At Foundry Chocolate we are Bean-to-Bar chocolate makers.

Bean-to-Bar chocolate makers make their chocolate themselves from scratch, beginning with cacao beans and ending with a finished chocolate bar. They are solely responsible for the roasting, winnowing, grinding, conching and tempering of their own chocolate. There are only a handful of bean-to-bar makers in New Zealand.

Chocolate makers usually differentiate themselves from most chocolatiers who melt ready-made couverture chocolate to mould into various shapes, bars or to make into ganache. 

Many chocolate manufacturers make chocolate using semi-finished ingredients such as cocoa mass, this is not classified as bean-to-bar as they are not responsible for the whole process as they don't begin their process with the cacao beans.

Basically it means that all the cacao beans in a particular bar comes from a single farm, estate or a single co-operative from a particular region, geographically defining where the cacao beans come from. Single origin does not mean the cacao beans come from a particular country, that is not detailed or transparent enough to be considered single origin. 

We are proud to source and work with seven different single origins around the world:
- Kilombero Valley in Tanzania
- Semuliki Forest in Uganda
- Pinalum Village, Malekula Island, Vanuatu
- Pichari Alta, Cusco, Peru
- Korosim Microlots, Solomon Islands
- Anamalai Estate, Tamil Nadu, India
- Ea Kar, Dak Lak, Vietnam

You can discover much more about the people and place behind each single origin on the page for each chocolate bar and drinking chocolate.

We gravitate towards cacao beans that are unique in flavours and have the potential to make delicious unflavoured chocolate.

We don’t usually seek out any particular genetic type or variety on purpose, because in our experience the pre- and post-harvest techniques farmers and fermenters use can make the most “normal” cacao beans taste exceptional, rather than working with badly prepared “rare” cacao beans.

We use only cacao that is traceable to its source and we provide full transparency, giving credit to farmers, growers and co-ops.

We make our chocolate with just two (or even one ingredient) so the percentage refers to the ratio by weight of cacao beans to sugar.

We do not add any additional cocoa butter, so our percentages are very clear.

For example:
- Korosim Microlots, Solomon Islands 70% contains 70% cacao beans and 30% sugar. 
- Semuliki Forest, Uganda 90% contains 90% cacao beans and 10% sugar.
- Anamalai Estate, India 100% contains 100% cacao beans and no added sugar.

We use an organic unrefined golden cane sugar from Brazil. We tested numerous types and varieties of sugars in the process of choosing this sugar, the differences were striking between different sugars, and we love the character our sugar brings to the chocolate.

We start with fermented and dried cacao beans – also known as cocoa beans, that we have sourced from different locations, growers and co-ops around the world.

The cacao is hand sorted to remove anything we don’t want in the chocolate, for example clusters of cacao beans called doubles or triples that won’t have fermented properly, or stones and sticks etc.

The cacao is then roasted to develop flavour notes. We use gas powered coffee roasters that allow us to control rotational speeds, start temperatures, air flow, the rate of rise and decline, and end of roast temperature.

David spends weeks crafting roast profiles, we test and test and test, and taste a lot of chocolate to find the optimal roast profile for each single origin and new vintage year. The difference a tiny adjustment can make as part of a roast profile is quite incredible, and the way we develop roast profiles here at Foundry Chocolate is something we’re very proud of.

Once the cacao is roasted and cooled, it’s cracked and winnowed, a step that breaks the cacao bean into smaller nibs and separates the husk. Husk is the only by-product from our chocolate making, and we compost it through a local composting collective.

To start turning the nibs into chocolate, we use stone grinders, call Melangeurs. They have granite rollers in them that slowly crush the cacao nibs into liquid, these rollers press onto the granite base of a stainless steel drum that spins around, with the pressure and friction of the two surfaces rolling together allowing the cacao butter in the nibs to release. Within hours the nibs look like a coarse liquid. We keep the chocolate refining and conching in the Melangeurs for around 3 ½ days, with a focus on texture and flavour development. We use Melangeurs that can make up to 44kg of chocolate per batch.

Once the chocolate has reached the desired texture and flavour profile in the melangeurs, it gets poured into large chocolate slabs, left to set solid, and matured for several weeks or months depending on what is optimal for each single origins tasting notes.

