Tim, Deanna Green prepare to reopen family-owned Beaufort institution
By Delayna Earley
The Island News
For generations of Beaufort residents, The Chocolate Tree has been woven into the fabric of life in the Lowcountry.
It is the chocolate-covered strawberries that signal spring has arrived. The Tiger Paws tucked into Christmas stockings. The caramel apples that mark the beginning of fall. The truffles purchased for anniversaries, birthdays and special occasions. The field trips, the all-you-can-eat chocolate nights and the family traditions passed from one generation to the next.
For more than 40 years, the small candy shop on Carteret Street was a place where memories were made.
When its doors closed last year, many Beaufort residents feared those traditions had come to an end.
This fall, The Chocolate Tree is preparing to prove otherwise.
The beloved candy shop is expected to reopen this fall under the ownership of Tim Green and his wife, Deanna Green, returning the business to the family that founded it more than four decades ago.
A new chapter begins
The reopening comes after a difficult chapter in the business’s history.
After Pat Green stepped away from day-to-day operations, ownership of The Chocolate Tree passed to her sister and Tim’s brother, who operated the business as partners. Following the death of Pat’s sister, ownership passed to her two sons. The store ultimately closed in 2025, leaving many longtime customers wondering whether the beloved candy shop would ever reopen.
Over the past year, Tim and Deanna Green have worked through the legal and business matters necessary to bring the company back under the Green family’s leadership and prepare it for a new chapter. With those issues now largely resolved, attention has turned to renovating the building, updating equipment and preparing for a fall reopening.
“We’ve been waiting,” Pat Green said, while describing the months spent organizing inventory, sorting supplies and preparing equipment for the move and renovation.
From a home kitchen to a Beaufort institution
Long before The Chocolate Tree became a downtown landmark, it began in the Green family’s home on Southside Boulevard.
According to Tim Green, the business started when Pat Green began making candy for local teachers. Before long, those teachers wanted to learn how to make candy themselves, and Pat Green started holding candy-making classes in her home. What began as a hobby eventually grew into a storefront on Port Republic Street before becoming the Carteret Street shop that generations of Beaufort residents came to know and love.
Over the next four decades, Pat Green built more than a successful business. She built a community institution.
Tim Green noted that his mother was named South Carolina Business Person of the Year and was later inducted into the International Candy Hall of Fame, an honor that placed her alongside some of the most recognizable names in the confectionery industry.
“Here you’ve got Pat Green from Beaufort in this little chocolate store that has done so much, not only for the chocolate business, but the community,” Tim Green said.
A family legacy continues
For Tim Green, reopening The Chocolate Tree represents a full-circle moment.
He watched the business grow from its earliest days and has spent more than 30 years building a career in food service management and culinary operations. He believes that combination of business experience and family history puts him in a unique position to lead the next chapter of the company.
Deanna Green will help oversee the business side of the operation, bringing her background in accounting and food service management to the venture.
Pat plans to remain involved as an adviser as the business transitions into its next chapter.
“I’m going to help,” Pat Green said. “I’m going to be consulting, I guess.”
Tim Green said customers can expect one thing above all else.
“We’re not changing the candy.”
Made in Beaufort
One of the things Tim Green says will not change is the shop’s commitment to quality ingredients and traditional techniques.
The Chocolate Tree’s chocolate-covered strawberries will continue to be made using berries from Dempsey Farms on St. Helena Island. Tim said the partnership makes the product uniquely local, with the strawberries grown in Beaufort County and dipped by hand in Beaufort.
“All of that is now from Beaufort,” Tim Green said.
The same philosophy applies to the chocolate itself.
Both Tim and Pat Green emphasized that The Chocolate Tree uses real chocolate, which requires more care and attention than many products used in large-scale candy production.
That choice comes with challenges. Real chocolate is sensitive to temperature and humidity and requires careful tempering and handling throughout the production process. Pat described chocolate as finicky, requiring experience and attention to detail to get it right.
Many of the shop’s signature products continue to be hand-dipped, including truffles, apricots and a variety of clusters.
“All of our nut clusters and coconut and Rice Krispie clusters are all done by hand,” Pat Green said. “So we need hand dippers.”
