Elaine Read & Matt Weyandt have stamped the most important values from their previous careers into every facet of their craft chocolate manufacturing business.

In this episode of Logistics with Purpose, host Kristi Porter welcomes Elaine Read and Matt Weyandt, co-founders of Xocolatl Small Batch Chocolate. The Atlanta-based company sources cacao directly from farmers and cooperatives in Central and South America, and the Caribbean, and makes chocolate bars in small batches.

Listen in and learn more about Read and Weyandt’s unique story and commitment to sustainability through their organization’s carbon neutrality, packaging, and more.

Intro/Outro (00:00:02):

Welcome to Logistics with Purpose presented by Vector Global Logistics. In partnership with Supply chain. Now we spotlight and celebrate organizations who are dedicated to creating a positive impact. Join us for this behind the scenes glimpse of the origin stories change, making progress and future plans of organizations who are actively making a difference. Our goal isn’t just to entertain you, but to inspire you to go out and change the world. And now here’s today’s episode of Logistics with Purpose.

Kristi Porter (00:00:35):

Hi again, and thanks for joining me for another episode of Logistics with Purpose. I am your host today, Christie Porter, chief marketing Officer at Vector Global Logistics, and happily a co-host of this podcast. I’m excited to bring you some fellow Atlanta today. They are doing some great things. We’ve been wanting to talk to them for a while, and so we’re excited to have them on the podcast. So Elaine Reed, Matt Wyon, tell us everything about yourselves and we’re excited to get to know you, but welcome to the show and thanks so much for being here.

Matt Weyandt (00:01:11):

Thanks for having us.

Elaine Read (00:01:12):

Thank you for having us.

Kristi Porter (00:01:12):

Yes, Elaine and I met a couple of years ago, so this is a long continuance of a conversation that we’re excited to let everyone in on. So to start you off, I’m going to get our brains rolling with just some quick answer questions so you’ll answer with just the first thing that pops in your head and I will do my best not to ask follow-up questions because I always find this so interesting. If You could learn a new skill instantly, what would it be?

Elaine Read (00:01:36):

It would be to write faster. I am an edit as you go, writer and writing is a big part of what I do, and I would love to instantly have the skill of being a faster writer

Kristi Porter (00:01:48):

As a fellow writer. I great. Matt, early birder, night Owl.

Matt Weyandt (00:01:52):

I used to be a night owl. Now I am both, I think probably.

Kristi Porter (00:01:58):

So you just don’t sleep much. Right,

Matt Weyandt (00:02:00):

Exactly.

Elaine Read (00:02:00):

Got

Kristi Porter (00:02:00):

It. Okay. Elaine, what’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?

Elaine Read (00:02:05):

Kind of from an odd place, but I use it both professionally and personally, but it is to be more opportunistic. I was at the time living in Venice Beach and I was out surfing early one morning and letting all of these tiny little waves pass me by and I think I was sitting out there for over an hour and some other surfer just paddled past me. Ollie said was You need to be more opportunistic. And then just kept going, and that thought really meant something to me that day out on the water. And then I think that the way that I’ve applied it is just realizing that there’s so many little things out there that we might not even notice that they’re there and we should grab them.

Kristi Porter (00:02:45):

I love that. That’s awesome. Matt, what’s something on your bucket list?

Matt Weyandt (00:02:49):

I would like to high think Patagonia.

Kristi Porter (00:02:52):

Oh, okay. That’s a really good goal. Keep that on there. And Elaine, if you had a superpower, what would it be?

Elaine Read (00:02:58):

I would to be able to speak to anyone in the language that they speak. Ooh,

Kristi Porter (00:03:03):

Good answers. Thank you for that. That was a great way to get it started off and I love all of those answers. Let’s talk a little bit now as we move more into the interview phase. I’d love to hear a little bit about both of you. I’ve heard of course what you’re up to now we’ve connected on that, but I don’t know your origin stories. So tell me a little bit about where you grew up in your childhood.

Elaine Read (00:03:24):

I had a pretty Stanford childhood. I grew up in the Washington DC suburbs in Virginia, and I grew up in a multiracial family. So my mother is from Korea. She came to this country in the late sixties pursuing a master’s degree. So she had entered into a master’s program out in Oregon, which is where she met my father. His background is European family members, been in this country for generations. So I think that’s probably the most standout thing that shaped my childhood is just growing up in that environment.

Kristi Porter (00:03:58):

Absolutely. Matt, what about you?

Matt Weyandt (00:04:00):

Yeah, I’m actually from Atlanta and grew up in the city in the eighties and nineties, and I think it was really, that experience really informed me in a lot of ways with my dad worked in city government and so he worked for Andrew Young, he was mayor of Atlanta. And being around people like that, John Lewis was our congressman. We were just various sort of, the civil rights movement was very present. The leaders of the Civil rights movement were just people that we interacted with. They were there in the city. You would run into John Lewis at the grocery store or we would go to events, a mayor or something. And so I think that from an early age that perspective was kind of there and it was just sort of part of everyday life and really kind of informs my worldview from an early point

Kristi Porter (00:04:53):

For sure. Two very interesting and different perspectives and congrats on being an Atlanta native who is still in Atlanta. Those are rear and rare these days.

Matt Weyandt (00:05:03):

I left for a little bit and then I came back. So

Kristi Porter (00:05:06):

You came back. It’s a great city. Well, tell me a little bit, Matt, we’ll start with you because I feel like that leads really into what you were just talking about. What’s a story from your early years that now you can look back and say that really helped shape who you are now?

Matt Weyandt (00:05:19):

Well, it’s a lot of the stuff I was just mentioning. I did sort of a art major in high school and we painted a civil rights mural in the hallway, and our son’s actually starting high school next year at the same school that I went to and went back and the mural’s still there, which is kind of amazing. But for the dedication of the mural, John Lewis came and spoke and everything. And then I went into politics after school after college and ended up working in my last political job before I left. And we went on this adventure to start this chocolate company was actually being his campaign manager in 2012. And that was really sort for me, kind this full circle kind of moment. And it was, I think the company was us finding a way to engage with a lot of these same issues in a totally different format than know what we had before.

Kristi Porter (00:06:11):

Wow. Been a privilege to spend time with him for sure. What about you, Elaine?

Elaine Read (00:06:16):

I suppose on the note of the biracial, I guess, background that I grew up in. So I was fortunate enough that my brother and I were able to travel back and forth between Korea and the us. One particular trip stands out, which is a time when my brother, who’s two years older than me, I think it was the summer before I started third grade, so the summer before he started fifth grade. So we’re both minors, we’re both well under 12. And my parents packed us up on a plane and shipped us to my grandparents in Korea. So we traveled ourselves unaccompanied minors at that time, flying to Korea involved multiple stops and it was a longer journey than it is now. And I think that both the combination of being able to go back and forth between Korea and the US shaped a lot of my understanding of the world and people, I feel like I gained a sort of cultural fluency or if not fluency, at least a real sort of comfort in my own skin being in different cultures. And then the one particular experience of traveling on our own as very young children I think is what probably kickstarted my level of comfort in travel and just the sense that things will work out and you should get on that plane and you should go somewhere. Yes,

Kristi Porter (00:07:31):

Another good life lesson for sure. Well, Matt, let’s jump back to your career. You alluded a little bit you were on a political path. You also obtained a degree in African-American studies because you were looking for a way to make a difference. So that thread has certainly continued with you. Why African-American Studies and what did you discover through that process?