Once the chocolate has matured, we choose a slab to melt ready for tempering and moulding into bars; or choose a slab to grate into drinking chocolate flakes. 

We choose not to add any additional cocoa butter, or any lecithin in our chocolate making process.

It is technically more difficult to make chocolate without adding cocoa butter or lecithin as these are both viscosity modifiers. Our chocolate is thicker to work with, but we prefer how the chocolate melts and tastes without adding cocoa butter, and we love letting the purest possible tastes shine through in our chocolate.

No we don’t add any vanilla. We prefer to let the flavour of the cacao beans and our skill in working with them be the focus of the bar, rather than adding an extra ingredient.

Vanilla, or the synthetic version called Vanillin, is often added to industrial chocolate as it makes the chocolate taste “better”, thus allowing industrial grade cacao beans to make an acceptable tasting industrial chocolate.

On the flip side, some craft chocolate makers add premium vanilla to their chocolate on purpose to celebrate the tasting notes the vanilla adds to their chocolate. We’ve tried some lovely craft chocolate bars flavoured with the seeds from inside a vanilla pod, which also gives the bar a fun speckly appearance.

Janelle - David’s wife and co-founder of Foundry – is dairy and gluten free, so David quite sensibly focused on making chocolate she could eat.

Today, our production kitchen is kept allergen free, meaning there is no dairy, gluten, soy or nuts in our chocolate. 

The team lunch room (in a different part of our little factory) does have these allergens in it. All chocolate that enters this area is already wrapped.

The ‘Tasting Notes’ are flavours you may experience while tasting a Foundry Chocolate bar. We have not added any flavour to our bars. These flavour notes are coming from the bean itself, and are contributed to by the genetics of the cacao, the fermentation and drying techniques at origin, then our roasting, making and maturation techniques.

Our chocolate doesn’t just taste of “chocolate”, each single origin bar has its own set of notes and a flavour journey, and we love that we make chocolate that you can actually taste the difference between single origins in.

We have suggested flavour notes that we can taste on each bars profile, and because your senses are unique, you may discover characters and aromas others may not - that’s the magic of Foundry Chocolate.

There are many different approaches and schools of thought on how best to eat chocolate.

For us the most important thing is that it brings you joy. So you do what works for you.

We like to break a piece of the bar off, chew it a little, let it melt on our tongue, and see what we taste and enjoy.

With really good chocolate you’ll start to notice tasting notes and stages of flavour, not just a singular taste of “chocolate”.  

When we are professionally tasting our chocolate to choose roast profiles from test batches, we have a very specific process that we follow.

We source cacao bean origins that have intrinsic flavours and characters we want to keep and develop further. In the same way different coffees, wines, craft beers, etc taste different, it is the same way with cacao beans. The taste difference comes from the genetics of the cacao beans, the environment where it is grown, the fermentation technique used, the drying technique used, then when the chocolate maker gets it, how they roast (or not) the cacao beans and then start making it into chocolate. 

Please see our 'What do you mean by tasting notes?' answer.

No, not at all! If you enjoy flavour and enjoy tastes, you’ll easily be able to taste the difference between each our single origins. 

At our Cellar Door or at events where we do tasting flights, one of the most common comments, (after people being amazed at dark chocolate that does not taste bitter), is that they can taste the difference between each bar and that there is so much flavour.  

Yes we do, we have test results for all our single origins, and all our chocolate is well under the NZ and EU guidelines. We are happy to share the individual results, just get in touch via our contact page.

Regarding Cadmium, the New Zealand guidelines have a 'blanket approach' that doesn't take into account different percentages of chocolate or even different types of chocolate (milk etc). They allow a maximum of 0.5 mg/kg of cadmium in chocolate.

We prefer the EU Codex Standards as they have levels for different types of chocolate, which are 0.8 mg/kg for 50 – 70% dark chocolate and 0.9 mg/kg for > 70% dark chocolate.

Our chocolate is under the levels of both the EU Codex Standards and the New Zealand guidelines.

Yes and no. We have a mix of certified, uncertified and conventionally grown cacao beans.

