If you landed here, it’s probably because you’re tired of preservatives and artificial ingredients in your chocolate. Or worse yet, paying high premium prices for chocolates that have virtually no chocolate in them. It’s safe to say, a majority of box store chocolates are low quality products being sold by international conglomerates with no concern for your health or the exploited communities harvesting their contaminated cacao. That’s why I’ve gone ahead and did the research for you and have compiled this evolving list of chocolate companies that you can safely support.
Below are the companies I’ve spent countless hours researching so you don’t have to. Many of them will be family owned or small businesses that lack the resources to rapidly grow. If you want good, ethical chocolate, start here.
If you’d like to see my list of high quality cocoa powders, you can visit my page on best cocoa powders over here.
The content below contains affiliate links. If you purchase something using my links, I may earn affiliate commission. Commission allows me to continue upgrading the website and researching new products (I am a one person show and this takes an incredible amount of time to research).
Prophecy Chocolate
Prophecy Chocolate focuses primarily on drinking chocolate, but also produces other chocolate products. I had the pleasure of meeting the owner, Mateo, at the Boston Food Festival in 2024, where he put on a demonstration of how the Inca people of Peru created their drinking chocolate. The chocolate is grown just down river of Machu Picchu using regenerative forestry by generational family farms. Prophecy Chocolate provides all the agricultural details of their cacao such as elevation, cacao varietal, and many other attributes to relating to the cacao and harvesting process.
Captain’s Chocolate
Captain’s Chocolate is a family owned chocolate maker based out of Wisconsin that specializes in cacao brew, cacao nibs, and chocolate covered products. They source their cacao directly from generational indigenous Costa Rican cacao farmers that belong to the BriBri and Cabecar tribes. The owners of Captain’s Chocolate conduct a ton of humanitarian work in Costa Ricas such as building houses and donating supplies. They make public their heavy metal testing and are the only company I’ve seen in the entire industry test for zero traceable lead (though cadmium is still higher than average).
Raaka Chocolate
Raaka Chocolate is a great example of a company that has scaled well past a small business but stayed true to their roots. They are highly transparent about where their cacao comes from, the cooperatives they work with, and even the prices they pay over the farm gate rates. They also offer the most unique flavor of chocolate you’ll find because their chocolate isn’t roasted, giving it a wholly different experience than traditional chocolate. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s worth a shot for the sustainability and ethical business practices, if nothing else.