Matt Weyandt (00:07:51):

Well, when I started, I was at Emory here in Atlanta that didn’t go far away from school. And when I got there, I didn’t have a plan. I didn’t know really what I wanted to major in. I started taking courses that I was interested in and then realized after a year and a half that I was sort of halfway down the trajectory to African-American Studies major. But I think the thing that also appealed to me about that program at Emory specifically was there was a real focus on, it wasn’t just academic, there was real focus on social activism too. And so part of the senior year project program was you get an internship in some sort of social activism kind of role. And so I ended up interning with Shirley Franklin when she was running for mayor. She ended up becoming the first woman elected mayor in Atlanta. And that was started my senior year and it was I think four or five of us working out of the basement of our house. And I was licking envelopes and those people going, people still sent mail it, but it was close. It was close. I wanted to be involved in trying to make the world a better place. I mean as corny as that sounds. And so that was really what kind of drew me towards that program. And then that trajectory into political work after college is what launched that.

Kristi Porter (00:09:10):

Yeah. I’m now also noticing a trend of being in on the ground level or early years of things as well, which also seemed to probably lay a path for entrepreneurship down the line. What is it about early stage things that get you excited?

Matt Weyandt (00:09:26):

Yeah, I mean, running a campaign is very much starting a small business. You start with nothing. You have a candidate basically you’ve got to raise money, you’ve got to raise funds, you’ve got to build the infrastructure, find a campaign, office hire staff, trainings, all of this stuff. It’s intense. They last a year and a half, and so you sort of build up this organization and then election day happens, it’s all gone. Then you’d start all over again. And I spent basically 12, 13 years doing that. So I didn’t really go into policy side or anything. I kind of stayed on the campaign side and it was really good practice for starting a business. I had basically started eight or nine different businesses over the course of that time. So

Kristi Porter (00:10:08):

That’s them. That’s a great way of looking at it as well. It sounds exhausting, which is also entrepreneurship and learning how to get through that exhaustion or wake up and do it again another day. Elaine, you graduated from the University of Virginia, then you left to work in Malawi and Eastern Africa as a Peace Corps volunteer. So I can’t remember if I’ve actually talked to anybody who’s been a part of the Peace Corps before. So I’m interested to hear more about that experience. Did you choose Malawi? Yeah. Tell us a little bit about your time there.

Elaine Read (00:10:36):

Yeah, so the impetus, I’ll be completely honest, was just a sense of adventure. My family growing up, a lot of families subscribed to the National Geographic, and so I always had these magazines of photos around the world and something about Africa always piqued my interest and I always felt like my heart was drawn towards that continent even though I had never been there. Prior to joining the Peace Corps in the Peace Corps, at least the time that I served, you could put in vague geographic preferences, not country specific, and you weren’t guaranteed that you would get your preference. And I think the idea behind that was to keep an open mind. But I was lucky enough to be placed in what’s considered by some East Africa or Central Africa. It’s kind of right off the eastern coast. And I was a secondary secondary school English teacher.

(00:11:23):

I was teaching grammar vocabulary literature to all four levels of the high school in a very rural village. So my school had about 200 students from our equivalent of freshman year through senior year, and I got to teach all of them in their classes. And I spent two years really learning a lot about, I think myself, but a lot about the world too. And I remember having this epiphany one day as I was teaching class and looking at the kids who I think it must have been a hot day or something, kids were a little bit distracted and I’m kind of teaching, but I’m sort of watching them too as I’m teaching and my brain is firing and I’m thinking about how certain students reminded me exactly of myself or my friends when we were in high school because I was only a few years.

(00:12:10):

This is directly out of college, so I wasn’t that much older than my students were. And I think the realization that I could see myself and people I really cared about, and the people here in this really rural village in Malawi, you would think that there weren’t a lot of commonalities. But I think for myself, it was that epiphany moment in realizing that I think across the world, people are more or less the same. Our cultures might be the things that give us differences, but I think in terms of motivation and drive and what you want out of life in the world, I think that that’s largely the same no matter where you are in the world.

Kristi Porter (00:12:49):

How long were you there?

Elaine Read (00:12:50):

So service is two years and three months. So is there, I see it a little bit longer afterwards. It was a little bit hard for me to go, you can receive cash in lieu of a plane to get home. And I used that cash to just travel through Southern Africa. And at some point I think my parents wanted me back, so they offered to buy me a plane ticket battle.

Kristi Porter (00:13:10):

That’s awesome. Malawi is not a country I feel like we hear a lot about. What did you learn about the people or the country that you’d love to share?

Elaine Read (00:13:18):

Unfortunately, when Malawi does make the news, it’s usually because of some disaster, whether it’s health related. So it was a country that has been struck pretty hard by HIV. And then also with climate change, you hear a little bit less about the effects on Malawi because it is a smaller country. But when you hear about the typhoons and floods and droughts that are hitting East Africa, Malawi is affected as well. The motto of the country is it’s the warm heart of Africa. And I think that because it is not a very well-known country outside of Africa, so for people coming onto the African continent who are traveling, I think it’s not a lot of preconceived ideas about Malawi. And I think that the way that has benefited travelers coming into the country is that I think that it’s easier for them to maintain a lot of their culture and who they are instead of trying to meet these expectations that tourists have of the locals. And so for me, it just felt like a very sincere and open place. And I remember noticing that I lived there for a little over two years, but I would run into travelers who are traveling through the country either for work or on adventure, and consistently heard people say that they were surprised that Malawi was their favorite country in their travels. I think again, because people didn’t know enough about it to have expectations. And I think that by not having expectations, were not forcing people to behave the way we think they’re going to.

Kristi Porter (00:14:42):

Yeah. Well, it sounds like you were always drawn to Africa and it sounded like you ended up in the right place to be drawn there as well. That’s really amazing. Matt, let’s talk about Chaco lot. I hope I’m saying that right, small batch chocolate. Who doesn’t want to talk about chocolate? You get to talk about it every day. You guys are founded in Atlanta. So first of all, before this company became a thing, it sounds very natural now in hearing more about your backgrounds, but you made a choice to leave your careers and moved with your families to Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica. Why that decision? Why Costa Rica?

Matt Weyandt (00:15:17):

Well, Elena and I met actually in 2004. She worked on some political campaigns for a little period of time as well. And we met doing that and we traveled in Central America after the election in 2004 and for about, I don’t know, five, six months, something like that. And we went through this little town border of Viejo. It’s right down almost at the border with Panama. And we were there pretty briefly. It was like a day or so, but we really loved it. And fast forward about eight, nine years later, we were both kind of burned out on the work that we were doing at the time. And at that point had two young children, a three-year old and a four month old, and we decided we wanted a family reset. I mean, as you mentioned before, I’ve been doing political campaigns and that is pretty grueling work.