Currently:
- Kilombero Valley, Tanzania: Certified Organic
- Semuliki Forest, Uganda: Certified Organic
- Pinalum, Malekula Island, Vanuatu: Uncertified Organic, certification underway
- Anamalai Estate, India: Uncertified Organic, certification underway
- Soconusco, Chiapas, Mexico: Uncertified Organic, certification underway
- Korosim Microlots, Solomon Islands: Uncertified Organic, certification underway
- Pichari Alta, Cusco, Peru: Agroforestry grown (this is the Peruvian name for an initiative about sustainability and biodiversity).
- Ea Kar, Dak Lak, Vietnam: conventionally grown

We do source certified organic cacao where we can, and only use certified organic cane sugar. We make every effort to buy and use organic ingredients where we can, but flavour is the main thing that we are after.

It's worth noting that sometimes some of the origins we work with are very small co-ops or families or villages, where funding the organic certification process is simply too expensive and not worth their while, yet their growing practices are organic.

We are not certified fair trade, and do not want to be, as if we were we’d be paying less for our cacao beans. Instead, we pay substantial premiums for the cacao that we source, and in all instances we are paying well above what a fair trade price would be.

The most important things for us is a focus on a high level of transparency throughout the supply chain, close relationships with all our suppliers, paying them an ethical and fair price, and the most amazing tasting fine cacao beans.

We do not have this kind of certification. These certifications are suitable for, and sometimes even created by industrial scale chocolate makers, to give them a level of credibility and supply chain reassurance.

They are not suitable for a craft chocolate maker like ourselves where we source directly from the families, growers and co-ops that grow our cacao.

Most chocolate in the world is industrial chocolate, made from industrial specification cacao beans.

We do not use industrial grade beans at Foundry Chocolate, we use 'fine cacao' grade beans.

industrial grade cacao is grown and prepared for yield and efficiency, and consequently has some undesirable flavours that need to be 'burnt out' during the manufacture process into industrial chocolate. When chocolate is made this way, you are left with a uniform and homogenised “chocolate” flavour.

Industrial chocolate is very different from Craft Chocolate.

A bean-to bar chocolate maker is somebody that is buying cacao beans and then performing all the steps to make finished chocolate themselves.

A Chocolatier usually does not make their chocolate. They usually buy and re-melt already produced chocolate (either couverture chocolate or mass) to make into beautiful confections and flavoured bars.

There are only a handful of chocolate makers in New Zealand, the vast majority of chocolates in New Zealand are made by chocolatiers buying ready-made industrial chocolate and using it to do all their beautiful work. 

If you would like to find a chocolatier in NZ that is also a chocolate maker please see www.abarapart.co

We are small scale Bean-to Bar, Craft Chocolate makers, which is very different from a large volume driven industrial business model.

There are many factors that affect the price of our chocolate bars. One of the main reasons is because the cost of the quality raw ingredients we use is very high, as well as the time and labour that goes into making and wrapping chocolate on such a small scale.

We choose to pay a premium for top grade fine cacao, (it is after all where the amazing flavour notes in our bars begin!). This is cacao that has been well farmed and specialty fermented; and the growers and farmers and fermenters deserve to be paid fairly for their efforts.

We say no to cheaper industrial grade beans.

The only way to make a sustainable business that pays people fairly and can keep opperating is that the bar has to reflect the cost of the craft that has gone into it.

Sometimes a low priced bar has been made by much larger industrial chocolate makers, who have a volume based business model where they use industrial grade cacao (which is less expensive than the fine cacao beans we use) at large scales and achieve cost efficiencies that way.

Sometimes that less expensive bar is a bar that has been made in a way that uses as little expensive cacao as possible, either by making filled chocolate (uses less chocolate) or using extra ingredients or inclusions (uses less chocolate).

If you notice the ingredient labels of common chocolate brands, you will often find many additives and cocoa substitutes present. One of the main reasons for the higher value of our chocolate bars is that we use only the best quality real ingredients without any processed cocoa substitutes, cocoa butter, lecithin or other additives.

Many of the less expensive chocolate brands are not chocolate makers, their business model involves buying industrial chocolate made by some of the biggest chocolate factories in the world and making it into products for their brand.

We acknowledge that it can be difficult to tell the difference between industrial chocolate and craft chocolate, which has lead to the creation of A Bar Apart for Craft Chocolate makers. See the section below for more info on A Bar Apart.

Our Drinking Chocolate is delicious made with milk, plant based milk or water.

We suggest two recipes for different strengths and approaches:

Rich Sipping Chocolate
Combine 2-heaped Tbsp (24 g) of drinking chocolate with ¼ cup (62 g) of liquid.

