At first, chocolate hearts, bears, and oversized gingerbread men could only be found online or in the homes of celebrities like the Kardashians. Then came Butter, Love & Hardwork's pop-up in West Hollywood, and now Chris Ford's chocolates, in all their fantasies, are finally available for instant eating.
The famous chocolatier made a name for himself with themed, knockable chocolate sculptures, which open with the tap of a wooden mallet. In late 2025, it launched a pop-up at the base of Kimpton's La Peer hotel, which it converted into a showroom and its first bakery. After multiple extensions, Butter, Love & Hardwork resides there indefinitely, along with a host of new additions.
“I thought, 'I need a foundation,'” he said. “People see that I am an e-commerce or [do] celebrity stuff, and people don't really know what I am, so I thought this would be a good way to show it all off. That's why it's almost like a museum.”
Currently, it is covered in hanging red faux roses, while chocolate roses in heart-shaped boxes rest on pedestals. For Easter, he's imagining a chocolate egg “hunt” with an astroturf floor.
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With the help of Alex Olmos, former sous pastry chef at République, he fills the shop with some of the most fantastic sweets in the city. Ford thinks about chocolate the same way a designer might think about clothing: Seasonally, each year offers a different motif, theme or color combination.
For Valentine's Day, delicate chocolate roses coated in bright red glitter contrast with a triple-layered chocolate bar of creamy dark chocolate ganache, freeze-dried raspberry, and a crunchy berry ganache. They are rose chocolates filled with dark chocolate ganache. Ford's rose variations can come a la carte, in a nine-piece decorative box, on stems, in breakable chocolate shells, and can cost as little as $10 each or as much as $150 for a full bouquet.
At Thanksgiving, there were tied turkeys made of chocolate painted orange. All year round, but especially appropriate for the Lunar New Year, Ford will print out a fortune from his dictation and stuff it inside a large breakable chocolate fortune cookie. On Halloween, look for edible ghosts and more.
And with a storefront, their collections are growing.
Borrowing space from the hotel's kitchen, it expanded its menu with pastries, layered banana pudding in a jar and mocha tiramisu, and coffee drinks, including a brown sugar oat milk latte and vanilla iced coffee. He has installed a chocolate vending machine.
Pastry chef and founder Chris Ford at the counter of his Butter, Love & Hardwork store.
(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)
A pastry case at the register displays the new variety of molded chocolate bars, which can appear as a rose, a croissant (made with croissant butter) or as ice cream cones topped with a burnt, bouncy, meringue-like marshmallow cream. In the summer, Ford plans to introduce a homemade soft serve ice cream to fill the chocolate cones.
Under the pastry glass there are also chocolate chip cookies made with a recipe that he has been tweaking and perfecting for 16 years; a fluffy cinnamon bun made with potato-enriched dough and cinnamon cream, glazed like a Krispy Kreme donut; and a croissant “brick,” a cube that blurs the line between croissant and kouign-amann.
Ford's first memory, she says, is baking bread with her grandmother.
“That's actually my first love,” Ford said. “It's not chocolate. I fell into the chocolate.”
A cinnamon bun with donut glaze from Butter, Love & Hardwork.
(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)
Ford enrolled in culinary school, but was unsure about pursuing it professionally, until he discovered baking.
“It's like my mind exploded,” he said. “I felt like, 'Oh my God, this is where I belong. I get it. This is my language.' And I've been obsessed ever since.”
Ford went on to work at ChikaLicious Dessert Bar in New York City's East Village, Bouchon in Beverly Hills, and on the pastry teams of celebrity chefs Michael Mina and Bryan Voltaggio. When he returned to Los Angeles, he took a chance, hired a publicist, and began shipping his extravagant chocolates and sculptures to celebrities. It paid off.
Kim Kardashian wanted to collaborate, and in 2018 Ford's work went viral when Paris Hilton, Chrissy Teigen and others uploaded photos of themselves breaking large chocolate hearts that hid Kardashian's new perfume. Building on the success, he dedicated himself to the Butter, Love & Hardwork brand full time.
Now she scours the world searching for intriguing soap molds that she can reuse for her chocolates, or have them custom built by a production designer in Los Angeles.
Butter, Love & Hardwork, Ford says, is always growing. In the coming months it plans to launch a dessert tasting menu only on weekends. In the future, he hopes to build some of these stores, but believes the base will always remain in Los Angeles.
Butter, Love & Hardwork is located at 627 N. La Peer Dr.IWest Hollywood, and is open from 9 am to 6 pm Monday through Saturday.
