Forget the flowers: Colorado Chocolate Festival happens this weekend with 50,000 samples & Mother’s Day market

If your Mother’s Day plan involves a card from the drugstore and a vague promise to “do something nice,” consider this your intervention…

The Colorado Chocolate Festival — one of the state’s longest-running food festivals, now in its 15th-plus year — returns Saturday (May 9) at a new location, offering more than 50,000 chocolate samples from over 80 vendors, a dedicated Mother’s Day gift market, and a free cake cutting for moms. The timing is not a coincidence: the festival falls on the Saturday before Mother’s Day, making it a built-in excuse to treat the woman who raised you to 20,000 square feet of chocolate heaven.

The event runs 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday at the Delta by Marriott, 10 E. 120th Ave. in Northglenn, at the southeast corner of Interstate 25 and 120th Avenue. VIP ticket holders may enter at 10 a.m.

The festival fills more than 100 booths across the Delta by Marriott’s event space with chocolate candy, chocolate fountains, cakes, cookies, truffles, fudge, brownies, toffees, coffees and chocolate martinis — “everything chocolate will be here,” the organizers promise.

Vendors come from across the United States, and the festival uses a timed-entry model to keep the experience manageable and prevent overcrowding. Admission is limited to 1,000 guests per session.

Stage activities include Chocolate Bingo, a Chocolate Crown contest and a chocolate pudding contest.

The Mother’s Day angle is woven throughout. A Mother’s Day cake cutting — free for moms, with taste tickets required for everyone else — is a festival highlight.  The accompanying Mother’s Day Gift Market offers jewelry, clothing, imports, crafts and other non-chocolate gifts for those looking to pair the sweet with the sentimental.

Kids 10 and under get in free, and the festival includes dedicated children’s activities.

Tickets and logistics

• General admission: $6-$10, available in advance at cochocolatefests.com.
• VIP tickets: Include early entry at 10 a.m., reserved front-row seating at stage events, line-skipping at entry and designated VIP booths, and a VIP Indulgence Guide with a map showing which vendors have VIP-exclusive samples.
• Taste tickets: $12 for 12 tickets, used for sampling at select booths and for the Mother’s Day cake cutting (for non-moms).
• Parking: Hotel parking is free. Overflow parking is available at the Wagon Road Park-n-Ride at 600 E. 120th, just across I-25. A pedestrian tunnel connects the park-n-ride lot directly to the hotel.