(00:16:08):

And I wanted to reset my balance of work, family life, and we had talked about going to Costa Rica or going somewhere outside of the country for a long time. Elaine had, I think, been ready to do it for quite a while. So in any case, we didn’t really have a plan, but we just knew we were going to kind of take a break, go down there and see what would happen. And we thought there was some chance we could figure out a way to sort of be down there longer. We knew we had at least a six month sort of window, didn’t really know anything about chocolate before we went down there. So we weren’t going down there for chocolate, but we met people that were growing cacao and they were making chocolate, and it was sort of our treat for ourselves. We were on a pretty limited budget and we would get these little 30 gram bars of chocolate or something like that, that we would get from the local farmer’s market that they had every Saturday day in town.

(00:17:03):

And we kind of share them in the hammock at night after we got the kids to bed. And it was really, the chocolate was a really amazing chocolate. It was different. It was richer than the chocolate that we had in the past. And we started to learn about cacao and chocolate making and sort of understanding what made the chocolate different. It got more and more interesting. And then also as we started to learn about all of the issues around chocolate, environmental, social justice, economic justice with farmers and all those pieces started to click into place for some of the work that we had done before and how this seemed a really interesting way to engage some of these issues in a way that was maybe a little more fun than some of the work, at least that I had done in the past. And so that was kind of the whole impetus.

(00:17:50):

And so we came back to Atlanta. I think we’d been in Costa Rica about seven months or so, and we really decided before we left, we were like, this is what we’re going to do. To the point where we had actually knew that there was this food all being developed right around the corner from our apartment that we had rented out while we were down in Costa Rica. And we called from the jungle, we looked up online, found the broker and said, Hey, we’re chocolate makers down here sourcing ca cow. We totally kind of B made it sound like we knew what we were doing. And so we were pretty fully committed. We came back to Atlanta with a duffle bag of about 50 pounds of cocoa beans and started making chocolate out of our apartment and went from there.

Kristi Porter (00:18:30):

That’s amazing. And so let’s jump back to Costa Rica for a minute. What was it like raising two very small kids in that environment? I mean, was it what you expected? Was it harder? Was it easier? What was it like compared to what you think it would’ve been in the United States?

Matt Weyandt (00:18:44):

Well, it wasn’t really a vacation.

Kristi Porter (00:18:47):

That’s true. You don’t

Matt Weyandt (00:18:47):

Really go on vacations. I have a friend who said this, when you have kids up to a certain age, you’re not really ever going on vacation. You’re going on trips with them.

Elaine Read (00:18:55):

So we had a fraction of the baby gear that people have, and I’m grateful to that. So instead of a stroller, I had a sarong that I would just tie around my bike. It was actually a trick I learned from Malawi. So that was the way that women would carry babies around, and I learned how to do that. We had a little plastic bucket that we would take to the beach, and that’s where we would put our four month old in. I mean, we wouldn’t leave her. One of us would always be sitting with her.

Kristi Porter (00:19:21):

She was we’re good parents we’re

Elaine Read (00:19:22):

Good parents, she couldn’t be crawling in this. It was just our way of containing her. The toys that they played with were the natural items that were around. So the flowers that were growing on the bushes, just natural things. And that minimal amount of baggage and equipment is really in line with I think my minimalist tendencies. And so I do feel very grateful that we were in a place where we were forced to even more than we probably would’ve chosen, but forced to go very minimal. And it’s really eye-opening to see how little you really need to have and still be able to raise young children and keep them engaged with the world and safe and happy. And there’s so little of the plastic contraptions that are out there that are actually necessary.

Kristi Porter (00:20:08):

Yeah, absolutely. That makes a lot of sense. And it makes also a big difference when you’re having to carry around manually versus load, throw things in an SUV and drive out to the next destination as well. Well talk to me, Elaine about the origins of the name because it is a unique name, it has a very unique meaning. Well, I guess first let me ask, so you decided you could do chocolate. There is, what you could have done is just tell people about chocolate. You could have sold somebody else’s chocolate, you could have done a variety of things. Why did you decide to go ahead and make your own?

Elaine Read (00:20:42):

I think that it goes back to the previous careers that Matt and I had. So I think almost from day one, we saw the through line between crafting food with intention and issues of sustainability and social justice and transparency. So as awareness is growing in the world and in the US among consumers who want to know where their food is coming from, what farms is it coming from? How is it being grown? Once chocolate became industrially produced in the 18 hundreds and maybe even a bit earlier, chocolate has had a pretty opaque process. I think that there was a very industrial process for making chocolate. When the industrial revolution rolled along. It allowed chocolates to be made more quickly and more cheaply. And as soon as food is produced quickly and cheaply, there are a lot of negative factors that come into play right now.

(00:21:36):

The vast majority of the chocolate that the world consumes is coming from West Africa, cocoa grown in West Africa, and there are really quite shocking labor issues around a lot of that cocoa that’s grown. So whether it is child laborers, whether it’s laborers, including children being trafficked onto cocoa plantations to work, or whether it’s farmers who are willingly farming the cacao, but being paid bottom of the barrel prices for their work and their labor, that has been sadly the story of chocolate since it became an industrial item and since it became mass produced. And while as Matt mentioned, we got to know and became friends with some local cacao farmers and chocolate makers, we learned that there is a real art to making chocolate in small batches. And that to produce food, I think thoughtfully in a way that benefits the consumer. So we are using minimal ingredients or fillers that are more usually added to facilitate the production of cacao and not because it adds to the actual food that the consumer is consuming.

(00:22:41):

Craft food can benefit the consumers, it can benefit the producers as well. So when you’re working in small quantities with intention, there’s a lot more emphasis placed on knowing who the people in your supply chain are and working directly with them. And so that was pretty evident to us from the beginning. And so when we thought about going into chocolate, it was always with this idea that we were going to work directly with farmers or cooperatives of farmers, hopefully become beneficial partners to them where we can be mutually beneficial, where they can kind of expect us to place orders on a regular basis and work with them on their labor and that we could have a good steady supply of high quality cocoa. There’s something different than the commodity products that you can buy a lot more cheaply.

Kristi Porter (00:23:28):

Yeah, for sure. Thank you for explaining that. It is amazing when you look at the back of a cheap product and see all the different ingredients and how small chocolate is actually kick out, is represented within that ingredient list can definitely taste the difference when you taste something like yours. So tell me about the name. Where did that come from? How did you discover it? Yeah,

Elaine Read (00:23:48):

So anyone who is a marketing professional would probably tell us not to choose a name that starts with an X is unclear on pronunciation. And has you

Kristi Porter (00:23:59):

Notice I’m throwing that question to you instead of trying to pronounce it myself? Yes.

