Phil Davis: Mormon Businessman

Phil Davis is a chocolatier. He was raised in Provo, Utah. He loved chocolate as a child, even reading about acceptable ingredients at the age of eight. He recalls buying every type of chocolate he could find and started ordering and ranking them. His love for chocolate developed and refined over the years.

"I started studying chocolate when I was 8 years old, in which time I read an article about the ingredients that should go into good chocolate. Later in life I found myself searching the depths of Europe for the best of the best chocolate. I got to know some of the best chocolate makers and I started tasting prototypes, and I would, I’d give them my opinion, ‘this is too dark, too light, too much sugar not enough, too much vanilla, or too little. I started writing up aroma flavor profiles and they started to put them on the back of boxes, and that’s when I realized that I did have one of the best chocolate palates in the world. We are very passionate about chocolate."[1]

He attended the Parisian Salon du Chocolat to negotiate with farmers deep in the Venezuelan jungles to procure the best.

With business partners Morgan and Char Coleman, he formed the company Coleman & Davis Artisan Chocolate and the restaurant Taste, which sells imported cheeses, high-end balsamic vinegars, quality olive oils, and the company’s chocolates. According to a Deseret News article, the fine chocolate companies in Utah “may put Utah on the culinary map.”[2]

Davis served a full-time mission to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, of which he is a member. He earned a bachelor’s degree in political science in 1998 from Brigham Young University. He worked for IBM for three years doing technical writing, marketing and product design and development. He then cofounded and later sold a successful commodities futures fund, the U.S. Commodity Fund and Firestorm Group.