An unexpected package

Fränzi was amazed when a parcel from India arrived unexpectedly last year, sent by our partners in India, the Fair Trade Alliance Kerala (FTAK). The contents are still on her mind today.

The story begins six years ago, when Franziska Akert, an agronomist and trained cheesemaker, was called to South India to teach FTAK producers the art of cocoa fermentation. Although the cocoa bush Theobroma Cacao has had a secure place in the ecosystem of Kerala's forest gardens, which cover an average of around 1 hectare, for more than a hundred years, it has not been possible for producers to produce cocoa beans of the highest quality. Usually, the cocoa beans, some of which were dried and some of which were still raw, were supplied to large industrial buyers such as Cadbury. These food giants add cocoa butter and other additives to the cocoa, melt it into large slabs and sell it as chocolate coating to chocolate manufacturers all over the world. That was the status quo until Fränzi came along.

From cheese to cocoa

The Wädenswil native gained her knowledge of cocoa processing during an internship in Peru. "But even before Peru, during my training as a cheesemaker in Andeer, I felt a passion for preserving agricultural products". And so the leap from cheese to cocoa, and from Andeer to Peru, didn't feel far at all.
Back in Switzerland, Fränzi couldn't let go of her fascination with chocolate. Together with Andi Brechbühl - a fellow student - she makes her first attempts at roasting in the oven at home. They used a hairdryer to blow away the shells and then crushed the exposed beans in a small melangeur. That was in 2013, and today they produce around two tons of pure chocolate from four origins in Peru, Ghana and India under the name "Garçoa" in a small garage in Zurich Wollishofen.

FTAK's long journey

After her visit to Kerala in 2013, Fränzi had not heard from FTAK for six years. During her stay in southern India, she realized that it was much more difficult to dry the cocoa beans safely in Kerala's warm and humid climate than in Peru: "We had to travel to the other side of the mountains, where it was drier. This was the only way to dry the beans after fermentation without exposing them to the risk of fungal infestation. It was very time-consuming and, to be honest, I didn't expect anything else to come of it," she explains.
Fränzi was all the more surprised when she took the really well fermented and dried cocoa beans from the package in her hands and dared to try her first roast.

Bean to Bar

The tinkering begins. "Bean to bar" is the name given to what more and more small chocolate manufacturers around the world have been practicing with great passion since 2005. In addition to its purist aspirations, the process can also be seen as an emancipation from industrial production techniques. Garçoa himself describes it like this:

"Our aim is to bring the taste of each individual cocoa into the finished chocolate. We can only do this by handling the entire processing ourselves in small batches, from the bean to the bar. First we select the cocoa by hand, then we peel, roast and grind it, add some organic cane sugar and finally we pour the chocolate mass into our own molds. We do not use any additives such as cocoa butter, lecithin etc., which otherwise end up in many a chocolate. This guarantees that only the taste of the cocoa beans is in our chocolate, and yet every bar tastes completely different."

And so the bar from Kerala also has its very own character. Fränzi hands me a bulky slab of broken chocolate: "This is the result of the cocoa sample from the package". I let this fine piece of craftsmanship melt on my tongue with relish. Flavors of raisins and dried plums awaken my love for this chocolate and the thought of ordering more than I already have.

Garçoa X Crowd Container

In addition to the correct setting of the melting point of the chocolate, which can vary by a tenth of a degree depending on the variety, cocoa procurement is one of the biggest challenges for the small "bean to bar" manufacturers. In world trade, cocoa beans are traded by the unit "container". However, as a container contains far too much cocoa for the small production facilities, small buyers are dependent on middlemen. And this requires trust, because not just any cocoa, but precisely this one with a specific origin and a specific variety should end up in the chocolate. It's best to do it yourself, but this presents huge logistical challenges.
It was precisely these seemingly insurmountable hurdles that prompted Crowd Container founder Tobias Joos to import the first container full of spices, rice, coffee and cashews from Kerala to Switzerland in 2016. And because Fränzi and Tobias have known each other personally for a long time, cooperation in the case of Kerala's cocoa was an obvious choice.

Three bags of cocoa

As a result of this story, we can now also order chocolate made from the excellent cocoa from the Kerala forest gardens. However, the total amount of cocoa in the container is still manageable and is three bags of 50 kg each.