It means that we do ALL the steps to take raw cacao beans and turn them into fine chocolate at our little factory in Bozeman.

Our process starts by hand-sorting the raw cacao to remove any beans that won’t make great chocolate. We then roast the beans, 10 pounds at a time in a coffee roaster. After that we crack them, winnow them, and stone grind them for about four-days straight days until it’s chocolate. We then temper the chocolate, pour it, and package it up for you — and this all happens at our roasting room in Bozeman, Montana!

We do not use dairy, tree nuts, or peanuts in our ingredients.

Everything we sell is made at our factory in Bozeman, Montana. We do not produce chocolate on shared equipment at a co-manufacturer.

We are not a certified allergen-free facility, and we cannot guarantee zero cross-contact risk.

If you have a severe or life-threatening allergy, please read our full allergen and ingredients overview before purchasing here.

Most of our chocolate is made from just organic cacao and organic cane sugar. We do sometimes use non-certified organic cacao when making unique single-origin chocolates.

If you see “organic cacao” on our label that means the product only contains certified organic cacao. If the label just says “cacao,” it means the chocolate is made from cacao grown without the use of harsh herbicides or pesticides but is not certified organic by any certifying body.

The percentage on a chocolate bar shows you the proportion of the bar's weight that comes from cacao beans.

This means that the following two chocolate bars would BOTH be labeled 70%:

1) A bar that is 70% cacao beans and 30% sugar

2) A bar that is 30% cocoa mass, 30% added cocoa butter, 10% added cocoa powder, 29% cane sugar, and 1% soy lecithin

Our dark chocolate is made from just two ingredients: cacao and organic cane sugar. For our bars that have flavors, we then added high-quality ingredients to that two-ingredient base.

There is no formal definition for what makes cacao “fine” or “speciality.” For us, “speciality” cacao requires two things: 1) it comes from trees with genetics that have a reputation for producing great flavor and 2) the beans have gone through a quality fermentation and drying process to develop that flavor.

Specialty cacao is in contrast to bulk or commodity cacao that trades on global financial markets and is used in mass-produced chocolate. In commodity cacao, the priority is the cacao’s yield-per-acre rather than the the cacao’s flavor potential.

We seek out speciality cacao where flavor development is the priority, and we work with talented farmers and fermenters who take great pride in the cacao they grow and how they handle it during the post-harvest process.

From a product stand point, ceremonial cacao is simply 100% cacao paste. We make 100% cacao paste almost daily, but there is much more to ceremonial cacao than “the product,” and our view is that we don’t have the deep knowledge that is required to make legit ceremonial cacao.

Cacao has been used in religious ceremonies since at least 1,500 B.C. in Guatemala and 3,500 B.C. in Ecuador. And for many communities and shamans in Latin America, cacao is viewed as a sacred plant medicine. Because of this, we feel it’s really important to buy ceremonial cacao directly from these communities.

So, while we don’t make ceremonial cacao, we can recommends brands of ceremonial cacao that we love. If you have questions about ceremonial cacao in general or want help evaluating a source that you are using, feel free to reach out. We enjoy using ceremonial cacao and have appreciation for the communities with a long history of making and using it.

“Cacao” and “cocoa” can be used interchangeably, and they both describe the fruit and seeds (called “beans”) of the theobroma cacao tree. The word “cacao” is more common in Latin America while “cocoa” tends to be more common in Africa and Europe. We use “cacao roasters” in our name because our focus is roasting fine cacao beans (some would say, cocoa beans) from Latin America.

Some folks also make a distinction that “cacao” is best used to describe the tree itself and the wet beans before they have been fermented and dried, and that fermented and dried beans should be called “cocoa.”

We always start our work with fermented and dried beans from the theobroma cacao tree, so if that’s what you call cocoa, then you can call us cocoa roasters :)

Things labeled ”coco” are typically made from the pulp or water of the coconut, and that’s a whole ‘nother ball of wax.

Cacao was first cultivated in what is now southern Ecuador roughly 5,500 years ago. Then, starting 3,500 years ago, cacao was used extensively by the Maya, Aztec, Olmecs, and other indigenous groups in what is now Southern Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and the northern part of Costa Rica.

Today, you can find awesome cacao growing all around the world between 20 degrees North and 20 degrees South of the equator, and there is great chocolate made from cacao grown in many different regions of the world: Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific islands, to name a few places.

We focus on cacao grown in Latin America because of the region’s deep history and relationship with cacao, along with our personal interest in connecting with the people and places of Latin America.

When a chocolate maker practices direct trade, they buy their cacao beans directly from an individual farm, farming cooperative, or fermentaria (the place where the beans are fermented).

This model of trade removes middlemen from the supply chain and means there is more “juice” in the proverbial “orange” for the farmer and fermenters. And because of this, farmers and fermenters who sell their cacao within the direct-trade model typically receive a price per kilogram well above “fair trade” standards.

This is really important for chocolate, because layer-upon-layer of middlemen is the primary driver of farmer exploitation, child labor, and slave labor happening today in the “chocolate industrial complex.”

Today, we buy all of our cacao from three importers. Each of these importers bought the cacao directly from individual farms, cooperatives, or fermentarias, and each of them take pride in practicing direct trade for the reasons listed above.

You may wonder why we use importers rather than buying directly ourselves. To buy direct, you need to order at least a 20-foot shipping container at a time, which is about 18 metric tonnes of cacao. As soon as we buy cacao in those quantities, we will buy directly. With your help, we can get there :)

So to answer this question directly, direct trade is the concept of removing middle-men between cacao growers and chocolate makers, and this is only possible when the supply chain is transparent and chocolate makers know each party involved.

Our chocolate factory is in Bozeman, Montana which is on the edge of the Yellowstone Caldera. This supervolcano first erupted 2.1 million years ago, then again 1.2 million years, and most recently 640,000 years ago ... leading some geologists to believe we are due for the next one. This supervolcano created and still defines the landscape around Bozeman and Yellowstone Park, known as the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.

It comes down to three reasons.

1) We make chocolate from specialty cacao and zero fillers or binding agents

2) 100% of our cacao is fairly traded, and we pay a premium for exceptional cacao

3) We are a bean-to-bar chocolate maker, which means we start with raw cacao beans and do all the steps needed to make fine chocolate at our roasting room in Bozeman, MT

That’s the short story. If you want the full story, you should check out the blog post that we wrote on the topic and reach out if you have any questions!

Cacao contains theobromine, which is a cardiovascular stimulant. This is one of the reasons why you may feel up-beat or energized after enjoying chocolate or cacao. Humans can easily metabolize theobromine, but dogs, cats, and other animals can not.

The higher the cacao percentage in a bar of chocolate, the more theobromine is in the chocolate. For example, you would expect a 70% dark chocolate bar to have twice the theobromine as a 35% milk chocolate bar, all else being equal in the recipe. For this reason, the darker the chocolate, the more danger it presents to our furry friends.

We encourage everyone with pets to be mindful of where they store chocolate or cacao nibs. If you find that an animal has eaten any chocolate or nibs, regardless of the percentage, it is best to get them to a vet as soon as possible.