the city’s open data collection.
The Choco-locate iPhone application is just the latest app to be released in a wave of app-related developments in the Ottawa area. Choco-locate now joins the other 156 iPhone apps designed for the Ottawa area, making it easy for iPhone users to search and find any information about the city from checking if a bus is running on schedule, to what ice-skating rinks are open, and now to where you can find the closest specialty chocolate shop