Today we visited Sibo Chocolate and Riverside and they both seemed completely different at first. One focused on chocolate and the other food and music, but both businesses actually shared the same goal of creating something sustainable and meaningful. Both places really cared about helping the community, supporting local culture, and using resources responsibly rather than just making money. The triple bottom line ( people, planet, and profit) became way easier to understand after seeing real examples of it in action.
When visiting Sibo Chocolate I noticed that they keep value and creativity in Costa Rica instead of just exporting cacao beans somewhere else. Julio one of the three founders started making chocolate 20 years ago and they all spent years learning how to make chocolate because they believed Costa Rica should benefit more from its own cacao industry. That idea connected directly to the triple bottom line because they were investing in local farmers, local production, and Costa Rican identity instead of taking the cheapest route possible.We learned cacao has been used for around 4,000 years and was once so valuable that cacao seeds were even used as currency. The tour also showed how chocolate changed over time, from Indigenous groups drinking bitter chocolate beverages to Europeans adding ingredients like sugar, milk, caramel, nutmeg, and chili powder. Learning about companies like Hershey and Nestlé mass producing chocolate made Sibo feel even more different because Sibo focuses more on quality and craftsmanship rather than producing huge amounts as cheaply as possible. One quote that stood out to me from Julio was that ” A good business is when everyone wins”. This shows that they want to benefit farmers, workers, customers, and competition.
Riverside showed the triple bottom line in a different but equally powerful way. Daniel Harris, the owner, took the remains of a project that burned down about thirty five years ago and reused the ruins instead of starting over completely. The restaurant still keeps original floors and pieces of burned wood, which keeps the history of the place alive. Riverside also uses a closed-loop system by growing organic produce and pizza ingredients in gardens around the restaurant while composting food waste back into the soil. Beyond environmental sustainability, Riverside supports the local community by hosting classical and jazz nights for local musicians and selling artwork from local artists on the walls and all profits made go right to the sellers of the artwork. They even use local ingredients in some of their beer. What stood out to me most was that Riverside was not just focused on profit, but on creating opportunities for local people while reducing waste and reusing resources already in the community.
