Reston residents no longer have to travel to Chantilly to indulge in a bar or box of River-Sea Chocolates.
The chocolate maker recently began welcoming customers to a retail shop at 11495 Sunset Hills Road, Unit 100, months after expanding there with a new, larger production facility.
In soft opening mode for about a month now, the Reston store sells the same chocolate bars and truffles that can be found at River-Sea’s original shop in Chantilly (4520 Daly Drive, Suite 100), along with branded T-shirts, stickers and stuffed sloths — the company’s unofficial mascot.
To celebrate the shop’s opening and Halloween, River-Sea Chocolates will give away free mini chocolate bars this Friday (Oct. 31) with no purchase necessary, the company announced today (Wednesday).
“It’s been a big hit,” River-Sea chocolate maker and outreach director Dave Przybysz said of the new retail shop. “We especially get a lot of parents who are waiting for their kids to come out of the Kumon tutoring center” in the same office building.
The Reston location isn’t quite as expansive as its Chantilly counterpart, where visitors can find a hot chocolate cafe, chocolate and wine pairings, craft chocolate tasting flights, custom chocolate bar-making sessions and tours of the smaller, on-site production facility.
However, customers can still peek through a window for a glimpse of the new, 2,300-square-foot factory, which began operations in late December 2024 and can process up to 20,000 bars in a single day.
Named after the Amazon Delta, where co-founder Mariano D’Aguiar grew up, River-Sea Chocolates emerged out of a trip that Mariano and wife Krissee D’Aguiar took to visit cousins in Brazil in 2017.
“They found some cacao down there, and they decided it would be a great idea to buy directly from the farmers and make chocolate,” Przybysz told FFXnow. “It’s better for the farmers, it’s better for the environment, and that way we could really make sure that we had delicious cacao, so that we wouldn’t have to put a bunch of other stuff, like chemicals, into the chocolate to make it taste good.”
From that initial batch of Brazilian beans, River-Sea has now expanded its cacao sources to over a dozen different countries, including Uganda, Bolivia, Thailand, Haiti, Vietnam and more.
Przybysz, who became friends with the D’Aguiars about 15 years ago when their kids were attending preschool together, says the company ensures that all of its cacao is grown free of child and slave labor, and it reduces its carbon footprint by bring some shipments over by sailboat.
The cacao is then processed entirely on site in Reston and Chantilly, from roasting to mixing, grinding, tempering, molding and packaging.
River-Sea initially wasn’t as affected by the Trump administration’s tariffs on cocoa products as other chocolate manufacturers, because it only imports raw ingredients, rather than finished products, Przybysz says. However, the financial impact has become more evident over the past few months.
“From the aluminum we source for the wrappers to the sugar and cocoa beans and butter we purchase, the tariffs range between 10% to 50% extra that we had to pay,” Mariano D’Aguiar said.
According to one analysis, tariffs on cocoa products of 15 to 39% are driving up the cost of Halloween candy by an average of 10.8% this year.
Of course, the chocolate at River-Sea is a refined sort not likely to be doled out to trick-or-treaters. According to Przybysz, the Reston store offers a roughly even mix of milk, dark and “milky dark” varieties, with unique flavors like salted caramel, coconut milk, cherry blossom and peach IPA.
The company shifted its main production operations to the new Reston location in part to accommodate milling equipment that couldn’t fit in the Chantilly building, which used stone-grinding mills that took two to three days to break down the chocolate. That process can now be completed in 12 hours.
“It’s really increased our capacity just in terms of speed, but it’s also a lot larger too, so it’s able to make more chocolate at a time,” Przybysz said.
At the Chantilly location, River-Sea has traditionally seen an uptick in customers after Black Friday, as winter weather starts to set in and people look to treat themselves around the holidays.
The Reston location likely won’t celebrate a grand opening until early 2026, but the River-Sea team still encourages community members to stop by. The retail shop is open from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Monday through Thursday and from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Fridays.
“People should definitely drop by,” Przybysz said. “There’s somebody with a friendly face here all the time, and people are able to see into the factory, so they can see the people making chocolate if they come to the Reston location. But if they want a guided tour and a more in-depth experience, Chantilly is going to be their best bet.”
This story has been updated with information about River-Sea’s Halloween giveaway and its current experience with the Trump administration’s tariffs.
