Maya Moon Cacao is a true, indigenous-owned cacao company based out of La Laguna, Guatemala. Run by sisters Maura and Elizabet, Maya Moon puts mission and community above all else. If you want authentic drinking cacao, give Maya Moon a read.
Learn how the son of a Detroit firefighter took his father’s toffee recipe global. Andrew used his marketing skills to slingshot toffee back into the mainstream and has taken over TikTok with fierce political commentary. The toffee has gone viral and has been endorsed by a plethora of high profile influencers. But is the toffee as clean as it claims?
The ceremonial cacao market is full of brands that use the right language without doing the right work. “Direct trade,” “heirloom,” “ceremonial-grade”: these are labels that cost nothing to print on a bag. Backing them up is another matter entirely, and that’s where Cacao Laboratory steps up.
PERC coffee aims to lightheartedly bring you popular specialty coffee estates. The branding is colorful and welcoming and the coffee is sourced directly from the estates with traceability. Located around Atlanta, Georgia, you can drop by one of their many cafes and enjoy a fresh brew of PERC.
Trust Issues with Top Google Results One of the driving motivators for creating this blog was this very example I’m
Hydrangea Coffee Roasters Hydrangea Coffee Roasters is a specialty coffee roaster out of Berkeley, California. Their artwork is unique and
Looking at the top listings for “organic cacao powder” in Amazon, do you have any idea which are good? There’s lots of buzzwords and lots of healthy looking packaging. The results are going to surprise you. Click to find out which I have vetted to be a good purchase.
A highly curated and consistently updated list of recommended cocoa powders that I have personally researched and meet my rigorous standards.
Every cocoa powder company is going to tell you how organic they are and what sets them apart from the other hundreds of cocoa powders. Let’s see what DOES make them different.
Yup, I said it. Everyone gets this wrong ranging from dietitians, culinary experts, industry insiders, and consumers. I have seen a couple instances of articles getting it correctly, but it’s quite rare. There is no uniformity on what consists of cocoa and cacao, and you’ll hear so many different answers that you’ll walk away worse off than when you started.
Captain’s Chocolate is a micro-business that ethically sources their chocolate from Costa Rica, which is quite rare from my research, as oppose to Peru, Ecuador, and African countries. They test their product and post the results, which can be seen here. They are probably the smallest business I’ll be reviewing. This is the first chocolate company I’ve seen that contains no lead.
Embue Cacao at face value appears to be a great company. They have a quaint backstory, deeply intertwined spirituality, passionate for cacao, and believe in what they do, for better or for worse. But when a sudden change in sourcing shakes the foundation of their company, and the introduction of AI into their advertising, Embue Cacao is struggling to maintain the principles that got them started. Let’s find out what’s really happening at Embue Cacao.
Hu Chocolate is one of the best examples of a terrible company that hits all the trending buzzwords in organic chocolate and renders their meanings useless (just look at that packaging). They test high in heavy metals and will not publicly post their results, they greenwash their customers about it, and there’s no mention of how and where they source their chocolate from. Hu Chocolate was started by wealthy owners that wanted to own a business and they landed on chocolate. That’s about as deep as it goes.
Chocolate has gotten a bad reputation over the past couple of years, and deservedly so, about the concern of heavy
Jouvay Chocolate is a very small company founded by Larry and Paula Burdick of the famous chocolate company, L.A. Burdick. Ethically sourced and handcrafted from Grenada, it’s hard to beat the story of Jouvay.
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Moylings, formerly known as Little Moy, is a newly established (2021) organic clothing company for children that has also started
