Rising Stars: Meet Katrina Markoff of Chicago and LA

Today we’d like to introduce you to Katrina Markoff.

Katrina, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I founded Vosges Haut-Chocolat at a young age, and for many years I explored chocolate as a medium for storytelling, travel, culture, and transformation. Building Vosges was an extraordinary chapter of my life and gave me decades to explore the possibilities of cacao and the sensory world around it.

I left Vosges in 2024, and that transition opened a new chapter—one that allowed me to go much deeper into ideas that had been developing within me for years.

I became increasingly interested in the divine signature within plants: the idea that each plant carries a unique intelligence and signature, and that through resonance, we can begin to recognize that same divine signature within ourselves. That relationship can become a powerful bridge into intuition—not because the plant is giving us the answers, but because it can help us become quiet and present enough to access the knowing that already exists within us.

That exploration is at the heart of Violet Flame Chocolate.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Smooth? No. I built my first company from the time I was 22, grew it into a $30 million business, and eventually found myself ousted from the company I had created. No, it has certainly not been a smooth road. I founded Vosges Haut-Chocolat and spent decades building it, only to ultimately be fired from the company I created. There is no entrepreneurial playbook that prepares you for that.

One of the harder lessons I’ve learned is that when you create something with energy, originality and momentum, you can also attract what I sometimes call ‘vampires’—people, relationships or systems that attach themselves to that energy rather than helping replenish it. Learning to recognize the difference between people who amplify your life force and those who consume it has been one of the most important lessons of my career.

Losing my place in the company I founded forced me to confront a very difficult question: Who am I when the thing I built is no longer mine to lead?

And strangely, that loss became an opening. I had to return to the intuition that had guided me before there were investors, boards, titles or expectations. That brought me back to plants, cacao and the idea of resonance—the divine signature within the natural world that can help us recognize the divine signature within ourselves.

Violet Flame has emerged from that period. So I don’t think of the difficult parts of my story as detours anymore. They stripped away a great deal of noise and brought me back to the source of how I create: intuition

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
At Violet Flame Chocolate, my work is centered on alchemy, the transformation of one state into another. On the surface, we make extraordinary chocolate, but what I am really interested in is how chocolate, plants, aroma, taste and ritual can help transform our internal state.

We live in an incredibly overstimulated world. Our nervous systems are constantly being asked to process more information, more screens, more urgency and more noise. I am fascinated by creating sensory experiences that interrupt that pattern, experiences that invite you to slow down, become present and move from activation toward a calmer, more receptive state.

Cacao is an extraordinary medium for this because chocolate already asks us to engage our senses. When we combine cacao with botanicals intentionally, I think of it almost as plant alchemy. Each plant carries its own signature, and I explore how those signatures resonate with us—how taste, scent and sensation can become a bridge back into the body and, ultimately, into intuition.

That is what sets Violet Flame apart. I’m not interested in creating chocolate simply as a confection or luxury object. I’m exploring chocolate as a transformational medium: something beautiful and pleasurable that can also create a shift in how you feel.

What I’m most proud of is bringing everything I’ve learned over decades of working with chocolate into this new chapter while still being willing to begin again. Violet Flame gives me the freedom to ask a different question—not just, ‘How does this taste?’ but ‘How does this make you feel, and who might you become when your internal state changes?’

For me, that is the alchemy: transforming cacao and plants into chocolate, transforming a moment of consumption into a ritual, and transforming our state from noise into presence. And in that quieter state, we may become more capable of hearing our own intuition.

We love surprises, fun facts and unexpected stories. Is there something you can share that might surprise us?
I have my pilot’s license

Pricing:

• 15-127

Contact Info:

• Website: Www. VioletFlameChocolate.com
• Instagram: @violetflamechocolate