Elaine Read (00:24:04):

Yeah. So we tossed the name around, but it was one of the first names that we wanted to name the company. And then we kept giving ourselves reasons to kind of poke and prod at it and see if it was the right choice because of the difficulties and a name starting with the letter X. But we always came back to it. We loved the meaning of it. Soat is the original Aztec word for chocolate. It comes from the nawa language that was spoken by Aztecs, Mayans and other pre-Columbian civilizations in the Americas. And chop exo COL meant bitter and al meant water. And the reason that that word was used for what we now know of as chocolate is because it was consumed as a drink. So cacao beans were roasted, they were ground down, water cornmeal spices were added to it to become a very frothy, probably quite bitter, but very fortifying drink. And so with the name Bitter Water, we liked that we could use a word that would kind of ground our company and the storytelling of this product. And then the fact that it ends in a TL for Atlanta kind of brings both another part of the world and another time and connects it to what we’re doing present day in Atlanta.

Kristi Porter (00:25:14):

Yes, it’s fantastic. And because it starts with an X, I’m going to figure out how to use that in my next Scrabble game as well for, but I love it. I love the tie-in to a TL as well. So for those of you who are just listening, it is X-O-C-O-L-A-T-L. When you’re Googling, you get that right. So you talked about storytelling. You’ve talked a little bit about the history and where you guys came up with this idea and how you really wanted to impact lives. You mentioned the supply chain, so tell us a little bit about how that is happening and some success stories.

Matt Weyandt (00:25:48):

Yeah. Well, as I mentioned, when we first came back, we had a duffle bag full of 50 beans, but 50 pounds,

Kristi Porter (00:25:55):

50

Matt Weyandt (00:25:56):

Pounds, sorry, not 50 beans. It’s

Kristi Porter (00:25:57):

Been a

Elaine Read (00:25:57):

Very small chocolate

Kristi Porter (00:25:58):

Fire. And just that would’ve

Matt Weyandt (00:26:01):

Gone through that even quicker. And so we had to kind of figure out a sourcing strategy. We didn’t really know how to import beans into the country. And so one thing that was great at the time, this was 2013, was the craft chocolate world. There had already been like one or maybe sort of on the second wave of craft chocolate makers that was starting up, and it was still a relatively small group. It still is a relatively small group. And we found that folks were actually very welcoming and it wasn’t hyper competitive. It wasn’t people throwing elbows, it was more of this collaborative spirit and this rising side lifts all boats kind of notion, which it was really the common mindset that this was about educating people about chocolate. And as Elaine talked about the industrialization and commodification of chocolate, this was trying to get people to reconsider chocolate as something, because historically it had actually, it would been a fine food, it was only with industrialization that really became commodified.

(00:27:03):

And so we started reaching out to other established, but compared to the big guys, still relatively small chocolate makers, and started developing relationships and talked to Dan and JL Rattigan and Asheville, North Carolina, the owners of French broad chocolate were incredibly helpful early on, put us in touch with some other chocolate makers. And we started kind of buying beans through some other chocolate makers. And there are a few boutique cacao brokers, and they kind of worked just with craft chocolate makers. So originally we were kind of buying some beans through some of those groups, but we really knew we always wanted to directly source our cacao from the farmer. Usually they’re farmer that are selling beans. And so in 2016 maybe or 2017, we had kind of first opportunity to visit a co-op with farmers in Peru. And it was actually through a local coffee roaster here in Georgia that had formed a coffee buying.

(00:28:01):

And they were actually one of the very early kind of direct coffee and had been purchasing coffee beans from this co-op of farmers in Pango, Peru for 15 years I think at that point. And we had a conversation with a founder of that coffee co-op who said they have cacao, I don’t know it’s any good, but you guys should go and check it out. And they’re looking for places. They’re actually finding that with climate change, the cacao is starting to grow a little bit higher up the hill, the cacao typically grows a little lower than coffee. And so the coffee was kind of struggling and the cacao was growing a little more, so you guys should go down and check it out. And then through the grapevine we heard that there were one or two other craft shopping makers that had also heard about the same.

(00:28:43):

And so we kind of went down together as a group and met the farmers and toured the co-op. And then over the course of the next couple of years, started bringing beans in and kind of in an informal co-op ourselves started purchasing beans together. We were too small to import a container load of beans on our own, but if we kind of got together pulled our resources, we could bring a container load in and then kind of split it up once it got here. And so that was kind of the beginning of us being able to meet directly with farmers, negotiate a fair price directly with the co-op purchase, send the money directly to the co-op as opposed to going through anybody else. And then kind of bringing those beans in. And now we’re doing that with beans in Nicaragua and beans in Uganda and Tanzania as well. So those are the four origins of beans that we have kind of workforce beans for the last probably five years now. That’s

Kristi Porter (00:29:35):

Awesome. Many of us will unfortunately never know the people who grow our food cultivate it from the ground. What was it like to meet the farmers? What did you learn about them? What did they have to say and why this matters to them?

Matt Weyandt (00:29:49):

Well, the farmers know a lot more about cow than we do. So if there was a lot of learning from our end, and a lot of people I guess don’t really know everything that goes into making chocolate before we even get the cocoa beans. So it’s a really labor intensive process. The trees takes about four or five years before they start producing fruit from when they’re planted. They produce these pods, and so we call them cocoa beans. They’re really the seeds inside the pods. So they’re the seeds of this fruit. Each pod has to be manually harvested. There’s no mechanized way to do this. So this, and they’ll grow right off of the tree trunk, but they’ll also grow up in the branches of the tree. And so you have long pole with a kind of sharp hook on the end where you cut the pods off, and then once the pods have been harvested, each pod has to be chopped open with a machete by hand, and then the pulp and the seeds are taken out.

(00:30:37):

And then usually in the case of these co-ops, the individual farmers, they’ll do all of this process on their farm and then they take buckets of the pulp and seeds in Pan Goa, for example, at the co-op, they have essential ferment area. And so cocoa beans are actually fermented and then sun dried and it’s a longer process. Coffee goes through a slightly similar process, but it’s a much shorter process. Cocoa beans usually take about a week to ferment, and then another usually about two weeks to dry. And so there’s a lot of hands involved in that. And so the co-ops usually, and pango at least for example, they have workers that work at the co-op, the farmers, the co-op’s, selling the beans, paying for the workers there, the money going back to the farmers as well, that’s a farmer run. And so the first couple of times it was really us learning more about the process.

(00:31:29):

Fermentation is really an art and the science, and so there’s each place where you’re fermenting beans is going to be a little different based on the weather, the altitude. And so there’s a lot of knowledge, expertise and a lot of work that goes into it that I think when we’re eating at a chle bar, we’re not really thinking about all of these hands that are involved in producing it. And so I think we had seen some of that when we had been in Costa Rica, but really the first couple times down there was really us just kind of soaking up knowledge about what it takes to make a good cocoa bean. Because if you don’t have a cocoa bean that’s not from good genetics combined with a good post harvests process of fermenting and drying it, then there’s not really a lot we can do on our end to then turn that into a good chop bar. So we’re really dependent on the labor and the work of the farmers, the people working at the co-op permit here and things like that. So that was really the big takeaway early on was we really need these. We’re not doing them any favors. We really need them and the work that they’re doing.

