It was 2 a.m. on a fall morning in 2013 and Melissa DiMinico couldn’t sleep. She had been wrestling for quite some time with the question: What makes us different? Ignoring the late hour, DiMinico sent a text to her new business partner, chocolatier Shauna Semenza, looking for an answer. A flurry of texts and more than a few test batches later, The Candy Dish’s chocolate lobster was born. The Candy Dish is a North Andover-based party favor and corporate gift company that specializes in hand-dipped, binder-, filler- and gluten-free artisan chocolates. The company’s signature sweet reimagines the classic candy turtle, or terrapin, as a lobster. It’s made with your choice of cashew, macadamia nut or pecan claws, a rich dark, silky milk, or creamy white chocolate body, and a zigzagging drizzle “shell.”
