April 26, 2017

Honduras Chocolate Now on Florida Grocery Store Shelves

Better-than-fair-trade dark chocolate bars now available for purchase online and at Sarasota and Tampa area gourmet and health food retailers.

For the first time, single-origin Honduran chocolate bars produced by the Honduras Chocolate Company are available at select groceries in the Tampa, Clearwater and Sarasota areas, including Abby’s Health & Nutrition in Tampa and Nature's Food Patch in Clearwater. The company got its start in 2015, but this is the first time their chocolate products have been sold by North American retailers.

While it’s known that some of the best cacao is grown in Honduras and other equatorial regions, very few chocolate producers are based in these same areas. Most often, consumers think of chocolate as a Northern European commodity.

“Of course, we care about making the best-tasting chocolate,” said Mike Wiesner, Honduras Chocolate Company Vice President. “But it’s about more than taste for us. It’s also about making a product in the place where it’s grown to further support the local economy. This means paying the farmers better than fair-trade prices, following environmentally-friendly processing practices and hand-selecting the best cacao.”

The Honduras Chocolate Company produces four, 2.7 oz chocolate bars at 65 percent, 70 percent, 75 percent and 80 percent cacao. Because the chocolate is only two ingredients—cacao and pure cane sugar, both of which are grown organically in Honduras—the flavor is unlike many other chocolate varieties. It has a unique deep buttery cocoa flavor. The higher the cacao percentage, the more pronounced the coffee accents. The lower the cacao percentage, the more pronounced the fruity accents.

All of the chocolates are non-GMO, gluten-free, soy-free, dairy-free, and nut-free. The company hand selects the cacao pods grown by its network of local farmers and completes the processing by storing the beans in its own dry processing facility in Honduras. From there, the beans are fermented and, when ready, processed into chocolate and packaged for distribution. This setup allows the farmers to focus solely on farming and the Honduras Chocolate Company to control quality and consistency without adding fillers and other flavors to the recipe.

About the Honduras Chocolate Company
The Honduras Chocolate Company develops deep, personal relationships with its Honduran farmers, pays better-than-fair-trade prices and provides farmers with essential business training, micro-loans and access to farming resources. These relationships result in greater crop yields of a higher-quality compared to mass-produced cacao. The net result: better chocolate for you, and a positive, sustainable solution for a country rich in culture but poor in financial resources. The Honduras Chocolate company sells four chocolate bars ranging from 65 percent to 80 percent cacao as well as cocoa powder and culinary chocolate online and at select retailers.