It's Not a Farming Problem. It's a Creative Ecosystem Problem. Chocolate edition.

When Loren asked me for the fourth time to work with him on saving the chocolate supply chain, I switched my “no” to “maybe”. I told him I would have to be convinced sustainable chocolate tasted good. From my experience, it did not. I very much like dark chocolate – the silky smooth kind Godiva and Lindt sell in party packs at Costco.

I wanted to like sustainable chocolate. I know enough to know children are trafficked throughout Africa to harvest the cacao beans. Not “I grew up working on my parents farm in Michigan” child labor. The ugly, we will beat you if you even try to leave this farm – which far from your actual loving home – kind of child labor. I don’t want my dollars to support this.

My requirements were simple and typical – I need to be easily able to obtain the chocolate and it needs to taste good. Loren responded with Caputo’s website (https://caputos.com/chocolate/) promising easy home delivery and plenty of good options.

Trying chocolate alone in my basement seemed, well, lonely, and maybe seen as a call for help by my loved ones. So, I decided to make it a party.

I brought out many things to pair the chocolates with – honey, wine (port, red), cheese, crackers, jams, bacon, garlicy things, etc. Note from the day after, simplicity would have been better on my stomach. There were plenty of yummy combinations.

I purchased a variety of chocolate bars, from very dark to milk, from nuts and fruits to Amazonian ants. I had cocoa too.

Serious about our evaluations, my party of six would each sample a small piece of a chocolate bar at the same time. Like a wine or olive oil tasting, we had sheets where we could keep notes on each bar.

I want everyone reading this article to purchase sustainable chocolate. But I also have to be honest. Reactions to chocolate went from gagging, to “tastes a bit like burning rubber”/ spit out, to this is the most delicious chocolate bar I’ve ever tasted. The Mayana bar may be the most delicious chocolate I’ve ever had. It is small batch made, although it’s supply chain is not fully tracked.

My favorite small batch chocolates are easily Bon Bon Bon, made right here in Detroit. There are competing reasons they are my favorite – the flavors, the quality of the chocolate, the industrial look with the corrugated cardboard wrapping, or the miniscule, handmade drawing on the top of each individually wrapped chocolate. The presentation and taste are unmatched.

Like fine wine, the more sustainable chocolate I eat, the more I can’t stand the sugary, tasteless, over the counter variety.

The chocolate tasting party concluded with a sense of, maybe some sustainable chocolates, but definitely not spending $10 on a bar without having a little taste first. I’m sure a wine tasting is very similar – you find some you love and some you hate.

As we unwrapped each bar, we could all agree: the packaging was stunning. Each bar was wrapped in a piece of art. The weight of the outer wrappers added to the sense you were opening a gift with each bar. The wine ecosystem is perhaps the most advanced in having a standardized language and rating system — one that travels all the way onto the label. Coffee, tea, cheese, and cigars have their own versions of this. Chocolate bloggers, podcasters, and influencers are prominent across the world. But unlike wine, those voices haven't made it onto the packaging in a way that explains origin, process, or why a bar costs $10. So, while the packaging is art in itself, the absence of a rating means you can’t be sure if this is worth $10 or $2.

That's the missing piece — and it's not a farming problem. It's a creative ecosystem problem.

The farmers producing the world's finest cacao are not the ones capturing the story, building the brand, or setting the price. The designers, the copywriters, the chocolatiers, the regional identity builders — that entire layer of creative infrastructure is largely absent from origin countries. That's what keeps a Ghanaian farmer supplying a Belgian label instead of building their own.

So yes — buy some bars. Host your own tasting. Find your Mayana moment. But also recognize that every time you pay $12 for a beautifully packaged bar from a small-batch maker, you're paying for exactly what cacao-growing regions deserve to build for themselves.

That's what B Global by Design is working toward.

Listen to my podcast this week. I talk with Loren about all of it — why he's devoted his career to this, how stakeholder engagement can actually end child slavery in the supply chain, and the story behind Chocolate Noir. https://open.spotify.com/show/5MY4HkfznJruukyOHJNyPQ

A big thanks to Billi Richardson, Carl and Heather Watts, and the others who saved me from eating 25 chocolate bars alone in my basement.