Bissinger's Handcrafted Chocolatier opens its Sarasota boutique at University Town Center

An opening 358 years in the making

The ribbon cutting closed a two-day grand opening at University Town Center, where the company directed 20 percent of every sale to All Faiths Food Bank and sent shoppers home with complimentary truffles. One shopping bag held a golden ticket redeemable for a $200 gift card.

The boutique sits on the mall's main level, across from Apple and just outside Saks Fifth Avenue. Dan Abel Jr. leads the company under the title Chief Chocolate Officer, and the Abel family are its owners and master chocolatiers.

A house older than the country it sells in

Bissinger's traces its founding to Paris in 1668, which makes it one of the oldest chocolate companies still operating anywhere. The family earned the formal title Confiseur Imperial, confectioner to the empire, and served the French court and European nobility. The distinction is stamped on the wall of the Sarasota boutique, alongside the two dates that bracket the company's move west: Paris in the 1600s, the United States in 1845.

That second date belongs to Karl Bissinger, who left France with the family recipes and a master confectioner and opened the first American Bissinger's kitchen near Cincinnati. His son carried the tradition to St. Louis in 1927, and the company still calls that city home. The recipes in use today are preserved in the original Bissinger family cookbook, dated 1899.

Method has stayed as fixed as the recipes. The company cooks in copper kettles and prepares its confections in small batches, a pair of practices that cost more time than modern equipment would and are the reason the Sarasota case looks the way it does.

What sits in the case

The Sarasota boutique carries the full Bissinger's collection: signature truffles, buttery caramels, chocolate-covered fruits and nuts, seasonal specialties and gift assortments built for weddings and corporate orders. The boutique team works the other way round from a shelf, matching flavour, size, presentation and gift style to whoever the box is going to.

The piece that ties the case to the name on the door is the 1668 Collection, a nine-piece limited edition built to mark the founding year. Bissinger's says it was developed over two years under the personal supervision of the company's chief chocolatiers and owners, and the box reads like a nod to the family's first customers: a Milk King Louie Caramel, a Dark Versailles Vanilla Caramel, a Dark Grand Marnier Orange truffle.

Alongside it sits the Bear Claws Royale, fresh-from-the-shell pecans folded into vanilla caramel and enrobed in milk chocolate. Around both, the selection turns over with the calendar, so the assortment in December is not the assortment in July.

The gift business runs alongside the retail case. Bissinger's builds assortments for weddings and corporate orders, and the boutique staff will walk a customer through a selection rather than hand over a catalogue. It is a slower way to sell chocolate, and it is the reason the boutiques are small and few.

The Florida footprint

Sarasota is the third stop in a deliberate Florida expansion. Bissinger's opened a Palm Beach boutique in 2025 and followed it with a location at International Plaza in Tampa earlier in 2026, on the first floor outside Neiman Marcus. The Tampa store has since added a chocolate-dipping station that turns out fresh chocolate-dipped strawberries year round rather than only around Valentine's Day. A fourth Florida boutique is planned for Boca Raton.

Set against a national count of eleven open boutiques, three Florida addresses inside roughly eighteen months is a concentration no other state currently matches. For a company that has spent most of four centuries in two cities, opening three storefronts in one state in a year and a half counts as a decision rather than a drift.

The Sarasota address fits the pattern the others set. University Town Center puts the boutique among tenants that trade on the same terms it does, and the neighbors on either side, Saks Fifth Avenue and Apple, draw the shopper Bissinger's is built for.

Visiting the Sarasota boutique

Bissinger's Sarasota is at 140 University Town Center Drive, Space 141, on the main level of The Mall at University Town Center. The boutique is open Monday through Thursday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., Friday and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. The shop can be reached at 941.404.2337, and the full collection is listed at bissingers.com.

Three hundred and fifty-eight years after a confectioner in Paris first went into business for a king, the same name is on a case in a Sarasota mall, and the caramel is still cooked in copper.