Today we headed to Chocolate Sibö, which had originally started in 2008 by historian Julio Fernandez Amón and journalist George Soriano. They had quit their day jobs to pursue their interest in chocolate, and headed to Europe to study with chocolate masters. Their dedication and hard work paid off, and they started their company, eventually entering into a partnership in 2015 to expand their company and get a mechanical engineering/financial perspective. They mainly focus on their chocolates and how to best be sustainable, mainly with their packaging. Their chocolate packing is made from the husk from a cacao bean and then grounded to make them into boxes and packages. They also use cellophane instead of plastic, as it is more sustainable and eco-friendly. We were lucky enough to sample their different Bonbon chocolates, each with a different richness and unique flavoring such as caramel, truffle, and lime!

Chocolate is similar to coffee, as the cacao is a bean that needs to be harvested and dried and then shed like the coffee cherry. Once husked, the bean, now referred to as nibs, can be turned into either a dark or milk chocolate. The nibs contain caffeine in it as does the coffee bean. While coffee comes from the highlands and chocolate comes from the lowlands, the companies in Costa Rica both export their finalized products to countries such as the United States, Japan, and Canada. They also focus on sustainability, as Chocolate Sibö uses the cacao husk for their packaging and coffee farms like Hacienda Doka uses the parchment from the coffee cherry to fuel their machines.

As a result, some of the biggest challenges and risks the chocolate supply chain faces is competition with larger brands and the element of cacao farming. Chocolate Sibö is an rising chocolate company but still face many bigger competitors such as Nestle, Hershey, and Lindt. In addition, they only work with Costa Rican cacao, and that takes time to harvest as it requires particular climate and is a permanent crop. This means that it can create a forest, but needs other crops to grow around it to maintain biodiversity. Another big challenge in general is convincing someone to try Costa Rican chocolate over Belgium chocolate. Luckily, since Chocolate Sibö is a little smaller than other companies, they can compete with marketing powerhouses by focusing on their clients. It is very important to know the client and have someone who believes in their company or wants to be apart of the company. They have had years of research to form their client base by talking to people, learning the market, discovering their niche, and then finding someone who has experience in selling that niche. Larger companies don’t focus as much that personally on their clients so I feel like that is the best way to compete with marketing powerhouses.