Xocolatl Small Batch Chocolate

If you live in Georgia, you probably remember standing in a line like this to vote and if you live outside the state you probably saw images like this on the news. One of the biggest challenges to efficient voting this past June was a lack of poll workers. That's why we're teaming up with some friends to launch Staff the Polls 2020. We're a group of small, local businesses who are all committed to doing what we can to ensure every vote counts this November. That's why we've a...ll committed to give our staff paid time off to become poll workers, that includes a day of training and working on election day. If you're a local business that wants to join us checkout www.StaffThePolls2020.com to sign up. There are also links there for individuals to sign up to be poll workers in their county of residence. We're all pitching in because democracy doesn't just happen by itself, it's something we've all got to work for. @rootbakingco @spillerpark @pancake.social @littletartbakeshop @ticonderogaclub @fiveandten @essouth @xocolatlchocolate #staffthepolls #vote

"Setting the Bar: A Craft Chocolate Origin Story" is now available to stream for free on Amazon Prime Video!

Dear Friends & Chocolate Lovers, We hope you are doing well under these trying circumstances and finding moments of normalcy in what is most definitely not a normal time. We also hope you're keeping your chocolate supply handy because we know chocolate helps! In our last update, we hinted at our store reopening at Krog Street Market. Since that up-date, the situation in Georgia has unfortunately only gotten worse and as we are committed to doing our part to slow the spread ...of the virus, our store will remain closed for now. During this time, we are still safely manufacturing chocolate for our online customers and our wholesale partners and we look forward to welcoming back our retail customers when things in Georgia start to improve. We are very grateful that all of our staff have remained healthy and COVID-free throughout this time and we're doing everything in our power to keep it that way. Even with our retail store closed, we have kept very busy. We've been able to purchase cacao from Tanzania and Uganda and are so excited for the new origins to land so that we can start recipe development and hopefully roll out some new bars in time for the holidays this year. Our staff have been working to retool the tours and tastings we used to offer in our factory into an online format so that very soon we can offer live, virtual tastings for folks in the comfort of their own homes. We're also deep in the throes of website-revamping to make ours more robust for what we hope will be a busy online holiday season. Elaine and Bobby (our Production Coordinator) even made time to get trained as poll workers, working the polls in Georgia's runoff election this month and they're mentally gearing up for a busy day as poll workers this November. To that end, as a company we're proudly offering paid time off to any staff who choose to volunteer for the election and to all our staff so that they can take the time they need to vote. As we make our way forward through these times, we know there will be more unforeseen challenges ahead and our plan is to keep ourselves educated and our commitment to our community unwavering. We are grateful to all of you for your support and as a token of our thanks, we've launched a 20% summer sale to help you with any chocolate restocking you might need. We hope you are healthy and stronger than ever in your perseverance. In Love + Gratitude, Elaine + Matt

Prior to our life in chocolate, Matt & I had careers in activism, politics & relief work & so, like the rest of the country, we deeply mourn the loss of national hero John Lewis. He represented our district, but he also graced our lives on a personal level. This photo is us with the Congressman just days before we left for Costa Rica, the journey that would lead us to founding Xocolatl. I wanted to share a note Matt wrote on his personal FB page with everyone here: I grew up ...Continue reading

When we founded Xocolatl we knew we wanted it to be more than a chocolate company. We envisioned Xocolatl as a tool for living our ideals and working toward a better world. Over the past five plus years we’ve strived to live up to those ideals, but our approach to running a socially conscious business has been somewhat ad hoc and to be honest we’ve also found ourselves bogged down in day to day operations. These past two weeks we marched with our fellow Atlantans in the birth...place of the Civil Rights Movement. It has been inspiring and reinvigorated our desire to do more and do it better. Today, we commit to clearly defining our priorities and the direct actions we will take so that Xocolatl lives up to its founding principles. Later this week we’re going to get back to posting about our chocolate. In the meantime, if you’d like to purchase some chocolate, we encourage you to check out these excellent #blackowned bean-to-bar chocolate companies: Dalloway Chocolate Willie Coca Chocolates Sol Cacao Noir d'Ebene Chocolat et Patisserie Good Girl Chocolate Island Sharks Chocolate Pure chocolate by Jinji SPAGnVOLA Chocolatier Many thanks to Chocolate Noise for their article highlighting these companies. Black Lives Matter. #chocolate #beantobar #Atl

https://www.gofundme.com/f/covid-crisis-indigenous-cacao-fa While you might not be at the beach this Memorial Day or at a cook-out with friends, I do have a suggestion for an easy, feel-good thing you can do from home AND you could get a chocolate bar out if it! A lot of you know Matt and I travel to many of our cacao origins in an effort to build long-lasting, mutually beneficial trading relationships with the hardworking farming families who grow the cacao we turn into c...hocolate. For the last several years, we've also visited some really remote indigenous communities in Peru with Conservation Cacao, Raaka Chocolate, Parliament Chocolate and French Broad Chocolates. These communities have recently started growing cacao as a cash crop but don't yet have the infrastructure to sell it on the international market where they would earn more money for their work and we hope to be able to help them get there. In the meantime, these tiny communities are also under quarantine as the Peruvian govt has extended their lock-down for another month. The Ashaninka and other peoples of the Amazon know how to live off the land in isolation, but in this global world, they are also feeling the hardship of not being able to travel to nearby towns to sell their crops or go to work. . Conservation Cacao opened a $5k GoFundMe Fundraising to provide emergency cash for 5 of these communities with the goal of being able to give $1k directly to each, just to help them bridge the gap and it's almost halfway there. An easy, online donation (link above) takes just a few minutes and $10 or $25 goes so much further in these communities than in our own. You won't hear directly from the people you're helping, but let their smiles be a thanks! And as our thank you to everyone who donates $35 or more, just DM us with a screenshot of your donation and we'll send you a $10 coupon for our online store! There -- easy, feel-good, plus some ! Thank you everyone for considering!

