午夜剧场

I began writing this text in a rural town called Sabalos in the Republic of Nicaragua. For the chocolate brand I founded, "Minimal – Bean to Bar Chocolate –," I visit cacao plantations around the world in search of high-quality beans. As a buyer, I spend about four months a year in countries located directly on the equator.

Broadly speaking, chocolate has traditionally been a choice between inexpensive snacks or luxury brands. We believe a third pole can emerge—a world where people enjoy limited-edition, special chocolates specified by origin or plantation, similar to the world of Romanée-Conti in wine. This is our brand vision: "Reinventing Chocolate." We are making chocolate with the belief that such a future will arrive in 10 or 20 years.

What surprises me when visiting plantations is that there are still cacao farmers who have never eaten chocolate. The industrial structures of the old colonial trade era remain deeply rooted. By offering the option of direct trade at prices higher than the market rate, we can return pricing power to farmers who were previously dominated by a volume-based economy. The key here is to help them understand what quality means, and for that, meeting and talking in person is vital.

Equally important is thoroughly understanding the individuality of the cacao beans produced with such soul and expressing that through chocolate. Cacao beans from the same plantation and the same tree can taste different depending on the season. To understand these differences, I eat chocolate every day until I feel sick, changing the recipe for each bean and creating over 3,000 recipes a year. As a result, we have received many awards, including the Grand Prize in our category at international competitions. However, this is not the goal; what matters is providing customers with a rich culinary experience through chocolate. If it isn't delicious, we cannot continue to receive payment, and we cannot sustain our purchases from farmers. That is why we continue to pursue deliciousness. It is a long road ahead, but we are continuing our efforts to create chocolate where consumers can recognize the character of the plantation in a single bite.

If we can create a "triple-win" relationship where we pay farmers a fair price, make good chocolate, and satisfy customers who pay for it, we can build a new ecosystem. This is not mere charity; by growing the business, global disparities are corrected, and the world becomes just a little bit better. I want to continue working hard, believing in such a future.