The 2023 Good Food Awards ceremony was held this past weekend in Portland, and we're excited and proud to announce our Ucayali bar is a winner. This is our 6th consecutive win! Check out the complete list of winners here. In addition to celebrating exceptional craft products, the Good Food Foundation requires that all entrants meet strict environmental and social responsibility standards. Also, each region is limited to only three winners in each category, which makes this award even more...

We've read many articles over the years describing the potential health benefits of dark chocolate, but haven't posted about them. Why? Well, one reason is we're not medical professionals, and can't independently verify any of the claims we're reading. Another is that there's an obvious conflict of interest when a chocolate maker mentions how healthy chocolate could be. But, at this point we've seen so many articles referencing studies which suggest non-alkalized dark chocolate may have numerous health benefits we...

Understanding where your food comes from is incredibly important. Most people usually have very little understanding of where their food is grown, the process by which it reaches them, and the prices paid to everyone involved in the journey. Not having even a basic understanding of food supply chains helps give rise to numerous problems, including the entrenchment of unsustainably low prices paid to the farmers at the beginning of the chain. This is the case with cacao - the...

The earthquake in Turkey has caused massive devastation and suffering, and created a humanitarian crisis. Two of the hardest hit cities are Gaziantep and Şanlıurfa, which is where the mint for our Peppermint bar and the Urfa Chili for our Black Urfa Chili bar are from. We source both from Burlap and Barrel, and they source directly from the farmers in those regions. As soon as we heard news of the quake we checked with the owners of Burlap and...

Chocolate comes from a fruit! In this video from our sourcing trip to Ecuador we show you how to open a ripe cacao pod. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPR2f6ahFH8  

When we communicate our chocolate’s value proposition, one of the terms we use is Bean to Bar. Being craft chocolate makers so heavily involved with the weight and intricacies of daily production, it’s easy to forget that many consumers still don’t fully understand the depth of information contained in that loaded term. Actually, it’s not forgetting; we don’t often have the opportunity or the universal platform to dive deep and explain Bean to Bar’s complexity, nuance, and real-life implications. We...

Popular Science included our Complete Collection in their top twelve list of the best food gifts to give this holiday season! If you think chocolate has nothing to do with science think again - from the aerobic and anaerobic reactions in the bean fermentation process, to the Maillard reaction in roasting, to the polymorphous crystals present in the cocoa butter and also the hundreds of flavor precursors in cacao that react in different ways during the coaching process, chocolate is...

The Northwest Chocolate Festival is the largest craft chocolate festival in the country, and this year we were very happy to be back at the festival in person! It was an incredibly fun time, and it was awesome to see so many of our chocolate friends after so much time apart. As part of the festival they announce the winners of the Chocolate Alliance Awards, which are judged by some of the most experienced and respected chocolate experts in the...

We love discovering new flavors, and trying different flavor combinations in our bars. The holidays give us a good excuse to let our creativity run free, and this season we're very excited about our upcoming "Winter Maple with Spiced Brown Butter" bar. This one has a little bit of everything: butter from High Lawn Farm in Lee, MA, which we brown to toasty perfection, maple sugar from Severance Maple in Northfield, MA, and cardamom from the single origin spice masters...

Affet two years of virtual gatherings we were excited to finally attend The Northwest Chocolate Festival in-person this year! It was two nonstop days of chocolate sampling and education, and it was incredibly energizing to once again be able to connect with people face to face. We saw a lot of old friends and made a lot of new ones. There were also numerous presentations about all things chocolate and Monica was on a panel for the Fine Chocolate Industry...