GIVEAWAY ALERT for #Educators and #Nurses!!! We're giving away 100 dark chocolate raspberry hearts to ten Nurses and $25 eGift certificates to three Educators. Check out our last two Instagram posts for details!

This #earthday $25 dollars plants 25 trees in the Amazon. Our friends at Cafe Campesino Roastery are helping the efforts of 90 women coffee farmers in Peru to raise money to plant 22,500 new trees in the Central Amazon to combat climate change, increase biodiversity and their families' own food and income security. These women farmers are members of Tienda CAC Pangoa., a cooperative of coffee and cacao farmers we were introduced to by Cafe Campesino and from whom we buy the Peruvian cacao we use in several of our award-winning chocolate bars. We've made a small contribution to their efforts and hope you will consider making one too! Grow Ahead will plant 1 tree for every $1 donated.

I hear there's a baking bonanza happening nationwide! We'll share some of our recipes in up-coming posts but in the meantime, if you're doing a lot of #baking and #homecooking, check out the list at Good Food Foundation for small, independent food companies who produce delicious food ethically and sustainably and are shipping during these crazy times. Buy from us or buy from the others on the list--just please spread your $ around so it doesn't all go to the big ecomm giants! These companies work tirelessly quarantine or no quarantine to contribute to healthy food systems in this country and we need them all to still be around when this clears. Here's a sampling of what you can find on the list: #chocolate #honey #cider #charcuterie #cheese #coffee #grains #elixirs #fish #oils #preserves #tea . Thanks for considering!!

Sometimes right now a few days can feel like a few months. This is a podcast our co-owner Matt recorded the week we closed our shop at Krog Street Market to the public. Since then a lot has changed. We've been overwhelmed by all of the support. There's still a long way to go, but we can see the path forward. Many thanks for everyone ordering online and sending words of encouragement.

Many of you have asked us for updates on how & what we're doing. Here's our current state of affairs: 1. As a food producer, we're continuing to operate as an "essential business" per the guidelines sent out by the GA Dept of Ag. While our factory has been closed to the public for 2 weeks now, we continue to make chocolate implementing strict controls. 2. We're continuing to ship online & wholesale orders--we've seen a big uptick in our online sales for which we're very gra...teful! 3. We're working through the new legislation so we can pay our furloughed staff & applying for small business loans & grants as we've gone from a team of 12 to a temporary team of 3. 4. We're at the Morningside Farmers Market and the Peachtree Road Farmers Market every Sat--come on out! If your #local #farmersmarket is still open, please remember they're safe places for you to continue to buy food directly from your local farmers & food producers. We're incredibly moved by how resilient & supportive yall are as we hand-write the notes you include in your chocolate care packages to your families, your friends & the medical personnel in your lives. We hope you're staying safe & sane & finding your ways of adapting. On our end, we'll keep the chocolate flowing.

Dear Friends and Chocolate Lovers, It’d be an understatement to say this has been a difficult week for us all. We hope you are doing well and staying safe. We wanted to give you an update on what’s going on with our little chocolate company. We made the decision to close our one retail location at Krog Street Market on Monday, March 16th. On Tuesday, the entire market closed to the public. While we closed our micro-factory to the public, we are still making chocolate safely, ...hygienically, and responsibly as we always have, and are of course following every CDC recommendation to the letter. We're proud of the fact that over the past five years we've grown from the two of us plus one employee making chocolate, working the cash register, answering the phones, and everything else it takes to run a business, to a team of twelve, with wholesale and online customers around the country. Over that time we've also won more than half a dozen national and international awards for our chocolate. We are especially proud that we offer a health insurance plan and paid time off to our full time staff, and offer three months of paid maternity (we're expecting our first staff baby next month!). Right now, we're working hard and thinking creatively about the actions we need to take so we can continue to honor those commitments we've made to our staff. Now, with our retail store and many of our wholesale partners closed, we will essentially be an online business for the next couple of weeks, months? We don't know. We have truly been overwhelmed by the support you and others have shown us during this time. There have been moments of reading notes of support sent with your orders that have moved us to tears and reminded us how strong our community is. We want to say a deep thank you to all of you. We are continuing to offer 20% off all online orders with the coupon code "HEALTHY20". We hope you will tell your friends and family about our sale. We wish you all the best. Stay safe. We look forward to making you award winning, ethically sourced and produced craft chocolate for years to come. With love, Elaine + Matt