A West Hollywood residency brings a celebrity chocolatier’s creations to the masses

At first, the large-scale chocolate hearts, bears and gingerbread men could only be found online or in the homes of celebrities like the Kardashians. Then came Butter, Love & Hardwork’s West Hollywood pop-up, and now Chris Ford’s chocolates — in all of their whimsy — are finally available to eat instantly.

The celebrity chocolatier made his name with themed, whackable chocolate sculptures, which crack open with the smack of a wooden mallet. In late 2025 he launched a pop-up at the base of Kimpton’s La Peer hotel, which he flipped to both a showroom and his first bakery. After multiple extensions, Butter, Love & Hardwork resides there indefinitely, along with a slew of new treats.

“I was like, ‘I need a foundation,’” he said. “People see I’m e-commerce or [do] celebrity things, and people don’t really know what I am, so I figured this would be a good way to kind of show everything. That’s why it’s almost like a museum.”

Currently, it’s draped in hanging red faux roses, while chocolate roses in heart-shaped boxes rest on pedestals. For Easter, he’s envisioning a chocolate egg “hunt” complete with astroturf flooring.

Aided by Alex Olmos, former pastry sous chef of République, he fills the shop with some of the city’s most fantastical sweets. Ford thinks about chocolate the way a designer might think about clothes: in seasons, each year’s offering a different motif, theme or color scheme.

For Valentine’s Day, delicate chocolate roses coated in a shiny red sheen belie a triple-layer chocolate bar of creamy dark chocolate ganache, freeze-dried raspberry, and a red-fruits crunchy ganache. There are rose bonbons filled with dark chocolate ganache. Ford’s variations on roses can come a la carte, in a decorative nine-piece box, on stems, in breakable chocolate shells and can cost as little as $10 apiece or as much as $150 for a full bouquet.

At Thanksgiving, there were trussed turkeys made of orange-painted chocolate. Year round — but especially fitting for Lunar New Year — Ford will print a fortune of your dictation and stuff it inside a large breakable chocolate fortune cookie. At Halloween, look for edible ghosts and more.

And with a storefront, his collections are growing.

Borrowing space from the hotel’s kitchen, he’s expanded his menu with pastries, jarred layered banana pudding and mocha tiramisu, and cafe drinks, including a brown sugar oat milk latte and vanilla iced coffee. He’s installed a chocolate vending machine.

Pastry chef and founder Chris Ford at the counter of his Butter, Love & Hardwork shop.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

A pastry case at the register displays the new array of molded chocolate bars, which might appear as a rose, as a croissant (made with croissant butter), or as ice cream cones topped with a meringue-like, bouncy, torched marshmallow cream. In the summer, Ford’s planning to unveil house-made soft serve to fill the chocolate cones.

Under the pastry glass there are also chocolate chip cookies made with a recipe he’s been tweaking and perfecting for 16 years; a fluffy cinnamon bun made with potato-enriched dough and cinnamon schmear, glazed like a Krispy Kreme doughnut; and a croissant “brick,” a cube that blurs the line between croissant and kouign-amann.

Ford’s first memory, he says, is baking bread with his grandmother.

“That’s actually my first love,” Ford said. “It isn’t chocolate. I fell into chocolate.”

A doughnut-glaze cinnamon bun from Butter, Love & Hardwork.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

Ford enrolled in culinary school but wasn’t sure whether he’d pursue it professionally — until he discovered baking and pastry.

“It’s like my mind exploded,” he said. “I felt like, ‘Oh my God, this is where I belong. I understand 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, at Bouchon in Beverly Hills, and on the pastry teams for celebrity chefs Michael Mina and Bryan Voltaggio. When he returned to L.A. he took a chance and hired a publicist, and began sending his whimsical chocolates and sculptures to celebrities. It paid off.

Kim Kardashian wanted to collaborate, and in 2018 Ford’s work went viral as Paris Hilton, Chrissy Teigen and others uploaded shots of themselves smashing large chocolate hearts that hid Kardashian’s new perfume. Riding the success, he devoted himself to the brand of Butter, Love & Hardwork full-time.

Now he scours the world for intriguing soap molds he can repurpose for his chocolates, or has them custom-built by a production designer in L.A.

Butter, Love & Hardwork, Ford says, is always growing. In the coming months he plans to launch a weekend-only dessert tasting menu. In the future, he hopes to build a few of these storefronts — but the homebase, he believes, will always stay in L.A.

Butter, Love & Hardwork is located at 627 N. La Peer Drive, West Hollywood, and is open 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday to Saturday.