Our goal is to produce the best tasting chocolate possible while maintaining high ethical standards. We control the quality of our chocolate by following the process carefully from the moment the bean comes out of the pod. We are constantly striving to create a sustainable, environmentally friendly company that pays a fair wage and treats employees and suppliers fairly. All of our packaging is recyclable or compostable.

We purchase only fine aroma or fine flavor cocoa beans. We purchase and promote the use of Nacional Variety heirloom cocoa beans.

Mindo Chocolate Makers

We are offering the following Chocolate Making Courses in 2013

2013 Origins Plantation Tour and hands on processing cocoa beans
Meet the farmers, harvest, ferment and dry heirloom Nacional cocoa beans
Location: Mindo, Ecuador
Dates: June 5-7, 2013

2013 Chocolate Making Course: Hands on From Tree to Bar
Complete hands on course from harvest to making chocolate bars
Location: Mindo, Ecuador
Dates: June 10-14, 2013

For more information contact Barbara Wilson at bwilson@mindochocolate.com

October 22
Mindo Chocolate Makers will be attending the North West Chocolate Festival in Seattle on October 22nd & 23rd, where we will speak on the topic of building direct links between cacao farmers and artisan chocolate makers. We will share our experiences working with small-scale cacao farmers in Ecuador who sell organic, shade grown, heirloom varieties of cacao. Additionally, we will open dialogue on how artisan chocolate makers like us can help farmers abroad develop their own local chocolate economies by making and selling delicious, high quality cacao products.

October 1
We had a great Bean to Bar Chocolate Making Class. We had a fantastic group of students. We are planning to have a Chocolate Making Course in Ecuador summer 2012 where we will visit a cacao plantation, learn about fermentation, drying and roasting and we will finish the chocolate making all the way to the bar. We will also offer the Bean to Bar Chocolate Making Course September, 2012 in Michigan.

9/2011 Mindo Chocolate Makers is offering our first hands on Bean to Bar Chocolate Making Class taught by Chocolate Maker/Chef Amanda Clark Culinary Institute of America graduate and current Chocolate Maker for Mindo Chocolate Makers and Barbara Wilson, owner of Mindo Chocolate Makers. For more information contact bwilson@mindochocolate.com

Course Summary        Photo Summary

2011 We threw a barbecue at El Quetzal in Mindo and invited the growers of the cooperative where we buy organic Nacional cocoa beans. We had an opportunity to get to know the people who supply us with cocoa beans better and to meet the families. We gave them a tour of our chocolate making site in Mindo and let them taste chocolate and brownies made with their beans. We all had a great day and appreciated them taking the time to come and visit us.

We were proud to be accepted into the Chocolate Craft Makers of America.

Awarded finalists for the Good Food Awards in January 2011 for our Pure 77% Chocolate Bar.

We are participating in the Cocoa Genome Project with the USDA where we will collect leaf samples from cacao trees of the farmers where we purchase cocoa beans and we will contribute to the database of cacao varieties in the world.

We implementaed a grading system for our beans and are now only selecting the best tasting beans for our chocolate bars.

We began selling raw cocoa beans and roasted cocoa nibs and offering Chocolate Making classes encouraging new artisan chocolate makers in the U.S. and Ecuador.

In July and August of 2011 we are visiting members of the cooperative of growers that we buy from and discussing growing and handling of the cocoa trees, learning to identify heirloom varieties and letting the growers know that many people value these varieties.

We are learning more about roasting and fermentation to further improve the taste of our chocolate.

We are visiting the farms and communicating to cacao growers that organic, shade grown, safe working conditions and a fair price paid to growers are important to us and to our customers who buy our chocolate and we want to work with them to continue to value those and other issues that may be important to those who buy our chocolate. We are also promoting the planting and care of Nacional, a rare variety of cocoa bean.

2010 We began purchasing from a cooperative of small family farmers who have ECOCERT organic certification. We found farmers who grow heirloom varieties of cocoa beans and have shade grown cacao. We began selling our chocolate in the U.S. and were selling our products at more than 30 stores in the U.S. in our first year. We became members of the Fine Chocolate Industry Association.

2009 Mindo Chocolate Makers was founded and we began making chocolate in Dexter, Michigan, USA. We devoted most of our time to learning about and improving the chocolate making process and out of that came our mission to not only make chocolate from the cocoa bean, but to produce the best tasting chocolate possible while maintaining high ethical standards. We control the quality of our chocolate by following the process carefully from the moment the bean comes out of the pod. We are constantly striving to create a sustainable, environmentally friendly company that pays a fair price to farmers. In 2010 we were purchasing from one farmer.

2008 Barbara Wilson and Joseph Meza opened El Quetzal de Mindo a small coffee shop/restaurant in Mindo Ecuador. We began serving brownies with our freshly roasted Ecuadorian coffee. Barbara was not happy with the chocolate she was finding in Ecuador for the brownies and this began their quest for making delicious chocolate.

She and her husband also own El Quetzal de Mindo in Mindo, Ecuador.