After 14 years working alongside her husband as part of a two-person crew on private sailing yachts, Kara Caputo traded life at sea for entrepreneurship. Today, she is the founder of Anchor Chocolates, a California-based business creating handcrafted, custom-branded chocolates for yachts, corporate clients, and special events. Drawing on the adaptability, creativity, and resourcefulness she developed while working in yachting, Caputo has built a business rooted in craftsmanship and local sourcing. She reflects on her journey from yacht chef and first mate to chocolatier, the challenges of starting a business ashore, and the advice she offers to crew considering a similar leap.
How did you get into the yachting industry?
My husband, Adam, and I have been together for more than 30 years and we worked in restaurants together in the Bay Area. I was a pastry chef at the time and he was running the wine program, but we separated from that restaurant we were working at. He did some deliveries to the Caribbean with some friends, and they were like, “You should really get your captain’s license.” He saw other couples working on boats in the Caribbean and said, “This looks like it would be a lot of fun and I think we can do this.”
The first job he worked on was a Swan 58 called Andromeda and I was a volunteer crew because the owner only wanted to hire one person. I worked with him for six months on that boat for free and then we eventually decided that we were going to go into it full time, so we started working on private sail boats in 2001.
What kept you in the yachting industry?
We enjoyed working together is really the reason we continued. There’s always adventure and travel with working on yachts, but you’re away and you miss big parts of your life. That’s a long time to be away, so in the end we bought a house in Sonoma, and we decided we were just going to put our feet on the ground and figure out how to move on from that.
Did you always know you would eventually start your own business or did that decision happen after leaving yachting?
I didn’t. We wanted to open a restaurant together initially. Adam wanted to do something kind of towards my passion. We figured he’d be in front of the house, I’d be back of the house, but over time we realized that was probably not the best move for us. Adam started working in different ferry jobs and I stepped into on-call cooking in wineries. However, I just realized after many years away from commercial kitchens that the people I was working with weren’t even cooking, they would just do one little piece of a job. When I was on a yacht, I was doing it all — managing the food, buying the food — and eventually I was getting very disillusioned with it.
Adam said, “You know you should really think about opening your own business.” One of my first culinary jobs in culinary school, I took an apprenticeship at a chocolate shop, so I’ve been doing this for a long time.
What does Anchor Chocolates do?
I do direct to consumer custom logo chocolates. This can be for yachts, corporate gifts, weddings, birthdays, anything. I can custom design the logo on top of chocolates with a cocoa butter silk screen — pretty much like a chocolate concierge, because I can customize any part of it. Whether you want to do an after-dinner chocolate on the table as one thing or something that would go with a themed dinner on a yacht.
I do my best to source all local, organic ingredients and I process my own fruit to put into the chocolates. It’s true to my beliefs of sourcing locally as best as you can and it’s all handmade.
What were some of your biggest early challenges?
Marketing is always difficult. I have pivoted a bit on the business, whereas I do a lot of local pop-ups around holidays and such. It’s a lot of marketing as well as community outreach. Finding local events that I can highlight my product is also a challenge.
Are there any skills from your life in yachting that have translated to running your business?
Adaptability. With yachting, you always have to be ready for the owner to bring 20 guests instead of five or show up in port when you have a head of broccoli and nothing else in the pantry. We had that happen to us in Mexico — we showed up and the boss wanted to entertain, so you make it happen. It makes it easier for you to adapt to the everyday challenges of running a small business.
Do you have any advice to captains or crew who are thinking about starting their own business?
The first thing is, you got to do it. It’s very difficult for crew to step away, and a lot of that has to do with being accustomed to being in the umbrella — you have your rent and food covered and people have difficulty separating themselves from that. If you have a vision of something, you need to pursue it. For us, we didn’t really have a plan. We decided we were going to move ashore and utilize the skills that we had to make it happen. If you have a vision and the passion to pursue it, you’ll make it happen. Don’t be afraid of failure, because there are going to be failures along the way, but you can learn from those.
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