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If you then still cannot find the confirmation e-mail, please contact our customer service at service@originalbeans.com.

We ship our delicious chocolates to all countries in Europe and the UK. For special inquiries please contact us via service@originalbeans.com

All parcels within Germany are dispatched by DHL; parcels with a delivery address abroad are sent via UPS. Delivery costs vary depending on the country where your delivery address is located. A full overview of all costs is available here.

We process all orders as quickly as possible. However, the delivery time depends on several factors: your selected payment method, the availability of the products and the type of delivery.

You will receive a notification with the estimated arrival time of your delivery, so you can plan accordingly. Usually, the courir hands the parcel over to a neighbour or a near-by post office/ delivery station from where you can pick it up.

Please contact us under service@originalbeans.com or create a ticket via “My Account”. We will investigate the issue and make sure you receive your chocolate as soon as possible.

With our name, we refer to the origin cacao varieties that we search and protect. The regions where Original Beans sources from offer unique cacaos, with extraordinary flavours reflecting their distinct terroirs. We have rediscovered and replanted long-forgotten beans, like the ultra-rare Piura Porcelana in Peru and the wild Beniano cacao, that grows endemically in the Bolivian Amazonas.

The cacao comes from highly biodiverse regions in South America and Africa. At the ground, we cooperate closely and trade directly with the cacao farmers. The organic cacao for all our chocolates grows either wild in the rainforest or semi-wild as mixed crops but never in plantations. To highlight the special taste of the fine flavour cacao, we only produce single origin chocolates. Read here more about our cacao origins

Cacao butter is the fat extracted from the cacao beans. The cacao butter used in all Original Beans chocolates stems from organic Trinitario beans from CONACADO, an organization of smallholder cacao farmers from the Dominican Republic.

Usually cacao butter is filtered and deodorized to get a neutral, standardized product. CONACADO’s cacao butter is different: It is warmly roasted and then pressed unfiltered. Thus, it fits perfectly to Original Beans’ philosophy of preserving distinct aromas.

Besides our finest single origin cacao beans, we just add raw cane sugar, in some bars cacao butter and milk (in our milk chocolates). The ingredients are all carefully selected to meet organic and sustainability standards.

Read here more details about our ingredients.

Original Beans milk couvertures using rich Swiss milk. The natural biodiversity of our region with its lush meadows and alps boasting over 100 different flowers and herbs, where cows gently graze, and the crystal clear mountain spring water contribute to the unique quality of Swiss milk.

The cows are kept in a particularly species-appropriate manner and spend a lot of time in the open air. Because only animals that feel comfortable give healthy, tasty milk. We stand for biodiversity. In generous ecological areas like hedges, heaps of branches, flower meadows or in high-stem orchards rare plants and animals find new habitats.

Last but not least, society benefits from sustainable milk: Because cows mainly eat grass, the world’s population has more grain than food.

Raw cane sugar is not carbonated or decolorized, meaning that besides sucrose and small amounts of fructose and glucose, it contains all the important minerals of sugar cane. The negative impact on the world’s climate is 40% less than products made with beet sugar, which is usually used in sweets.

As we want to bring out the natural aroma of unique cacao bean varieties, Original Beans chocolates are free from additives such as emulsifiers (like lecithin), foreign fats (like palm oil), industrial sugar or aromas (like vanillin). Besides the fact that additives like soy lecithin and palm oil gloss over the beans´natural taste, they are also against our philosophy of conserving the rainforest - because they are often the cause for deforestation in the first place.

We do not require emulsifiers like lecithin for the processing of our chocolates - due to the high-quality ingredients we use, our well elaborated recipes as well as proper roasting and conching times.

Since we refrain from using stabilizers and preservative agents, our chocolates are more temperature sensitive than other chocolate products. Original Beans chocolates should ideally be stored in a cool and dry place with a temperature between 16°C and 18° Celsius. Please do not store the chocolates in the refrigerator because the sugar content will crystallize due to the humidity. Too hot of a storage place is also not ideal as the cacao butter will be released and deposited as a white layer on the surface. Due to the loss of the cacao butter, the chocolate will dry up and lose its aroma.

All of our dark chocolates are vegan, also our Esmeraldas 50% Vegan M!lk. Only our milk chocolates - Esmeraldas Milk 42%, Femmes de Virunga 55% and Yuna 37% (Edelweiss) - contain milk products.

It generally indicates the percentage of cacao beans in our chocolates. In the case of the white chocolate  Yuna 37%, it indicates the percentage of cacao butter derived from the beans.

The chocolate used for both is the same. The bars can therefore also be used as couvertures. However, because of their handy form, the chocolate buttons are ideal for cooking, baking and making hot chocolate.

Despite intensively cleaning after every production with possible allergen ingredients, all our chocolate may contain minimal traces of hazelnuts and almonds. And for the dark chocolate also minimal traces of milk.

Moreover, our milk chocolates - Esmeraldas Milk, Femmes de Virunga and Edel Weiss - contain animal proteins in form of milk powder.

Cadmium is a natural metal element like lead, zinc and copper. In combination with other substances it is present in the earth’s crust and in the air, water and soil.

Cadmium can be unhealthy depending on the form of cadmium, the amount of intake in the body and whether the cadmium is eaten or inhaled. High levels of cadmium can cause flu-like symptoms and are also related to bone and lung diseases.

If you eat grains, potatoes, some leafy vegetables, shellfish and chocolate, you will already have ingested naturally occurring cadmium. Depending on the region where your foods come from, the amount of cadmium traces vary considerably.
 
