As one of the final parts of our immersion experience in Costa Rica, we toured Sibo Chocolate, a small chocolate-making business that started back in 2008. The co-owners of this business, historian Julio Fernandez Amón and journalist George Soriano, essentially gave up everything they had to start this chocolate business all those years ago. Our main focus on this trip so far has been on coffee, however the development and complexity of chocolate holds many similarities to coffee, so let’s take a moment to compare them. The cacao plants and coffee trees both need similar environments to grow and thrive, once harvested the beans of these plants need to be dried in order to create the products that farmers want, and the quality of the products both depend on very distinct flavors that can be adjusted to meet desired benchmarks. 

Much like coffee, chocolate holds a very important historic and cultural significance in Costa Rica. It was originally grown and used here in Central America for its believed medicinal benefits and its ability to “bring life” to someone, much like the way that coffee does. Eventually, Europeans took a liking to it and began making developments of their own, eventually creating many of the famous treats we know today like milk chocolate, chocolate bars, and chocolate eggs. Also much like coffee, chocolate faces similar challenges in regards to weather and pests affecting yields and the like. In regards to the supply chain and production of chocolate, as we know many of the larger companies like Hershey and Nestle dominate the bigger markets like the US, Europe, and Canada. This means that it is difficult for small businesses like Sibo Chocolate to enter these markets and grow their business past a certain point. 

To make up for this issue they face in the chocolate industry, Sibo Chocolate has already done an excellent job at positioning their brand as one of transparency and sustainability. The packaging they use for all their products is actually made using a by-product of the chocolate they already make, the husks of the cacao beans make up 95% of the paper they use for packaging. This is an excellent example of what companies can do to reduce the footprint they leave on the environment by replacing normally plastic packaging with more sustainably made paper packaging. By telling the story of how they created Sibo and educating others on their own process, they encourage others to follow in their footsteps of sustainability and help further their reach on how to leave the earth how we left it rather than strip it bare and poison it.