Elaine Read (00:32:31):

I would say to add to that, one of the stories that we heard over and over and over again was from the older farmers who are really, maybe even some cases, great grandparents who are saying that their children and their grandchildren who have gone into the cities to go to school really don’t see a future for them in becoming a cow farmer. And I think the emotional reaction from the farmers that we talked to were very supportive of their kids finding other opportunities maybe in a more urban or modern sort of environment. But I think plenty of others were also sad to see that the thing that they had been doing their lives is their profession and their vocation and maybe what their parents had done just doesn’t hold enough potential financial security for the next generation. And I think that that is another reason why for us educating customers on really the value of chocolate, as Matt had said, chocolate had pre industrial revolution had been a very sort of elite product.

(00:33:34):

First a drink and then chocolate, but was consumed by the wealthy and the very fortunate, and it’s great that chocolate could be shared more broadly of course, but I think in that sharing a lot of the inherent value of what chocolate is and everything that goes into it has been lost. And to be able to educate customers on the difference between the chocolate that we make as a craft chocolate maker and the chocolate that goes into a candy bar, it’s confusing because they’re both called chocolate, but they’re two totally different things. But to be able to raise the sort of understanding and the appreciation of chocolate, I think could then indicate to future generations of cocoa farmers that maybe there is something to staying on the land and continuing in this profession.

Kristi Porter (00:34:18):

Yeah, absolutely. And along those lines, speaking of differentiators, let’s talk about your ingredients. Definitely. When you say cacao, I think of Western Africa. So I definitely don’t think of central or South America. I’m going to assume you can tell me yes or no that much like coffee, different regions have different flavors. You said even Matt in the beginning, and maybe it was just comparing it to commercial chocolate versus Kraft chocolate, but with so much creamier tasted different. So what is cow from different places tastes like?

Matt Weyandt (00:34:48):

Well, first I’ll say, I think Elaine mentioned this earlier, about 65, 70% of the cocoa in the world today. It comes out of co war in Ghana, but about 20 years ago, they kind of did the first genetic studies, and I’ve really identified the Peruvian, Ecuadorian

Elaine Read (00:35:03):

Upper Amazon,

Matt Weyandt (00:35:04):

Upper Amazon area as being the genetic birthplace of cacao. And then it spread up into central America. And then now today has grown all across the world in basically like a 20 degree band around the equator. But most of the cocoa is coming out of West Africa. There are different genetic varieties. It’s not really clear cut. When you go out onto a farm in Peru or wherever you are, you’re really not going to find, okay, this is just this one genetic variety. There’s so much intermixing and stuff that happens naturally that you get a lot of genetics in any one place. But there is kind of differences by region usually. But then there’s other factors that go into it too. Like I mentioned, the fermentation process, the microbes that exist in this climate that are causing the fermentation are probably going to be different than the microbes that exist over in this other climate.

(00:35:53):

And the fermentation’s going to have an impact on the flavor. There’s also red things saying that how far away from the equator the cacao is growing affects the fat content within the bean. And so cocoa beans are about 50% fat, give or take. And some of the beans that we work with have a higher fat content and a kind of creamier natural texture than others. And then in terms of just flavor, at least I’ll say for the beans that we work with are Peruvian and Tanzanian beans definitely have more prominent fruit notes. Tanzania is kind of like stone fruits, cherries and kind of flavors in it. Peruvian beans tends to be a little more kind of darker kind, raisiny sort of fruit. And then Nicaragua is kind of a little more floral. It doesn’t have the pronounced fruit maybe that those other two origins do.

(00:36:42):

And then the Uganda bean is in a lot of ways, it sounds a little weird to describe it, but it is kind of our most chocolatey chocolate that we have traditional kind of chocolate flavor, but it has these marshmallow kind of notes it. And so the thing that from just a chocolate perspective that got us really interested in it, it was doing first time we sort of did a chocolate tasting in Costa Rica and really experiencing these D roses and flavors just coming from the beans. So from the beginning we knew we wanted to have a line of single origin bars. And so we have those four origins that I mentioned, and they’re all right around 70 to 75% cocoa. And then we don’t really add anything else. Obviously there’s the sugar and we add a little bit of extra cocoa butter, but not much. And you can sit down and have these bars side by side, and it’s like going to a wine tasting or a coffee cupping or something like that. Each chocolate really has its own unique distinct flavor. That’s something that we knew we always wanted to be a big part of the company. And then we do a line of flavor inclusion bars as well, so where we obviously add other ingredients to the bars. But those differences in the origins was something that we always really enjoyed and want to kind of share with other people. And I

Elaine Read (00:37:49):

Think it’s that differentiates Kraft chocolate from mass produced chocolate. So from a mass produced chocolate point of view, what you want is consistency. So you might have your supply coming in through your various links in your chain, and so you’ve got some cacao coming from Ghana and Cote Deir, maybe some from Madagascar. But at the end of the day, what you’re making is a, I dunno if I could say brand names, but a commonly known dark special bar, and it has a flavor and everyone knows that flavor and they’re expecting that flavor. And so the way to make all of these different varieties of cacao have that flavor is to uniformly roast them in a way that kind of drives out these more subtle flavor differences, add enough sugar, add enough vanilla flavoring, and all these other ingredients that help a industrial chocolate achieve a consistent flavor despite the ingredient inputs that they use.

(00:38:44):

Whereas for Kraft chocolate, we really want people to know, wow, Tanzania and cacao is just, it’s going to knock your socks off. It’s so fruity and bright and citrusy and niara one has just such a mellow kind of complex flavor profile. And to be able to get to watch people’s faces when they’re trying this for the first time is always a delight because it always takes me back to that initial realization I had, that chocolate is not this uniform flavor, that there’s so much variety natural to it. So again, that’s one of the pieces of chocolate that we work hard to educate our customers about.

Kristi Porter (00:39:20):

Yes, and if people can slow down long enough to actually taste the flavors rather than just shoving it down your throat, then that’s a good thing too. I’m very excited about your tasting. We’ve talked about the supply chain and the social impact focus. Elaine and I met when we were both kind of checking out the B Corp movement. We continued down that path to certification. Elaine, you guys deviated and became carbon neutral. So I’d love for you to explain obtaining a B Corp is not for everybody, certainly not trying to push anything. There’s no one certification that’s best for everybody, and there’s a lot of different ways you could go. You’ve talked about sourcing and supply chain and the people behind all of that and the farmers. So there’s a lot of different directions you could have gone. You chose a neutral. So tell us why and what that looks like in practice for you guys.

Elaine Read (00:40:09):

Yeah, so I’m very supportive of the B Corp movement, and I think that the way that I was thinking about is you go through the process and Christie, it’s a very long and involved process. There are so many different areas where you need to be auditing your own self and your processes and everything. And in doing that, the aspects of the B Corp certification, which include governance and the impact that you have on your customers, on your supply chain, on your employees, all of those, I felt at the end of the day, we were naturally doing as well as we could because I think keeping the benefit of people and the way that we operate our business with transparency and with I think ethics behind it that is just kind of baked into the DNA of the company. So I felt like those aspects were things that we were always going to be trying to do as well as we possibly could.

