From Chocolate to Dinosaurs: Mark Tarner’s South Bend Empire
But what makes Mark's story so remarkable is that those two passions, chocolate and dinosaurs, never faded as he grew older. And here on the city's west side are a couple of large attractions that pay tribute to Mark's two obsessions. A place where Willy Wonka meets Jurassic Park: the South Bend Chocolate Company and the Indiana Dinosaur Museum.
Mark Tarner, founder of the South Bend Chocolate Company and Indiana Dinosaur Museum, says he is “constantly trying to bring people together and build bridges and create new opportunities. I think primarily I'm sort of in the people business.”
Mark's introduction into the ‘people’ business began in the 1960s at this modest, family-run grocery store in tiny Leesburg, Indiana. Here, young Mark learned how to make candy and build a successful business under the guidance of his father, Don.
“I was the first kid to go to college. My dad never went to college; he always had a job. Looking back, it was probably where I grew up, the time I grew up, you know, we didn't have the internet or cell phones. So, I mean, what do you do? I just kind of followed in my father's footsteps when we lived above a grocery store in Leesburg. I remember going down for penny candy and straightening up the cans. I grew up in a family business, you know, the American dream. Leesburg was a great place to grow up. I delivered all the papers to everybody,” Tarner describes. “I understood capitalism as a child and understood its importance. It's always been sort of a trait of mine, and I think it's a great Hoosier trait.”
The History of the South Bend Chocolate Company
Mark started the South Bend Chocolate Company in the early 1990s with little more than a shoestring budget and a few family members willing to back his strong vision and sweet dreams.
Within a few years, Mark and his staff were cooking up more than 500 different varieties of chocolates and candy. The chocolate company soon grew into one of the top mom-and-pop shops in the state.
“I told millions of people, ‘hey, we’re Indiana’s Chocolate Company!’ It has to be good, it has to be better than my competition’s, and you have to like the price that you can buy it for. Basically, my role at the South Bend Chocolate Company has been and will be to market and to build the brand,” states Tarner.
The South Bend Chocolate Company has been an important part of the city's business landscape for more than three decades. Mark's latest passion project, the Indiana Dinosaur Museum, is a new venture launched in 2024 after several years of planning and construction.
The Inspiration Behind the Indiana Dinosaur Museum
Tarner recalls, “I was a nine-year-old. I thought I was an explorer and I would go to Mars or something. I have always had that adventure in me, and being from small-town Indiana, I didn't think I could ever do it, but I think it was always in my heart.”
At the invitation of a University of Notre Dame professor, and with the encouragement of his dinosaur-loving daughter, Mark and his family traveled to Montana in the early 2000s to join a dinosaur dig.
“I'd never really been out west. I fell in love with the adventure,” says Tarner. “But the springboard of it is my 10-year-old daughter said, ‘hey, Dad, I want to dig up a dinosaur.’ So we're coming back [from the dig], and I said, ‘well, we’re going to do this.’”
The experience was life-altering. Mark began reading anything and everything he could find about paleontology, and he started conversations with some of the nation's most accomplished scientists and scholars.
“I started suddenly digging around 2000-2001—and you just can't be an Olympic athlete overnight; it takes years—so I just partnered with people, people taught me. I'm bold enough to go ask people to help me. Some of the best paleontologists in the country have helped me,” Tarner says.
In order to stake a claim for his own dig site, Mark must work closely with western ranchers and landowners. Then he and his team can begin their search for fossilized clues to America's prehistoric past.
“I love ranchers; they're incredibly intelligent, hardworking. If I can think of any class of America that embodies who I want to be, it's a rancher,” states Tarner. “To gain their trust takes time. It's not something that money can buy. If people trust me, I'm going to do what they say I'm going to do. That's another Hoosier trait; we're trustworthy and honest and hardworking. That really, really benefited me.”
Inside the Indiana Dinosaur Museum
The Indiana Dinosaur Museum is an 8,000-square-foot warehouse that Mark turned into a huge educational facility for students of all ages.
“I'm trying to explain complicated ideas in a very simple way, visually—people get what they see. You can see we all come from eggs. Dinosaurs come from eggs, turtles come from eggs, we come from eggs. You can see that we have turtles and we talk about the evolution of turtles. It's one thing to see a turtle, a 65 million-year-old turtle. It's another thing to hold a live one in your hand and see that's 250 million years of evolution,” Tarner explains. “We have a great lab, there are people actually in the lab. We have a dinosaur with skin on it. These are some of the highlights, I think.”
The entire campus that Mark and his staff manage expands 100 acres across the Continental Divide, which just so happens to run through this property. Here, guests can watch live buffalo roam across expansive plains and meadows.
“I was here this weekend, and I heard kids come up [to their grandparents] and say, ‘Grandpa, thank you so much for this day.’ To see children reward people they love, and then maybe they can learn something together, primarily, I want people to take away that life is an adventure. What I've taken away with this is self-respect. I think that's the rarest commodity. So I respect what I've done. I haven't done it perfectly. The greatest gift I’ve given myself is that I took a big league swing, and I do it every day. I think sometimes I look and see that it's a miracle that I am where I am. But it's been purposeful; it's honest. Hopefully it’ll be part of the Indiana story and the South Bend story,” concludes Tarner.
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The above video is a clip from Journey Indiana from WTIU. You can watch more segments and full episodes at pbs.org/show/journey-indiana/