Highland Chocolates is owned and operated by Partners In Progress, Inc. Partners In Progress “PIP” is a non-profit 501(c)(3) vocational agency and is located in Mansfield, Pennsylvania. Partners In Progress empowers people with disabilities to succeed.

Highland Chocolates is one of Partners In Progress’ entrepreneurial programs, a non-profit chocolate factory that provides employment and job skills to Individuals with differing abilities within Tioga County, Pennsylvania.

Our talented staff creates dozens of handmade chocolate confections and creamy fudge using the freshest of ingredients. All of these delicious products are hand packaged and labeled and sold in our two retail locations. We also produce and sell products to corporate or wholesale customers.

Highland Chocolates not only taste amazing, but every purchase has an amazing impact on our community. Our individuals develop vital job skills that allow them to thrive in our factory workplace and, when possible, apply those skills to future employment outside the agency.

One of the things that makes Highland Chocolates so special (besides our amazing staff!) is the fact that during non-COVID times, we offer the ability for customers to tour our factory and see our talented crew hard at work creating our many confections. Highland Chocolates is in beautiful, scenic Wellsboro, Pennsylvania. This area is known for its natural beauty, including the Pennsylvania Grand Canyon. Having these scenic attractions allows Highland Chocolates to enjoy tourism traffic, especially during the summer months and during leaf-viewing season.

To connect with those visiting our beautiful area, we print two-sided, full-color rack cards telling the story of our facility, our confections, and most importantly our amazing staff. These rack cards have our contact information, our address information, our website information and when in operation, tour information. These rack cards are distributed to Pennsylvania Welcome Centers in the thousands. They are also distributed at local festivals and events to tell our amazing story, introducing us to new customers, and bringing them to our door. We had the same amount of rack cards printed in early March 2022 that we did in July 2021 which to my knowledge, lasted through January 2022.

In May 2022, the Pennsylvania Welcome Centers contacted me stating that the entire quantities of these rack cards were depleted. Our printing budget was based on 2021, and we have no other funds allocated to printing more of these rack cards. Not having these cards is a HUGE lost opportunity for our non-profit organization. There are several months of potential tourists visiting our area that we are not able to engage or communicate with using these rack cards.

Plus, the Highland Chocolates factory will soon be undergoing a renovation. Remodeling the facility will allow for better accommodations for our employees, a larger production and shipping area, and a contemporary factory store. As you can imagine, there are many costs associated with the move including relocation to a temporary factory location and then returning to our remodeled factory facility in the Spring of 2023. Upgraded, modern, efficient equipment is also in our plans. This equipment will allow us to improve our production processes and increase the amount of product we are able to sell - making 2023 and beyond bigger and brighter for our amazing employees. The unwelcome news is that our factory store will be closed during this renovation, and we will not be receiving the income from that outlet. Having an advertising grant will allow us to announce the opening of our new and improved factory location in Spring 2023 and invite visitors to take part in tours once again. Since we will be down the sales from our existing factory store during the renovation, we will need to get the word out as quickly as possible.

Having a grant to allow us to reach out to tourists to share our amazing story is vital to the future of our non-profit organization. We are a non-profit organization that operates on very thin margins and needs the sales from tourism to keep our doors open and our individuals employed.