Lincoln Small Business Owner Finds Passion in Chocolatier

Every year during Steinbach’s childhood, his mother would transform an empty guest room into a chocolate production space.

Steinbach watched as her mother carefully crafted bonbons by hand, crowning the confections with cursive letters to mark the filling: ‘A’ for almond, ‘C’ for coconut, ‘L’ for lemon.

“I grew up with my mom doing that in our house,” she said. “I knew him, I was surrounded by him, but the bug didn’t hit me until much later, when my mom sent me some of her chocolates for a birthday.”

Decades after seeing her mother for the first time, Steinbach said the taste impressed her, inspiring her to delve into the craft and eventually start her own business.

“It took me back home and piqued my interest,” he said. “I was so interested in how anyone could create such indulgent flavors inside this little morsel, so I started reading everything I could about making chocolates and started experimenting. Soon enough, family and friends encouraged me to turn this into a business. .”

Just as her mother shared the tradition with her, Steinbach kept her children close throughout the entire process, even going so far as to name her start-up business after her.

A combination of her nicknames, Lulu and Bee, were merged to create the face of Steinbach’s chocolatier journey: Lulubee.

Today, Lulubee Artisanal Chocolates is one of 70 stops on the Nebraska Passport Program — an annual tourism promotion effort that encourages travelers to visit a variety of museums, parks, restaurants, wineries, retail stores and more throughout the state.

The Nebraska Passport 2023 program runs from May 1 through September 30, and for the next five months we will have a weekly feature highlighting the stops along the Passport.

Participants can qualify for prizes based on the number of places they visit during the program by collecting physical or digital stamps at each stop.

Steinbach’s business began production in the kitchen of a North Bottoms coffee shop in 2014, but demand quickly outpaced the capacity of the space.

In November 2020, Steinbach opened his own physical store in Lincoln’s Village Gardens. He said it allowed him to increase production and, for the first time, gave him commercial space.

Previously, Steinbach did business solely through its online store, event outreach, and wholesale customers.

Now that the store has foot traffic and people loitering through the front door, he said the dynamic has completely changed.

“I could talk about chocolate for days on end,” he said. “There’s always something new, there are flavors we’ve yet to explore, endless combinations of flavor and texture differences. For me, it’s endless possibilities and it excites me, motivates me.”

While the shop is stocked with truffles, caramel, turtles, toffee and artisan chocolate bars, Steinbach said if customers were going to walk away with one item, it would have to be her gourmet bonbons.

Some of Steinbach’s most memorable pralines include a mint flavor, her favorite piece that her mother made when she was a child; a root beer flavor, tied to memories of summer and childhood; and a pina colada flavor, derived from traveling and living abroad.

“I talk about them being rooted in the past, but these are indulgences, these are gifts to share,” Steinbach said. “The flavors are rooted in my past experiences, which I want to share with customers… I don’t think you can go wrong with the gift of chocolate.”