TRANSPARENCY
TASTES DELICIOUS
TASTES DELICIOUS
We’re Beyond Good: both in name and practice. And we’re redefining quality and sustainability standards in the chocolate industry.
IT BETTER TASTE AMAZING - IT TOOK 6,000 YEARS TO MAKE.
We’re for flavor, not conformity. Madagascar’s cocoa crop has a heavy presence of criollo cocoa, Earth’s original and most flavorful variety of cocoa. This rare variety is used in less than 3% of the world’s chocolate. And if it tastes like your first bite of real chocolate…that’s because it is.
Some describe the flavor of Madagascar chocolate as fruity, with notes of cranberry, cherry, and raspberry.
REDEFINING SUSTAINABILITY
To us, “Fair Trade” wasn’t fair enough. For starters, it struck us as a top down approach to a problem that needs to be solved at the grassroots level. Secondly, we did not particularly enjoy outsourcing our impact to a third-party certification. Most importantly, it didn’t make any sense for the 100 cocoa farmers we work with in Madagascar. We work directly with farmers to grow premium cocoa so they can make a lot more money. So much money that some of them now have pick-up trucks. Which they lend to us when we need a ride.
Our work with cocoa farmers includes, but is not limited to:
Organic certification (this is a big deal)
Teaching fermentation and drying
Attending local weddings (okay, this isn’t that much work)
Feeding them our food when they stay with us
Eating their food when we stay with them (including tripe)
Buying an obscene amount of their cocoa
In the early days of working with cocoa farmers,
we’d finance their cocoa (cash crop) and even their rice (staple crop) during the low season.
That was ten years ago. Now, some of the farmers we work with lend us their pick-up trucks if we need to get around town.
In other words, we’re working towards a world where farmers make good money.
A world where farmers are not a statistic. A world where farmers are treated like people, and not photo ops. A world where farmers have pick-up trucks.
made at the source
The typical chocolate supply chain has anywhere from 3-5 middlemen sitting between the cocoa farmer and the chocolate maker. That doesn’t work for farmers and it doesn’t work for us.
So we put our money where our mouth is. We built a factory in Madagascar. And we built it as close as possible to our cocoa farmers. Making chocolate where the cocoa grows is our burning desire in life.
Our supply chain looks a lot better. We have zero middlemen between cocoa farmer and chocolate maker. In our experience, zero middlemen is better than 3-5 middlemen. They tend to get in the middle of things. Things like farmer profits.
Last year we made one million bars our new Madagascar chocolate factory. The rest of the bars were made in Europe by our trusted (and excellent) co-packer. In 2020 we think we can increase the number of bars made in Madagascar substantially.
CONSERVATION & COCOA
For most people, Madagascar evokes certain images. Lush vegetation. Endemic lemurs. Tropical birds. Rare chameleons. All thriving in a beautiful ecosystem of thick rainforest cover.
We wish that were true.
Maybe it was 250 years ago.
Truth is, that image is only found today in a few remnant forests and national parks. And, this is where we get really excited, in cocoa agroforestry. Cocoa agroforestry refers to the system of growing cocoa that involves shade trees and supports native wildlife.
With the help of Conservation International and the Bristol Zoo, we started to research the link between cocoa trees and lemur conservation. The researchers spent 6 months embedded with cocoa farmers, sleeping in forests, monitoring night cameras, and producing acoustic recordings. The results blew our minds. It wasn’t just that these cocoa trees could potentially support lemur populations; they already were. We found five species of endangered lemurs, 19 species of birds, the Madagascar flying fox, and more.
We knew that chocolate could be more than just okay. And, we were right.
Chocolate, at its best, can make each corner of the world happier, healthier, and tastier.
And to us, that’s the best difference between good and Beyond Good.
