Taza Chocolate - Stay True to the Craft. Outlast the Competition
About this episode
Alex Whitmore shares the story of Taza Chocolate's resilience and commitment to traditional chocolate making and direct trade.
A flood destroyed the factory, the FDA shut them down, and the company had almost no cash and then something remarkable happened. Ramon Vela sits down with Alex Whitmore , Founder & CEO of Taza Chocolate , for a deeply human conversation about twenty-plus years of stone-ground, mission-driven chocolate making in Somerville, Massachusetts. From a transformative trip to Oaxaca to pioneering direct trade relationships with cocoa farmers in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, Alex's story is one of the most compelling in the specialty food world. * The flood that almost ended everything. Just a few years into building Taza , a freak thunderstorm flooded the factory, destroyed inventory, and triggered an FDA shutdown. What happened next surprised even Alex: suppliers, customers, landlord, and community all showed up. That moment taught him that business is deeply human at its core. * A trip to Oaxaca that changed everything. The name Taza comes from "taza de chocolate," a traditional Mexican drinking chocolate. After visiting stone mills in southern Mexico in his twenties, Alex came home and built the only company in America making chocolate on traditional Mexicano stone mills — and…
More episodes of The Story of a Brand Show
- POCA - What Building Hims and Hers Taught Her About Starting Over
- Raw Sugar - What Retail Really Reveals About Your Brand
- Farmana - Health Is a Verb. Start Acting Like It.
- I and Love and You - The Operator's Playbook for Pet
- Apothékary - She Left Wall Street to Redefine Wellness
- Eli Health - Your Hormones Are Talking. Are You Listening?
Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the The Story of a Brand Show podcast page.