(00:40:57):

The environmental side was the area that we felt like to compare ourselves or to put ourselves into a set structure that would always be pushing us and stretching us to do better and to do better, felt like the area that we could perhaps have the most impact in and improve our company the most in combined with the natural motivation that I have towards being as environmentally sustainable as humans and as a company as we can be. So for us, this is not a marketing thing. Environmentalism has been a core trait, I think, in the way that both Matt and I view the world in the work that we’ve done. But gaining carbon neutral certification felt like, as I said, a structure that we could learn and really measure ourselves again so that we can really see what we’re trying to do and measure our success toward it.

(00:41:47):

Matt, he took the leadership on working through our certification, but it involved a couple of years of measuring our greenhouse gas emissions and we measured it pulling in all emissions from cradle to grave, so meaning all of the inputs that go into making and selling a chocolate bar. And we are going to take responsibility for the carbon that was emitted by at the farm level, say the farmers, the amount of water that they’re using, the type of vehicles, the farm vehicles that they’re driving to get their cacao to a collection point, the electricity that they’re using on the farm. Also, all of the greenhouse gas emissions from the ships that are trading the cacao from their origin points to us in Atlanta. And then also all of the electricity that we consume here in this factory, how many miles our staff drive commuting to work and from home because we need them to come into our factory to help us make and sell chocolates.

(00:42:42):

So we’re going to take responsibility for that carbon too. And then all the way through the packaging of our chocolate, the wrappers that we use, the greenhouse gas emissions from shipping chocolate to our online customers or driving it to our store. So we went through a process of actually calculating exactly what our carbon emissions were. And then that is really the first step. Once you have that number, then you can start figuring out how to reduce it. The main, I think, priority we had was creating operational improvements that would decrease our emissions. And Matt, I don’t want to take away all of your, you doing great. This is what you primarily led, but I’ll actually, I’ll hand it over to you. Well,

Matt Weyandt (00:43:23):

We did basically, we worked with an organization called Change climate.org, I think is the website. And they have a whole kind of calculator system. And we worked with them really for I think three, four months to go through the whole process of calculating everything. And then as Elaine said, once you have the footprint figured out, then you have to have a reduction plan. And one of the big things for us last year was to really start tracking our waste, and we wanted to divert more waste out of the landfill into compost and recycling. And so we created a whole system to track everything coming out of the factory and divert more of it, our main byproducts and cacao, the husks of the cocoa bean, it’s great compost, but we also found we can divert a lot of office paper hardboard. There’s a lot of other stuff that can go into compost.

(00:44:11):

And so we’ve been working with a local organization here to do that. Lane’s been working on our packaging program and transferring more and more of our product into compostable packages away from plastic, which we had for our drinking chocolate and things like that. And then the final component is really offsetting what’s left. It’s virtually impossible at this point to be net zero, meaning that you’ve reduced your whole footprint, but we’ve then purchased carbon offsets for the remaining part of our footprint. And so for folks that are familiar with carbon offsets, it’s essentially the most common type is to basically to pay to protect a forest, rainforest or other types of forests that the trees themselves are capturing carbon. There’s a lot of issues around carbon credits and their efficacy. While we’ve done a lot of that, we felt like we wanted to kind of go beyond that.

(00:45:01):

So we actually also have been paying for some amount of carbon capture, which we’ve been using a group called ClimateWorks that they were just in the news actually recently. They just opened their new carbon capture station, but we’ve basically had a monthly subscription with them for the last three years. Now to capture carbon, it’s not a lot because carbon capture is way more expensive than carbon credits, but usually you get what you pay for. So there’s probably some legitimacy or maybe illegitimacy to the carbon credit game. But we also tried to purchase the carbon credits that we did, we did a lot of research on, and we ended up working with a group called Pajama, which we went with them because they actually do a lot of data gathering using satellite imagery and things like that to actually track how much carbon these forests are actually capturing compared to areas around the forest that’s protected.

(00:45:53):

And so we completed the certification last year. We’re going to do our recertification this year and every year moving forward and going to keep looking for ways to reduce our footprint and hopefully find better and better ways to offset the part of the footprint that we can’t get rid of right now at least. And I’d also say it’s not just something that is nice to do, I actually think it’s like an existential thing, particularly for our business, but honestly for pretty much any business and cacao grows in the rainforest, I mean, that’s where it does best. It does best with shade trees and climate change is having a big impact. And folks may have seen in the news this year that the price of cocoa has skyrocketed really since January. It was going up last year, but pretty much the entire time that we’ve been in business, the price of a ton of cocoa has been around like 2000 to $2,500.

(00:46:45):

This is on the commodity market. And so we’ve always paid significantly more than that for the bees that we’re buying. But beginning last year, that price went up to 4,000 a ton. And then since January of this year, the price went over 10,000 a ton. And then has come back down now a little bit as of I think yesterday, which was what May 20th or something like that. It was around 7,000 a ton. And so that’s really because again, ko, Devo and Ghana, where most of the cocoa in the world comes from has been hit with basically drought, then flood, drought, then flood, and also now disease for the last three or four growing seasons. And so disease on the cacao crops, disease on the cacao crops, yeah, swollen root disease I think it’s called. And now again, it’s a commodity. And so also financial speculators have now jumped in and caused even kind of more chaos in the market.

(00:47:36):

But the reality is a lot of that is climate change induced pressure, and that’s going to happen with more and more crops all over the world. And so I do really think it’s kind of an existential crisis for chocolate, but also for a lot of the other stuff that we consume. So it’s really important to us that as chocolate makers, we’re doing whatever we can to be proactive in trying to bring our carbon footprint down and kind of do what we can to move the ball forward. And also to educate people that this is something that’s happening and that we want to keep eating chocolate and all the other stuff that we have, then we’ve really got to pay attention to.

Kristi Porter (00:48:14):

Yeah, well, even as, I feel like carbon neutral is certainly a big term these days, buzzword or people are trying to pursue it. You mentioned net zero, even if somebody who was already aware of a lot of this and try to live your life accordingly, conduct business that way, what was surprising to you about the process? What was either a challenge or an opportunity or just something that you just hadn’t even considered before?

Matt Weyandt (00:48:37):

Yeah. Well, we were fortunate because one of our first employees who had actually been a friend of ours, he went back to grad school at Georgia Tech and did an environmental studies program. So then as part of his thesis, he did a lifecycle analysis for him. So this was before we even began the certification process. This is like a year or two ahead of that. And the thing that was really kind of eyeopening was that you think, alright, we’re purchasing this crop that’s grown halfway across the world and we’re shipping it over and we’re turning into chocolate. And the thing that was surprising was about 80 to 85% of our carbon footprint was from the electricity that we consume here at the factory. It wasn’t the transporting the beans across the world or some of this other stuff. And so there are a lot of ways that are pretty easy that don’t really require a ton of effort to address the footprint. And so I think one of the things we really wanted to let people know is that we’re doing this and if we are still a very small company, and if we can do this, I promise you pretty much any other business listening say this podcast could also do it. There

Elaine Read (00:49:41):

Are also a lot of community resources out there, I think too. So I think as people are becoming more and more aware that climate change is affecting their line of business, even if it has nothing to do with food or agriculture in any kind of way. So one thing that we’ve done over the past couple of years is actually work with the sustainability program at the University of Georgia. So they have a capstone program for students who are interested in having a sustainability certificate. And so each semester we’ll get partnered with a group of students who are helping to address a business problem that we might propose. And so Matt had mentioned earlier, our main byproduct in the chocolate making process is the cacao hest, which make an excellent mulch, but we learned also is a great slug pesticide. So through the work that done in ashing, the cacao, and they worked with, well, this is one group that I’m thinking of in particular, but they’ve worked with their science advisor and worked in the lab over at the University of Georgia campus to try a few different solutions for the cacao.

