History of the Festival

The Chocolate Festival  started in 1987 as the brain child of Mary Leavitt and Mary Piette, members of a local Advisory Board who wanted to help the Cache Valley community by providing  health care and educational programs through Planned Parenthood. What follows is the history of the festival, as told by Lee Austin to Ron Munger in 1997:

A Tradition Begins...

With so many organizations at work in Cache Valley asking people to donate money to worthy causes, our task on the Logan Planned Parenthood Advisory Board seemed daunting. We wanted to raise money for the clinic, but we also wanted to do something fun that would reflect favorably on Planned Parenthood. Since all of us on the board had full time "day jobs", we also didn't want to organize something that would consume huge amounts of time and energy. Our everlasting gratitude goes to Mary Piette, who brought the idea of a chocolate festival to Utah from Hawaii. She said lots of people have a passion for chocolate. Mary explained that regardless of how people felt about family planning, chocolate would bring them to our event. I think there were a few skeptics on the board, myself included.