Sweetening your day: The Chubby Chipmunk

RAPID CITY, S.D. (KEVN) - Deadwood is known for its gaming, mining and rich history.

However, there’s something else rich in the Northern Hills town, a chocolate shop just a few minutes from Main Street that may be small but is achieving big things.

“In the past, we’ve been in the swag bags for the Oscars, Grammys, CMA’s,” Carolie Tautkus, co-owner of Chubby Chipmunk said.

“We sold some truffles to a family that was doing a wedding and they were marrying into the Hersey family, so that was cool. We were also lucky enough that Justin Timberlake’s mom called once and she placed an order for when they got married way back in the day, way back in Vail,” Seth Tautkus, co-owner of Chubby Chipmunk said.

The Chubby Chipmunk has been hand-dipping chocolate for 20 years.

Although mainly known for their truffles, they also sell dinosaur molded chocolates and chocolate-covered potato chips.

“It’s based off the customers, what they like, what they enjoy. We like to create new things and test it out on our customers and if they get that ‘Oooo yeah’ sigh then we know we got something to continue to expand on,” Carolie said.

These sweet creations are made from chocolate that is flown in from different countries.

“Basically, we just get the best chocolate we can, we get it from all over the globe. We have a single source chocolate that we get from Peru, that’s our Fortunato bar. We also have our Belgium milk chocolate, and we use European dark chocolate. We try to go European, South American, the best stuff we can get,” Seth said.

Seth and his wife Carolie took over the business from his mom, Chip, two years ago.

“Just watching my mom do what she did every day was just pretty awesome. I’ve done a few different careers and I’ve never thought about looking back after starting this, it’s been fun from day one,” Seth said.

Chubby Chipmunk has two locations, one in Deadwood and the other in downtown Rapid City.

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