At sixteen I made my first chocolate in my parent’s basement...

 

To this day I love stone-milling my own chocolate from beans I “discover”. That’s a private hobby. My professional focus for the past ten years has been to establish and lead the Original Beans’ Bean Teams across eight regions on two continents. 

When people call us “cacao hunters” they think of dangerous adventures in dark forests. They may be right (sometimes), but they miss the most important trait of our trade: regeneration. Other chocolate companies may hunt - go in, buy beans, go out. But we stay. From the first moment of meeting in a dusty village square to the stage when they have become certified cacao craft professionals (and now the “cacao hunters” are coming), we are in it with and for our cacao growers. They are the true heroes of the Original Beans story.

Which doesn’t mean they know it all. They don’t (poor people receive poor education). As a Bean Team we can teach many things, from composting to sanitation and the alphabet. But regeneration our growers know better than almost anybody else. They practice it daily in their cacao forests. The Chocolate Foodprint is a testimony to their regenerative stewardship.