Chocolate Expert & Consultant
Curtis Vreeland has twenty years of confectionery industry experience, including as principal of Vreeland & Associates, which specializes in market research, analysis and events management. Mr. Vreeland’s trend analyses have been published in Candy Industry Magazine, Natural Business Journal, Fresh Cup, Tea Experience Digest, Tea Magazine and International Spa Association Journal. Additionally, he serves as Senior Consultant for the market research firm Packaged Facts, for whom he writes major reports on the U.S. chocolate market. Mr. Vreeland established his reputation in the confectionery industry in the mid-1980s as Hershey’s Manager of International Operations (Cocoa). He has visited most of the major cocoa-producing regions.
Mr. Vreeland is passionate about food! He founded Next Generation Chocolatier, a national competition held biennially that selects America’s best new artisanal chocolate makers. He opened the Harrisburg chapter of Slow Food, an international organization dedicated to supporting a food system that is good, clean and fair. He also founded the Pennsylvania Wine Society and, as an amateur winemaker, earned three national awards. Mr. Vreeland’s investment analysis of the Finger Lakes (NY) boutique winery industry became a best selling Cornell University economics publication. While a Peace Corps Volunteer in Nepal, his work with Sherpa apple growers won him recognition from the United Nations Development Program and membership as a national fellow in the prestigious Explorers’ Club.
For his philanthropic and academic work, Mr. Vreeland received the Governor’s Citizen Award (Pennsylvania), YWCA Reilly Award (Harrisburg, PA) and Childer’s Award for Academic Excellence (Rutgers University). Mr. Vreeland earned an MS in Applied Economics from Cornell and PMP certification from the Project Management Institute.
His insights on the confectionery industry have been quoted the Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Nutraceuticals World, Milwaukee Journal, Diario Financiero, Food Navigator, Vancouver Sun, Star Ledger, among others.