(00:50:41):

And one of the things that I thought was really interesting was just it’s an effective deterrent for the common garden pests. And with the number of home gardeners that are around, I think that that could be something that could be of interest. Now that is a very small drop in the bucket. We produce way more at Cacao Hess than we could give away to all the home gardeners out there. But working with the university system that has a program in place and students that are coming in who know that they want sustainability to be some part of their academic career or their professional career and are looking to partner with businesses. And there’ve been a few other community organizations like that. And so I think for business owners or just don’t even have to be a business owner, someone who’s interested in being involved in working in the sustainability sector there, fortunately it seems like an increased interest in the number of organizations that are tackling the problem from different angles. And so keeping your ear to the ground, networking and finding out who’s doing what and gain the support from others, but then also who provides support to people as well who we’re tackling this issue.

Matt Weyandt (00:51:42):

I also mentioning our carbon footprint from our electrical use basically. And so I’d also recommend any company that’s interested. One of the easiest ways to reduce your footprint. We don’t own the building that are factories in. We can’t solar panels on the roof, but you can purchase renewable energy credits from your power company in most places. And basically renewable energy credit is you pay your power company a little extra for each kilowatt hour of power that you consume, and then they are guaranteeing that allotment is coming from the renewable energy that they produce. And so once they sell you that portion of the renewable energy, they can’t sell it to anybody else. And so it’s increasing demand for renewable energy, encouraging power companies to build more renewable energy. So even if you’re not in a position where you can put solar panels on your roof, we encourage folks to look for local programs like that. That is a way to essentially convert the power that you consume into renewable energy, which probably in most cases is going to be a really huge part of your carbon take

Kristi Porter (00:52:37):

Front. Yeah, no, that’s an excellent tip. And when in doubt, ask around, somebody’s going to have the answer. Speaking of Elaine, let’s talk about packaging. That’s a huge deal for products. The larger you get and you have a more complex supply chain, but you can also purchase things in bigger quantities, which lead to lower prices. You guys are a small business, so every little bit has to be taken into account and you’re going as you demonstrated far beyond what you’ve been asked through this certification because it matters to you. So let’s talk about packaging. How was that process trying to find a better solution?

Elaine Read (00:53:14):

So when it came to our bars, we wrapped them in paper that is produced from a 100% hydro powered paper mill, and the company’s called French Paper. They have been hydroelectric, I think from their inception. And so sustainability and sustainable processes I think has been part of their business model from the beginning. So our chocolate bars were a little bit of an easier problem to solve when it came to sustainable packaging. We had other products that we initially packaged and single use plastic pouches, so things like our powder drinking chocolate, our trail mix, some items like that. And when we first bought the pouches and developed stickers and labels that went on them, the idea was that that was just a temporary solution until we could find a more sustainable option. I scoured the internet back in even in 2013 when we were actually starting to launch even from the beginning, the idea of using plastic was a very uncomfortable notion, but we did and I would regularly be looking to find more options for any kind of solution that wasn’t plastic, but as a food product, there’s certain things that you need to consider.

(00:54:19):

We need to have a moisture barrier, we need to have a light barrier, odor barrier, things like that to keep our products safe and extend the shelf life and plastic fits those bills. I would search on a regular basis to see if there was anything new out there about, I think it was two years ago, I finally found a company based in Chicago called Elevate Packaging, and they produce a fully home commercially compostable, but I think more useful home compostable materials that can be produced into pouches. And so we have been working with them for the last, almost about two years, working to custom design pouches that are going to fit our various products, eliminate the use of stickers to put a sticker on a compostable pouch, renders that pouch non compostable because of the materials and the stickers. So there are all these little details.

(00:55:08):

It seemed to kind of provide these constant stream of stumbling blocks as we were looking to get to fully compostable pouches that we should be receiving our first shipment of custom printed fully home compostable pouches this summer. Our kind of intermediate step was that we were using those compostable pouches and then truly compostable stickers. A lot of labor went into people putting stickers on the back in front of packages. So as you’re looking to streamline your costs, because at the end of the day as a business, you need to be financially sustainable, and so you do need to make these operational improvements to lower your labor time and your labor costs. And so these pouches are certainly more expensive than the plastic pouches that I could keep getting. We are absorbing that cost. Our customers will absorb some of that cost too. The information about the sustainable aspect of the pouches and how to home compost will be printed directly on those pouches. And I’m pretty confident that our customers are the kind of people that would be satisfied in knowing that what they’re purchasing is something that hopefully fits their lifestyle and their mindsets.

Kristi Porter (00:56:12):

Absolutely. Well, it’s going to be no surprise to listeners, listen to how educated you are, how passionate you are, the craft that you approach this with, that you have won multiple awards and received recognition for your chocolate and your business model. So I’m going to ask you to boast a little bit and tell us a little about some of the recognition you’ve received and what it’s done for you.

Matt Weyandt (00:56:36):

We’ve been fortunate enough to win a couple of good food awards, which is I think in the craft chocolate world kind of craft food craft craft food. Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. In the Kraft food world, it’s one of the more sought after awards. We’ve won a couple awards from the International Academy of Chocolate, and so all of those are kind of for chocolate itself. And then more recently we won an impact award from Gusto. Some folks may be familiar with is an online payroll company that started doing their first year of doing this impact award, which really is more about the community impact of a business, and so

Elaine Read (00:57:14):

The business gives back. So it gave us an opportunity to describe a lot of the work that we do that we somehow cannot figure out how to find the time to tell our own customers, and thank you for allowing us to go in depth into the work that we’ve been doing. The mission behind our company I think is really what keeps us passionate more so than just delicious chocolate. But as I said, we’re often not able to figure out how to take the time to tell our customers about the work that this company does and hopefully the betterment of the world in the small way that we can. So with Augusta Awards, we had a chance to lay out the different ways in which we support our community. So we like to work with Atlanta public school teachers, so we get a lot of requests for STEM related field trips to our factory.

(00:58:00):

It’s this sort of thing that if you were an adult wanting to do just a fun social activity, we would charge you for, but when it’s an Atlanta public school teacher bringing their 20 or 30 kids, that’s something that we’re thrilled to be able to provide. So being able to introduce public school kids to the STEM concepts behind chocolate production, but then also some of the softer skills behind running a business and being an effective employee. We also contribute to organizations that are working to fight food insecurity here in Atlanta. So we have this opportunity to just let the folks at Gusto know what it is we do. They awarded us their impact award in Atlanta. So that was I think an award that I personally feel even prouder of than some of the awards that we’ve won on chocolate just because it really does kind of get to the heart and soul of what we do and who we are as a company.

