Sep. 16, 2005 – When Neil Wyant was a kid growing up in Akron, Ohio, he says he cut out from school for brief periods to buy a bulk piece of chewing gum. Back in class, he would break it up into bite-size pieces and sell it at a comfortable markup.

So it was no surprise to family and friends that the Chicago-based entrepreneur is back to hawking gum, only this time it is of the micro-enhanced, patent-pending, chocolate kind.

“This has been described by a couple of people as sort of the holy grail of chewing gum,” said Wyant, president of O’lala Foods. Veterans like Wm. Wrigley Jr. Co. had declared that the cocoa butter in chocolate makes the gum base too mushy.

But Wyant and partner Michael Gurn say they found a solution. They use a proprietary microencapsulation process that Gurn invented that combines the taste of chocolate powder with the creamy texture that people expect in a chocolate product. The partners, who also are distant cousins, sell their Choco’la gourmet chocolate gum across the country for between $1.29 and $3.

The cousins are arguably the best combination since, well, chocolate and peanut butter: Gurn is an independent inventor and Wyant was the licensing director for Argonne National Laboratory. Today they have what Wyant characterizes as a portfolio of food technologies supported by methods and materials claims as well as a pipeline of a dozen new products.

“We know the gum is always going to be a niche product,” Wyant admitted. But it serves as a proof of concept, attracts lots of attention and generates early revenues. Other improvements to basic foods could include skim milk that tastes like regular milk, candy bars with better nutritional content and diet chocolate.

To be fair, says Wyant, the Food and Drug Administration has a strict definition of “chocolate” that his product doesn’t technically meet because it lacks the requisite amount of cocoa butter. But, he says, customers don’t seem to mind.

Next up is hazelnut cappuccino gum. Now that’s an idea worth chewing on.