I think y’all know by now how obsessed I am with bean-to-bar chocolate. Bean to bar not only means that the chocolate is made from scratch, starting with whole cocoa beans, but also that it’s created with a focus on quality, flavor, and ethics. Today we’re talking about the third point: ethics.
The mainstream chocolate industry is based on colonial structures that date back to the days of slavery. In my work as a writer and in Chocolate Noise’s chocolate tastings, we want to change that model: to pay farmers fairly and respect the work that they do, as well as honor ingredients like cocoa beans and sugar. I think of ethics in three categories: sustainability, transparency, and diversity/inclusion.
Our Commitment to Sustainability
For our chocolate tastings, we source chocolate from artisanal companies that consider their impact on their environment every day. For example, one of our favorite partners keeps their chocolate fresh with recyclable packaging. It looks like plastic but goes in the recycling bin!
Much of the chocolate we curate is certified organic, but even if it’s not, farmers always use organic growing methods and practices. Most cocoa farms are actually super biodiverse. For example, at Oko-Caribe in the Dominican Republic, cocoa beans grow among plantain, avocado, zapote, corn, beans, yucca, and cassava. In our current lineup, we taste a dark chocolate and milk chocolate made with these special beans.
Our Commitment to Transparency
One of bean-to-bar chocolate’s biggest gifts to the industry has been its transparency. A lot of companies now publish transparency reports that detail how much they paid for ingredients, information about the farm and the farmers, and a lot more. It’s a 180 from the industrial chocolate world, which operates with a lot of smoke and mirrors.
We curate chocolate from makers who source beans directly from farmers or from trusted third parties. One of these trusted parties is Uncommon Cacao, which has pioneered the transparency report in the chocolate world. You have probably already seen pages from it in our tastings, as we love to share this kind of information.
Our Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion
We’ve partnered with one of my good friends and DEI specialists, Sheena Daree Miller, to create a new kind of diversity, equity, and inclusion training program: one with CHOCOLATE! This may seem out of left field, but the history of chocolate includes systemic injustices that are present even to this day. In our online diversity training workshops, we draw parallels among these problems and the current issues in the workplace. Your team will taste and chat about three types of bean-to-bar chocolate, and then we’ll move on to a diversity training session tailored specifically for your industry. This is perfect for executive board members, managers of internship and mentorship programs, and teams dedicated to promoting inclusion and belonging. We strongly believe that diverse teams perform better, and we’re excited to offer this program!