There’s no place like home—or chocolate!—for Dustin Cornett (’05)
By Laryn Hilderbrandt
For WKU alumnus Dustin Cornett (’05) of Beattyville, Ky., entrepreneurship is a recipe of travels, family and lots of chocolate.
Cornett and his wife, Mai, opened the Chocolat Inn and Café in Beattyville in September 2017—a process that was a sweet concoction of trial and error.
“We had visions of opening a café and getting into chocolate,“ Cornett explained. “My grandmother had made gourmet chocolates years ago. We found her recipes and, since we had time on our hand, we gave them a shot.”
At that moment, Cornett had just returned from Japan, one of the places he traveled to after feeling lost from changing the direction of his career and wanting a new perspective on life.
“I originally planned to be overseas for just a year. Then my mother suddenly passed away and I couldn’t bring myself to come home,” he said. “From then, I worked to make enough money to travel to my next country and continue my adventure. I was basically soul searching and found a new, fresh outlook on life and how I want to live it.”
Japan was his favorite place, both the culture and the people. It was there that he met his now wife. She returned with him to Beattyville and they planned to move out west. But Mai loved the area and, because of his travels, Cornett saw the positive things around him too.
“I saw untapped potential,” stated Cornett.
The chocolate-making hobby of his grandmother turned into a determined path for Cornett. He researched how to make his own chocolate from the bean rather than using Hershey’s chocolate like she did.
“That is what sparked everything,” he said.
The journey to open the Inn had humble beginnings. The Cornetts originally found a building in Beattyville with an owner who let them pay rent by fixing up the building. They invited other art-related businesses to share the space and named the building the Art Factory.
“My wife and I did the bakery and chocolate shop and another guy did the coffee and audio recording studio,” Cornett added. “We also had a painter, tattoo artist and then a newspaper company after a couple other businesses came and went.”
While the concept was great, he felt disappointed that many didn’t take full advantage of the situation.
“The hope was to have it as a place they could launch their business,” he said. “It might take more time for that model to become apparent to some. I still believe in that co-op model in small town America.”
After a year and a half, Cornett left the Art Factory behind to finish the Inn.
Located in the hills of Appalachia and surrounded by Daniel Boone National Forest and the Red River Gorge, the Chocolat Inn and Café boasts themed rooms designed after locations Cornett has traveled to around the world. London, Paris, Osaka, Berlin and New York themed rooms are currently available for bookings, with Mumbai and Rome – the biggest – coming soon.
Currently, it’s just the Cornetts who operate the inn with a close friend who helps clean the rooms.
“Mai makes a fantastic breakfast in the morning and guests can indulge in artisan chocolate made on the premises, as well as specialty coffee roasted on-site to ensure freshness,” he noted.
Cornett graduated from WKU in 2005 with a degree in Broadcasting, but he wishes he had taken a few business classes and culinary lessons to support what he does now. The journey started for him on campus, as a small town 17-year-old who met people from all around the world.
“I started growing into the man I am today while attending WKU,” Cornett said. “A seed was planted in me that blossomed while I was soul searching on the other side of the world. I can’t say I learned my current trade at Western, but I can give WKU credit for shaping me into the individual that I’ve become.”