The use of real chocolate is also why, Pat Green noted, the candy featured in the famous box of chocolates scene in Forrest Gump could never have actually appeared on screen.
“Because our chocolate melts,” she said.
Along with longtime favorites such as Tiger Paws, truffles, creams, English toffee, peanut brittle and caramel apples, Tim Green also hopes to introduce a few new offerings, including gourmet popcorn and other specialty items.
Before reopening, the building itself will undergo renovations aimed at improving energy efficiency and modernizing the space while preserving the character customers remember.
More than a candy store
For many Beaufort residents, The Chocolate Tree has always been about more than chocolate.
Over the years, the shop became part of the downtown Beaufort experience. Carriage tours regularly stopped at The Chocolate Tree, where visitors could step inside, cool off with a bottle of water and enjoy a piece of chocolate before continuing their tour through the historic district.
The shop also welcomed generations of local schoolchildren, who visited on field trips to learn how chocolate was made. For many Beaufort families, a trip to The Chocolate Tree became a childhood memory later shared with children and grandchildren of their own.
Others remember stopping in with parents or grandparents for a special treat, picking up chocolates for birthdays and anniversaries, or waiting each year for the appearance of the shop’s famous strawberry sign.
“The strawberries and the caramel apples,” Tim Green said. “It is one of those things that people look forward to.”
Some of the shop’s most popular seasonal offerings reflected its Lowcountry roots.
“We would sell as many alligators as we did bunny rabbits,” Pat Green said. “Well, they said we can get bunnies anywhere.”
The chocolate alligators became a favorite among tourists and locals alike, offering a uniquely Beaufort twist on a traditional holiday treat.
Pat Green said one of the greatest joys of operating The Chocolate Tree was watching families return year after year.
“Then brought their children and now their children bring their children,” she said.
When the store closed last year, the community response underscored just how much the shop meant to Beaufort.
“The last few days, the customers were crying,” Pat Green recalled.
Hollywood’s sweet tooth
The shop’s reputation extended far beyond Beaufort.
Over the years, The Chocolate Tree became a favorite stop for actors, filmmakers and production crews working in the Lowcountry.
During the filming of Forrest Gump, the shop supplied chocolates for cast and crew members who became regular customers. Tim said the store provided pounds of candy every few days while filming was underway.
While many visitors assume the famous box of chocolates featured in the movie came from The Chocolate Tree, Pat Green said that was never the case. The chocolates would not have held up under filming conditions, and the production used an empty box for the iconic scene.
The shop also became a favorite of visiting celebrities.
Pat Green recalled delivering chocolates to Sally Field while she was staying in Beaufort during filming. She also shared stories about Barbra Streisand, who personally called to thank the shop for its service after staying in Beaufort during the filming of The Prince of Tides. Pat Green also maintained a friendship with Beaufort author Pat Conroy, for whom the shop created a signature truffle.
Still, both Tim and Pat Green say the heart of The Chocolate Tree has always been the local community.
“Everybody has a story connected to The Chocolate Tree,” Tim Green said.
Looking toward the future
While the reopening is rooted in nostalgia, Tim Green says the goal is to ensure The Chocolate Tree remains part of Beaufort’s future as well as its past.
For a business that began in a Beaufort kitchen more than four decades ago, that possibility feels fitting.
Just as Tim Green grew up watching his mother build The Chocolate Tree from a home-based hobby into a Beaufort institution, he hopes the business will continue for generations to come. One of his daughters is already a professional chocolatier, and he would love to see her become part of the business one day.
This fall, when customers once again walk through the doors of The Chocolate Tree, they’ll find many of the same handmade treats they remember, from Tiger Paws and truffles to peanut brittle and English toffee.
They will also find something else – a family determined to preserve one of Beaufort’s most beloved traditions while building new ones for the generations that follow.
For longtime customers, the reopening is a chance to revisit cherished memories.
For the Green family, it is the beginning of the next chapter.
Delayna Earley, who joined The Island News in 2022, formerly worked as a photojournalist for The Island Packet/The Beaufort Gazette, as well as newspapers in Indiana and Virginia. She can be reached at delayna.theislandnews@gmail.com.