Smooth Drinking Chocolate
Combine 3-level Tbsp (28 g) of drinking chocolate with ¾ cup (190 g) of liquid.

Method
Use a milk frother or coffee machine steam wand to combine the chocolate and liquid. Or heat the chocolate and liquid in a saucepan, stirring gently, then use a stick blender or whisk to create a velvety texture.

David and Janelle often prefer the "Rich Sipping Chocolate" version in the weekends for when they are after an intense chocolate experience. This method (especially when a powerful stick-blender is used) produces a thick Italian style drinking chocolate, and the closest thing David has got to creating an Espresso from drinking chocolate.

The Smooth Drinking Chocolate method is absolutely perfect to enjoy as a daily (sometimes more than once a day) steaming mug of drinking chocolate. Delicious.

Your Way
Of course the joy of having our Single Origin Drinking Chocolate in ground/flake form, is that you can experiment with exactly how you most enjoy preparing it. Experiment with ratios, and processes and intentions.

It’s also delicious to enjoy by the spoonful straight from the bag, and we have many customers that tell us they've never made it into a drink, but enjoy it sprinkled on their breakfast or dessert.

No it is not. Our Single Origin Drinking Chocolate is the same craft chocolate we make our bars from, we have simply grated it into flakes of chocolate for you. It’s untempered chocolate, meaning it melts more easily into hot liquid.

Cocoa powder, in contrast, would have started as 100% dark chocolate - usually called liquor or mass, the cocoa butter is then mechanically pressed out, and the remaining solids are made into a fine powder. This is often a highly processed production method, especially if the cocoa powder has been "Dutched" or "Alkalised".

When you look at the ingredients list for other cocoa powder based drinking chocolates you’ll likely see many ingredients, with the first ingredient (the largest quantity) being sugar, followed by cocoa powder or milk powder.

Our ingredients list in our Single Origin Drinking Chocolates is made of only two ingredients: Cacao beans (70%) and Organic Sugar.

Our drinking chocolate is also available in 1kg bags, Please use the drop down box on the drinking chocolate product pages to change from a 250g bag to a 1kg bag.

We recommend keeping it in a cool dark place, such as a cupboard or pantry. You may see recommendations to store chocolate at 18°C, however in practice this can be difficult to achieve, so in our experience a cool dark place below 26°C is suitable. 

If you are in an environment with high ambient heat (28 degrees Celsius and above) or high humidity and you would like to store your chocolate in a fridge, we recommend placing it inside two snap-lock bags so it can not absorb any flavours or moisture from your fridge. When you’d like to eat some, allow the chocolate time to warm to room temperature to enjoy it, as it will taste different when it is cold.

If you are not in a very hot or humid environment we do not recommend storing your chocolate in a fridge, a cool dark place is quite suitable.  

Orders are packed to minimise potential heat damage, with prominent "Keep Cool and Out of the Sun" stickers on them. If there is a heatwave forecast we'll also hold your order until it's safe to ship.

In sending thousands of orders, we've only have a handful of "melting" incidents, and when this happens we'll do our best to look after you.

NZ orders over $70 ship for free in NZ.

Orders between $40 - $70 are $4.90 to an urban address and $10.90 to a rural address.
Shipping for orders under $40 is $7.90 to an urban address and $13.90 to a rural address

You can see more details on our Shipping page

We send orders to Australia, China, Hong Kong and Japan regularly. You can see the full list of countries we send to on our shipping page

For the UK and Europe, Cocoa Runners stock our bars.

In the USA and Canada, visit Chocolate Squirrel for a list of retailers.

In China, visit Penguin Guide.

Yes. We offer a range of beautifully presented gift collections, and we can also handwrite your gift note on a Foundry gift card to accompany your order. 

You can see the range of gifting options here: Gifting & Collections

A Bar Apart is a new collective of 14 independent New Zealand bean-to-bar chocolate makers working together to champion transparency, provenance and craft chocolate.

Launching in July 2026, the initiative introduces a shared mark (logo) to help consumers identify chocolate that is genuinely made from bean to bar in New Zealand, while celebrating the makers behind the country’s growing craft chocolate movement.

