Marcia Cumming is one lucky Momtreprenuer. 

 She works side by side with her daughter, Kaite.

“It has been a lot of fun and I’ve really depended on her a lot,” she says. 

They’re using chocolate recipes passed down from her grandmother. 

“My grandmother went to a class in 1973 with a group of friends and then over the years we would make the cholocate at Christmas time and Easter,” says Marcia. 

About two years ago, she finally opened Marcia’s Chocolates in Altoona. 

“It’s a small little chocolate business, and everything we make is from scratch,” says Marcia. 

But it would take a career in the Navy and as a Pediatric Physical Therapist to get there. 

“I decided to retire a little early and then I went to work doing some Early Intervention with Kids First so that I had the flexability,” Marcia says, “because with early intervention I can make my own schedule.

Still, with three active kids, she says it can be tough to be both a mom and a business owner.

“Unforuntately there are times when I have to make a decision. Do I make it to a game or am I going to make it to the cholocate shop? And then there are days when I get to go to the game and then there are games when I don’t,” Marcia says. 

But Marcia’s biggest supporter, her husband Vince, is always by her side. 

“Right now it’s fun. It’s a stress reliever in a way,” says Vince. “It’s relaxing, we come down here and make chocolates. We spend a lot of time together now.

“I left a full time job, full time paycheck, full time job to start this so if it wasn’t for him saying ‘alright, go for it,’ I just, I wouldn’t be here,” says Marcia. 

That risk has paid off.

Marcia’s Chocoloates has enough demand to be open five days a week.

It’s even hard for Marcia to believe how far they’ve come, because it all started with a family tradition more than 40 years ago. 

“I truly think of myself as just a lady who likes to make chocolate,” says Marcia. “When I start to think about the fact that we actually have a business sometimes it just really makes me like, ‘Wow!’. But I love it, I love every minute of it, I really, really do.”