About

We buy all our cacao beans from small family farmers in Southern Belize. Most of these farmers are of Kekchi or Mopan Maya descent, who have had their farms handed down through generations. Our sugar comes from northern Belize from mainly Yucated Maya cane farmers.

We press our own cocoa butter from these beans and use this in our chocolate to give it the familiar smooth mouthfeel of quality chocolate. We offer a variety of chocolate products including bars, truffles, chocolate tea, cocoa powder and chocolate body products.

All our chocolate products are available in our stores in San Pedro, Ambergris Caye and our neighboring island Caye Caulker. We can also ship via Tropic Air throughout the country of Belize. Our online store for International shipping is available here. 

Our Story - The short personal version

We are Chris and Jo Beaumont. We moved to Belize from UK in 1999 and after a few years of being beach bums, running a windsurfing business and a boutique hotel, we started making chocolate in our small kitchen in our wooden house on the beach in 2007

We opened the first chocolate boutique in Belize in 2012

Our story- the long official version 

Originally from the UK, we first came to Belize in 1998 to set up SailSports Belize, the first windsurfing and sailing school in the country. Chris had been working as a process engineer for Owens Ilinois in Toledo, Ohio and I had been working for a boutique advertising agency in London, as a television advertising producer.

We had both become disillusioned with our busy lives where work figured more prominently than pleasure, and separately,(we hadnt met yet) we left our careers to follow a dream of a simpler life.  

We met in Barbados learning to be sailing and windsurfing instructors, and at the end of the six- month course, we ventured to Belize.

Back in 2000 when we first came to Belize

Back then, it was hard to get chocolate in Belize, and Chris, who is a self- confessed chocoholic used to rely heavily on his parent’s annual visit to bring him a suitcase full of chocolate (Cadbury's Dairy Milk no less!!). We had already traveled to the Toledo district in the southern part of Belize, way back in 1999, when we were first contemplating the big move. We fell in love with the beauty of the Maya Mountains and the Maya people, but back then we weren’t even aware that cacao was grown in that region. In fact, we didn’t even know what cacao was!

Way back in my advertising days, I had eaten bars of Green and Black’s Maya Gold bar (which at that time was using Belizean cacao. Sadly it doesn't anymore!), but I hadn’t made the connection, until several years later in 2007 when we visited the first-ever Cacao Festival in Belize, with Green and Black’s as the sponsor.

A visit to a local cacao farm during this festival, was the turning point in our lives and the beginning of our chocolate story. We came home to San Pedro with a sack of cacao and started experimenting in our tiny kitchen in our wooden house on the beach.

The first bar, named Kakaw, after the Maya name for chocolate, made its debut in December 2007, in Wine de Vine, the local wine and gourmet food store.

                   

Over the next few years, we sold the water sports business and started managing a small boutique hotel to help finance us, while we continued to make chocolate and grow the business. In 2012, I completed the Professional Chocolatier Program with Ecole Chocolat in Vancouver, and in December of that year, we took the plunge and opened the first chocolate boutique in the country.

(We'll be celebrating our 10th anniversary of the shop in December of this year! where has the time gone?)

It was a dream come true.

The gift shop/chocolate cafe offers a delicious selection of individual bonbons using our dark, milk, and white chocolate combined with Belizean ingredients such as Belizean citrus blossom honey, coconut, pineapple, banana, cashew, rum, and even the local beer Belikin sorrel stout. We also offer unique chocolate gifts and have a full chocolate menu of drinks and treats. In 2018 we opened our second store on the neighboring island of Caye Caulker.

Our story would not be complete without the mention of our son Noah, who we adopted as a baby in San Pedro in 2005.  He has been an integral part of our chocolate journey and Noah Boah’s chocolate syrup was developed as a result of Noah's love for chocolate syrup. He often helps out at the shop, has a very developed palate and is always up for being a taste tester.

We haven’t lost our love of the water, which was one of our main reasons for coming to Belize. Chris can often be seen windsurfing or kiting early in the morning or on his way home from work. I loves to paddleboard on calm days and on weekends we like to sail, camp out, fish and barbecue on our 25ft Catalina "Roots and Wings" (updated from our 28ft stiletto catamaran!)