You can see more at: www.abarapart.co

Yes, absolutely! We have a Cellar Door at our factory in Silverdale with our full range of chocolate bars for tasting and purchase. Our Cellar Door is the best way to experience the differences between each single origin and take your palate on a journey.

If you can't it to our Cellar Door, any of the selections on our Gifting & Collections page let you have your own compare and contrast tasting flight.

The Cellar Door is open Monday to Friday 9am – 3:20pm, except for Public Holidays and between Christmas and the New Year. 

We're at 34B Peters Way - (not at the nearby Foundry Road). Look for our neighbours Sausages by Design and NZ Sailing to find our precinct.

We have parking on site, directly in front of the roller door to our Roastery.

We currently do not open for the weekends.
It's important for us and our small team to spend time with their families.   

Yes you can, get in touch via our contact page and we’ll let you know what we have available or coming up.

This is a tricky one, as the accepted definition of Ceremonial Cacao keeps evolving.

In past years it has been taken to mean the cacao has been blessed at origin by a religious leader, therefore "permitting" it to be used for a cacao ceremony. However more recently awareness has grown that there historically has not been a cacao ceremony in many ancient South American cultures, and that it was a more recent Western innovation.

We eat and drink 100% cacao regularly ourselves, and enjoy the heart warming feeling we get from it, and the chance to slow down, connect and mindfully contemplate. Plus we make the chocolate we consume ourselves and are grateful for how is has been grown, sourced and carefully made into chocolate.

The description of a "Ceremonial Grade" cacao that resonates the best with us is:
- It is important the cacao is grown within its natural environment, using responsible farming techniques.
- The beans must be ethically sourced and fairly traded.
- The cacao must be minimally processed, i.e. no cacao butter removed or extra cacao butter added.
- The cacao is not over-roasted, as happens with industrial cacao preparation.
- The cacao must be grown wth care and respect, and made with intention and respect.
- The cacao is crafted in small batches into chocolate, with no added sugar, with a focus on flavour and intention.

We've three options:

Powdered:
- Pinalum, Malekula Island 100%
- This is our 100% drinking chocolate powder. you can see it here: Vanuatu 100%

1kg untempered blocks:
- We'll break a 1kg piece of untempered 100% from a large slab for you.
- You can choose from Pinalum, Malekula Island, Vanuatu 100%; or Anamalai Estate, India 100%. They are NZ$145 per kg.
- These are special order only, if you are interested please get in touch via our contact page

You've just witnessed the natural and safe process of cocoa butter bloom.

This is where the stable Type V crystals (yes, chocolate has crystal structures) that have been created by tempering the cacao butter in the chocolate have changed to a different cystal structure, either a mix of types I through IV, or Type VI.

It is usually caused by improper storage conditions such as storing a bar of chocolate in a warm climate of 28-30°C for extended period of time (Usually we see this after chocolate has been left in a car on a very hot day).

It is still fine to eat and enjoy, however you may wish to use the chocolate bar to make drinking chocolate instead , as the texture, gloss and snap of the bar will no longer be optimal.

We’ve worked hard to ensure the end-of-life of our packaging is well considered. We’re proud that both the outer and inner wrappers for our bars can be recycled in kerbside paper recycling, while our drinking chocolate pouches are home compostable.

For our shipping and courier materials, we use:
- PopStarch void fill. This is a 100% compostable and biodegradable void fill made from expanded starch.
- Eco Paper packaging tape. This can be recycled with cardboard.
- Jiffy Padded Courier Bags. These have a heavy duty recycled paper exterior and a 100% recycled padded interior. They can be recycled with mixed paper.
- Kraft cardboard boxes with recycled content. Because we seal them with Eco Paper tape they are easily recyclable.

It would have been significantly cheaper to use packaging materials that end up in landfill or soft plastics, however that was not something we wanted to do. From day one we have always tried to use the most responsible materials possible, despite them often costing more or being more difficult to implement.

We welcome enquiries from retailers in New Zealand and overseas who are interested in stocking Foundry Chocolate. Please get in touch via our contact page or if you are NZ based connect with us on Upstock

We are carefully adding more production capacity. Our chocolate often sells out, so if we can't supply your store immediately we will add you to our waiting list.

North American retailers - please get in touch with Ella at Chocolate Squirrel to discuss stocking our chocolate. Chocolate Squirrel is a fine chocolate importer specialising in chocolate from around the world.