Why is Cadmium relevant for chocolate consumers?
In chocolate, higher levels of cadmium traces are found in cacao beans from South America compared to cacao beans originating from Africa and Asia. Cacao trees absorb cadmium during their metabolic processes which is then stored in the cacao fruit and its seeds, the beans. No process exists to remove cadmium traces during the chocolate making and so they make their way into the final chocolate product.

EU Regulation on Cadmium Limits effective as of January 1st 2019
New regulations regarding maximum allowable limits of cadmium, as specified in the European Regulation (EC) No 1881/2006 of 19 December 2006, will become effective as per the 1st January, 2019.

Original Beans has been monitoring cadmium levels in the beans and the chocolates for years through analysis of independent and recognised external laboratories.

All Original Beans products will of course comply to EU regulations. We will continue to measure cadmium levels in all our cacao beans and all chocolates. And we will report them to you on demand. In this way, we want to make sure you can enjoy a pure, natural product from local provenance without a second thought.

What are the EU’s Cadmium Limits?

Child labour is any work that deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity, and that is harmful to their physical and/or mental development. It refers to work that is mentally, or morally dangerous and harmful to children; and/or interferes with their schooling (ILO).

High school attendance within our sourcing regions, child labour education and awareness training, and well-organised farmer and community structures point at low risk of child labour instances. Local partners signed our ‘No Child Labour’ Statement and regular educational trainings increase awareness amongst families and emphasise the importance of ceasing any type of child labour.

Living Income
Living income is the net annual income that a household needs in a particular place to afford a decent standard of living. A household should be able to afford food, water, housing, education, healthcare, transport, clothing, and other essential needs (LICoP).

For every bar sold, Original Beans enables the farmers in the origins to plant a new tree. That can be both a cacao or shade tree. For their cultivation, we set up tree nurseries where the seedlings grow until they can be planted. The farmers with whom Original Beans cooperates are trained as “tree experts” and gain knowledge about the fragile ecology they live in during their work in the nurseries. Once big enough, the new trees are planted in the midst of the rainforest and provide both food and a source of income for the farmers – all without chopping down precious forest.
Original Beans are sourced on purpose from origins defined by the scientists as biodiversity hotspots and wilderness areas. These are the most biologically diverse places on earth, but also the most threatened. Our local reforestation projects seek to re-establish the balance of these unique ecosystems and to protect nature’s wonderful wildlife. To achieve full traceability, the consumer can track the tree on our website.

According to our zero waste policy, the foil as well as the cardboard are made from FSC-certified wood cellulose and thus 100 percent recyclable. Try it on your garden compost!

Original Beans strives to turn its balance of greenhouse gas emissions and water consumption from a debit to nature into a positive contribution.
Cacao forests, if regeneratively farmed, absorb enough CO2 in trees and soils, that all the emissions from making chocolate are more than compensated. They can even become climate-positive, if the warehouse uses solar energy (as ours does), and the packaging comes from Europe’s climate-leading paper mill (like ours). For climate, our One Bar : One Tree programme is a cherry on top.
Read more about our CO2-positive chocolates

For every chocolate bar we sell, we pay the farmers an extra amount on top of what we pay for their cacao. We then make sure that this extra money is used for planting trees, both cacao and neighboring shade trees.

When you break off a piece of Original Beans chocolate, you are breaking ground for a new tree. Each tree is a miracle, an ecosystem in itself with the potential to become one of the oldest and largest beings in the world! But trees are not meant to be solitary creatures. They thrive with others in a forest, just like the trees we are planting and preserving. And these forests, called agrofields by the farmers, have a great impact in different ways:

They MULTIPLY FARMERS’ INCOME
They PROTECT THE RARE because each tree propagates the unique genes of rare cacao varieties
They guarantee that the production of Original Beans chocolate is CLIMATE-POSITIVE. As each tree absorbs CO2 from the atmosphere to grow, the tree planted or preserved per bar offsets the emissions for the entire production of the bar. In simple terms, you are reducing carbon emissions with every delicious bar you consume.

They REBUILD & PRESERVE THE HABITAT of endangered animals, and other wildlife and plants
All of this would not be possible without you, our conscious customers. Thank you for helping us to replenish the rare!

The Original Beans chocolates are certified with the EU organic logo. It means that our chocolates are produced in full conformity with the conditions and regulations for the organic farming sector established by the European Union.

Only our Beni Wild Harvest does not carry the logo because it contains wild cacao which does not comply with all organic certification criteria. Instead, the Beniano beans are certified “FairWild”.

The Beniano used for Original Beans Beni Wild Harvest is an endemic wild cacao that grows on cacao forest islands in the Bolivian Amazon, where it is hand picked by indigenous collectors.

Unlike common hybrid cacaos, none of our original cacao varieties grows on plantations. Except for the wild Beniano, they all are cultivated as mixed crops in semi-wild cacao gardens directly in the rainforest. This sustainable way of cultivation is possible because cacao naturally flourishes in the shadow of other trees. Furthermore, a diverse flora also enriches the forest terroir; its aroma is reflected in the cacao beans.

With our One bar : One tree program, we plant cacao and neighboring shade trees, such as fruit trees or legumes, as mixed crops in cacao forests. We also reforest native forest stands in the cacao origins to replenish the green lung of our planet. In the latter case, it’s not about the cacao itself but about nature conservation of its rainforest home.

To distinguish artisanal from large-scale industrial production coffee, beer, gin and now chocolate makers are using new words to describe their uniqueness. “Bean-to-bar” is such a word and it tries to capture the notion that bean-to-bar makers are deeply involved and control every step of chocolate making from the cacao bean to the chocolate bar. In this sense, Original Beans is a bean-to-bar maker.