From mechanical engineering lab to craft chocolate lab

Engineering involves significant creativity. For engineers, this incredibly transferrable trait can be applied in many different ways, often in a lab, such as a computer lab, maker space or machine shop.

But a chocolate lab? Not the canine friend, rather, a culinary experience.

Esa Reinreb, a 1983 mechanical engineering alumna, has used her engineering creativity to steer her career toward entrepreneurism, opening one of the very few “bean-to-bar” craft chocolate shops in North Carolina. After gaining career experience in designing textile machinery, interior design and other creative roles, Reinreb used those skills to design her own commercial culinary lab and become a chocolatier. In her small shop, visitors can don a lab coat (apron), grab their tool (spatula) and join hands-on creative classes as they engineer their own cocoa treats.

Learn more about Reinreb, her unique career path and the Charlotte-based chocolate lab that is her career.