Tonight 50,000 Belizean-made chocolate bars are on their way to the U.S. chocolate market. That's after southern chocolatier Mahogany Chocolate filled and sealed its first container of product for export.
It's a milestone that was marked by an official ceremony this morning where Executive Chocolate Maker Armando Cowo gave the media a factory tour and told the tale of how far Mahogany chocolate has come. Cherisse Halsall traveled to Punta Gorda to bring us this story.
It was all golden tickets for the Media this morning as we were invited to tour one of the country's most prolific chocolate factories. And after we'd strapped on our aprons washed our hands.
And donned the appropriate gloves. It was time to get down to business, the business of chocolate making.
But while we were the honorary Oompa Loompas for the day, we were no less impressed by the wonders of the factory.
And the chance to get an in depth look at the process from start to finish this chocolatier showed us how to fill trays and how to level them out.
But that was way easier said than done, our local Willie Wonka taking us through his chocolate factory was Mr. Armando Choco, Executive Chocolate maker and the brains behind the operation. And in between chocolate tasting he shared his vision for Belize's budding chocolate industry and the trajectory his brand has taken.
Armando Cowo - Executive Chocolate Maker "We wanted to create a product that will be enjoyed, admired, and loved, by first our local consumers, second we want also to represent Belize. We want for our consumers to enjoy real chocolate, and real chocolate contains higher cocoa content and on the first taste our local consumers may not really adjust their taste pallet to it. First thing they will say, it's bitter. It's not necessarily bitter it's actually more healthy for consumption. We are a tree, to bean, to bar chocolate maker, we manufacture and make two brands our Belize chocolate brand and our Brukdown chocolate brand, these two chocolates are available on the local market on every major retail store in the country of Belize and until recently, as a matter of fact, two days ago we loaded 50,000 chocolate products for the U.S. market."
Jules Vasquez "How exciting is that at this juncture and do you perhaps feel that this company has what it takes to be the next Marie Sharp?"
Armando Cowo "Well, we're doing all what it takes to ensure that we produce quality chocolate product -----and that's exactly where we want to go, we want to be able to produce product and make it available worldwide."
It's a bold feat and one that can only be carried out with good old Belizean ingenuity.
Armando Cowo "We have the skill here locally first and foremost we grew the product here in Belize, we produce cocoa beans much more than we can process, second we've developed the skill of our growers to improve the quality of the Cacao beans, third we've also invested in improving the skills of the people making the chocolate, transforming these cacao beans, adding value so that the products are competitive."
And Choco says that those 50,000 bars on their way to the U.S. are just for starters, tomorrow we'll tell you about the larger cacao cornucopia
Mahogany's Chocolate's premier product was their Brukdown Bar, a 50% dark chocolate bar with cacao nibs and almonds. They followed that up with their flagship product, the Belizean Bar which today consists of a range of 5 cacao percentages from darkest, to milk, and even white chocolate.
