“Most chocolate bars on the market are made with heavily roasted cacao that’s manufactured by major cocoa grinding companies,” says William Mullan, brand manager of Raaka, a chocolate company started in Brooklyn apartment back in 2010 that highlights a variety of wonderfully bold flavors found in unroasted, single origin cacao all the while maintaining a sense of transparency about their supply chain.
“These grinding companies source their beans from West Africa and pay low, unsustainable commodity prices for the beans; they grind the beans into a cocoa mass and sell it to the chocolate companies,â he adds. âThe result is a market dominated by a homogenous flavor profile that generally lacks transparency, even with the various trade certifications.”
