Chocolate is one of the world’s most popular and complex delicacies. Coming from a long, rich history, the story of chocolate, as we learned today at Sibö, is very old and sprawling. Starting centuries ago in central America, and running up through the present, chocolate has been on a very long journey. The cross section between chocolate and coffee’s histories are very intertwined. Coffee and chocolate grow and are produced in very similar climates, with a fair bit of overlap in primary producers and consumers. Additionally, coffee and chocolate have very similar fermentation processes, and were both initially utilized exclusively for drinks. When examining companies like Sibö and Café Britt, it’s easy to see a number of similarities; namely, both are effectively marketing firms for their own product. Sibö and Britt, additionally, are not responsible for growing or harvesting the crop, but instead producing it into the final product and shipping it to exporters.

A large number of challenges and risks fall upon the chocolate supply chain. Beginning at the baseline of harvesting chocolate, you need to be concerned about weather, enough workers, as well as keeping away bug infestations. Once the chocolate arrives at Sibö, who have cut out the middlemen, a great deal of time and care is put into their chocolate, as they do not produce on the same scale as Hershey or Nestle, and so this adds time and takes away potential profit. Sibö then exports to domestically, but has recently begun to export internationally as well. This opens up entirely new markets, but creates new challenges in terms of cutting into other large chocolate company’s markets, as well as finding ways to ship product to the States, Europe, and Japan.

If today I were to start a business exporting a Costa Rican tropical crop product, I would definitely go with either coffee or chocolate. As I’ve mentioned a number of times before, the final product is ultimately what interests me most, and in this case, you can’t go wrong either way. Chocolate has a very rich history that I’ve already mentioned, and working for a company like Sibö really keys you into that history. However, I would still have to go with coffee as my choice of a business. The coffee process is still by far the most interesting to me, and I think it’s a more versatile product than chocolate. However, I genuinely believe I would be happy with whatever product I were to go into business with.