Since 2018, we’ve dedicated time, rigor, and passion to curating projects that reveal cacao’s many overlooked facets—history, botany, cultural heritage, diversity and complexity.
Through this work, we aim to contribute to a broader shift in how cacao is perceived, bringing its hidden stories and nuances back into focus, and facilitating accessibility to Origin Cacao.
Each project we take on is both a labor of love and a necessary step toward enriching cacao literacy—bringing us closer to our purpose with every initiative.
Browse through some of our past and current projects for a glimpse into our contribution.
Cacao Insights’ initial and ongoing pursuit is to experiment with various Origin Cacaos to try and understand what impacts their differences in taste and effects.
An effort that serves two purposes:
→ Sharing an empirical and subjective approach aimed at mapping out the market’s offer while shedding a light on important distinctions between cacaos,
→ Creating a baseline study which helps linking causes to consequences, meaning here, how one or more slight changes in criteria ranging from genetics, terroir and steps in the making process are responsible for significant differences in aromas expression and induced physiological effects.
The vision is to share and spread cacao’s diversity and complexity, so we can help shift its related narrative from a single-taste commodity to a rich entity providing an experience on its own, in the likes of fine wine, craft beer or specialty coffee.
Our profiles are set as collection of articles — sorted by makers, origin country, aromatic profile and effect profile — and are accompanied with in-depth interviews from the makers. They are presented as thorough product sheet providing insights on each step of the process (i.e. genetics, terroir, cultivation methods, post-harvest techniques, transformation methods) as well as detailed aromatic and effect profiles.
We believe that training culinary specialists in places where specialty foods and drinks are already a staple is one of the main ways to facilitate accessibility to Origin Cacao and foster cacao education amongst their consumers.
This is why we created this training, oriented towards baristas and taking into account the realities of specialty coffee shops to smoothly incorporate Origin Cacao to their menus and rotations.
The training is divided into two levels, each comprising of a theoretical and a practical part.
It is designed for mastering the craft of original cacao drinks while getting an in-depth understanding of cacao—from roots to cup—and therefore being able to promote it, not only as an alternative to coffee, but as a full-blown addition to one’s lifestyle.
We’ve worked with numerous brands and producers of Origin Cacao, as well as with craft chocolate makers. Here’s a non-exhaustive list of the tasks we performed and projects we developed:
We designed and hosted events for pros and individuals.