Kristi Porter (00:58:51):

Absolutely. And you were also featured by Chase in a commercial recently, is that true?

Elaine Read (00:58:56):

Yeah, so the timing on that was kind of crazy. The release of the Chase ad campaign and the Gusto Award happened at exactly the same time, but we’re very fortunate to have been working with Chase for business, so that’s their business banking division. We’ve been banking with them basically since the beginning, and I think as they were looking to expand their visibility within Atlanta and the very strong ecosystem of small businesses here in Atlanta, I think they found something worthwhile in our story, which was also kind of validating to know. And so if any of your listeners have heard two people talking about chocolate on their radios or maybe on a billboard, those two people are us.

Kristi Porter (00:59:37):

That is terrific, was a long-term Chase customer. I’m also glad to hear it and would’ve voted for you had ever been given the chance.

(00:59:45):

But speaking of validation, hey, yes, food awards, awesome business awards, awesome, all those things are great, but I feel like the other validation is the way you’re building your business as a business as well as the craft and the sourcing and the environmental awareness and all of that, which as we’ve discussed there is a lot of errors, a lot of mistakes, a lot of oversteps happening within the world of chocolate from being to bar. The other thing I really loved that you were talking about both during the conversation and before we got on was that you could reach out to other people in similar positions and they were willing to share their lessons and willing to talk to you and kind of build this community together rather than just seeing you as competition. So whether you’re talking small craft chocolate all the way up to the big bag Halloween stuff that we get each year, what are your hopes for the industry? What do you hope that you are helping to change the conversation in?

Matt Weyandt (01:00:42):

There’s a lot of the stuff that we sort of touched on earlier that welcome more craft chocolate makers, and we’ve had people that are interested in it come through and we’ve tried to also share knowledge, but getting people to think of chocolate as a food and all the things that go into it rather than sort of like a throwaway candy. I think that’s where you start to realize the people involved, the farmers, the people working at the co-op, just all of the kind of labor that goes into producing something that brings a little spark of joy hopefully to your life. And I think it’s really education. I mean, I think bringing more people into this world, whether it’s other makers or people who are trying craft chocolate for the first time and realizing, oh, hey, this is different. Yeah,

Elaine Read (01:01:27):

I think maybe I would like for us as an industry, as a craft chocolate industry to maybe recognize some of the wonkiness that we have in the terms that we use too, that I think is kind of separating the meaning that we’re intended to convey and the understanding that customers get. So you use the term bean to bar, which is widely used within the craft chocolate industry, but I think ultimately at the end of the day, maybe to say made from scratch might be something that resonates more with customers. So I think that if we as a group I think could think about all the ways in which the terms we use unintentionally, but a little bit of distance between what we’re trying to achieve and what the customers are receiving would be a good step because again, it is the education. As I said before, we have these two pretty different things that go by the same name, chocolate and chocolate, totally different things, different processes, different ethics around all of it. And so we’re starting from a place of confusion. So if we as an industry could think a little bit more about how to maybe simplify the ways that we’re trying to educate our customers, that could help.

Kristi Porter (01:02:29):

What about consumers of which there are a lot of us that consume chocolate regularly, we continually hear on the news. Times are tough. People are worried about even everything from fast food to groceries, increasing prices. You’re paying for more to buy something like yours, which is handcrafted, and there’s a whole story behind it and quality ingredients versus the cheapest thing out there. So what would be your encouragement or advice to consumers?

Elaine Read (01:02:56):

I would say honestly, you don’t need to buy a lot. You don’t need to buy a lot. And that’s a crazy thing for a business. Oh, you’re

Kristi Porter (01:03:03):

Talking to Americans largely here.

Elaine Read (01:03:06):

I think it’s an insane piece of advice to give our customer base, but I think that it goes back to quality versus quantity. The type of dark chocolate that we make is pretty low in sugar, so we use basically just enough sugar to draw out the flavor qualities that we’re working to achieve in each flavor bar that we create. And so we’re not trying to load these bars up with the chemicals that trigger that addictive response in the brain. That’s not to say that I have never downed an entire chocolate bars. I have done that, but it’s not this kind of thing that I can do anywhere near as easily or would want to do as I could with the Shandy bars that I grew up eating as a child and as a teenager. So the chocolate bars that we make are pretty intensely flavorful from the true flavors in the cacao, plus the whole food ingredients that we include in the case of our flavor inclusion bars, aside from when you need a real energy rush or a real pick me up, you’re not likely to be able to eat an entire bar of ours in one sitting on a regular basis.

(01:04:08):

And I think that’s kind of the beauty of it. I think that to have a small bite nightly or whatever your cadence is, but to enjoy it in small amounts, I think is the best way to enjoy it. I think emotionally and from a culinary perspective, if you buy a bars of ours every couple of months, that is great. I’m not going to push you to buy several bars every week or anything like that. I think that it’s truly an example of when less is more, and I know how insane that sounds as a business owner talking about the buying habits of customers, but I honestly don’t think you should buy a lot. Enjoy what you do, buy,

Kristi Porter (01:04:43):

Enjoy what you do, buy that. Yes, that is a great motto right there. Well, thank you so much for your time. This has been so fun. I’ve loved hearing more about your background and the inner workings of the business. This is coming out during the summer or late summer, but always on the horizon is corporate giving time, holiday giving holiday parties, Valentine’s creeps up every year, mother’s Day. You have all of these things that you have an excellent gift option for. So what are some of your big holidays? What should people know?

Matt Weyandt (01:05:13):

Yeah. Well, the holidays are big for chocolate, whether it’s balance lines like the winter holidays and our chocolate’s very giftable. That was sort of intentional from the beginning. We also worked with a lot of businesses when they wanted to do custom gifts, and we can do things like whether it’s from just simple kind of custom bands on bars to others taking as far as the designing custom wrappers with company logos and things like that. So we’ve done a lot of work with those kind of holiday gifts. We also just launched our confections program, so now we have Fon chocolate boxes, lots of different confections, and so those are very giftable as well.

Kristi Porter (01:05:49):

Fantastic. Right, you guys. Well, thank you so much for your time. Where can people find you online? Where’s the best place to reach you? Best

Elaine Read (01:05:57):

Place to do both is our website, so choko laal chocolate.com, and that’s spelled X-O-C-O-L-A-T-L, the word chocolate.com. From our Contact us page, you can also, if you’ve got a particular question, it should be able to find the right person to contact through that page. We’re not super active on social media, we’re not as active as we should be, but on Instagram, we are chattle chocolate, and on Facebook, we’re Chattle small batch chocolate.

Kristi Porter (01:06:23):

Perfect. Awesome. Well, thank you both for your time. Thank you both for the way you’re advancing the industry, and I certainly learned a lot today, and I know our audience did too. So thank you for joining us. And thanks to everyone for tuning in. We’ll have another terrific episode soon.