What do these craft chocolate bars have in common? They are the beautiful and delicious bars in a special set I’m assembling to celebrate my birthday on December 10!
Be among the first to purchase the set, and I’ll invite you to join a Google Meet birthday party with me that weekend, to talk about the chocolate bars and more! (Party hats optional!)
The sets will ship the week of my birthday, and you can shop now, for yourself or for gifts, by sending $51 (why that number? Haha! : ) to me via PayPal at chocolateuplift@gmail.com or paypal.me/chocolateuplift. The price includes US shipping. Please let me know where to send the chocolate.
For my birthday set, I’ve selected four bars that I love and that have special meaning for me:
@crowandmosschocolate Bolivian Rose Salt chocolate bar, made from Colombian cacao plus cane sugar, with a gentle sprinkling of Bolivian pink salt. This fruit-forward bar reminds me of childhood visits to Michigan, where my mom spent part of her childhood on a small family farm!
@dandelionchocolate Costa Esmeraldas, Ecuador 70%, made in San Francisco from just 2 ingredients — cacao and sugar, all you need! — and with a precision-focus on flavor. Ecuador is the first place I visited cacao farms, and I also love that the bars are wrapped in upcycled Indian cotton!
@dicktaylorchocolate Brazil, made in Eureka, California, is sophisticated and rich, and reminds me of the years I lived in Europe, where the idea to create the world’s first chocolate tours came to me, as a chocolate-obsessed exchange student in Paris in 1989!
@xocolatlchocolate Kissed Mermaids, made in Atlanta, is light, bright, and topped with cacao nibs, and you know how excited I get about cacao nibs, and about blue and white! A cheerful bar! Plus, this is the first batch on Uganda cacao (instead of Costa Rica), grown by the Semuliki Forest collective of around 1,000 family farmers, and I love the rich notes of warm spice on a core note of straight-ahead chocolate!
What else do these bars have in common? They are all vegan, US-made, created by incredibly kind people I’m honored to call friends and clients, and of course they meet my 5 Ss of first-class craft chocolate:
slavery-free
soy-free
sustainable
small-batch
scrumptious!
For every set sold, I’ll donate a meal to CREER, a rescue center in Cote d’Ivoire for formerly trafficked kids including those trafficked onto cacao farms that supply Big Chocolate brands that rely on forced labor.
If you choose my birthday set, thank you! Let’s have some fun! Onward and upward!
*****New: Virtual Chocolate Tastings! I’ll be the “sweet speaker” at your next corporate or other event, even if it’s via Zoom, by bringing my chocolate and presentation expertise to you via a virtual chocolate tasting!
In-person events are also available!
Here’s how it works:
Choose your chocolate theme for my presentation, such as
History and Health Benefits of Chocolate,
Women in Chocolate, or
What’s In Your Chocolate: Making Conscious Chocolate Choices.
I’ll send our agreed chocolate for the tasting to your location or to each participant prior to the event, so that participants can taste the chocolate live during the presentation. Or, if you prefer to have participants order chocolate individually, I can add a special chocolate set to my online boutique for your group to select, or guests can choose from what’s available.
I’ll hold the presentation live on your Zoom or other platform, and we’ll have a blast! You can record it if you wish, to share with others in your organization.
The cost is the retail cost of the chocolate plus tax and shipping, plus a $30/person event fee. Or, we can arrange a flat fee; contact me at valerie@chocolateuplift.com to discuss.
Plus, you can choose from a rotating selection of fun Chocolate Uplift mugs and tees and the like from my merchandise store, with or without booking a virtual tasting. Custom merchandise is also available, such as with your logo and mine, or with a special message for your event participants!
Click here for my “sizzle reel” to get a sense of my presentation style through a montage of tv news clips, and click here for a recent podcast I did for the Chicago Bar Association Foundation on tasting chocolate and changing careers.
And, see below for my speakers one-sheet along with additional information, videos, bio, partial list of presentations and keynotes given, and testimonials like this one from Thanksgiving week 2020:
Hi Valerie,
The chocolate tasting was far beyond my expectations – thank you so much!! The chocolate selections were incredible and I’m so glad that everyone (especially the kids) got a better understanding of what goes into commercial vs. craft chocolate. You led us through everything so skillfully and we loved learning about the history and health benefits of chocolate. It was such a remarkable experience. I so appreciate your making it possible to experience it with my beloved sisters.
With admiration, Laurie
Thank you, and I hope to see you or Zoom with you soon!
Request Chocolate Uplift founder and “sweet speaker” Valerie Beck as the speaker at your next convention, meeting, association conference, networking event, or other gathering, by contacting us at chocolateuplift@gmail.com.
Ethical Chocolate: Sustainability Challenges and Solutions
Chocolate: History, Health Benefits, Myths, Magnificence
ABCs of Success: Attitude, Belief, Commitment
How to use these simple concepts for success in any business or endeavor
Sweet Life: How to Follow Your Heart and Take Your Brain With You
Start discovering or keep refining your heart’s desire, and be a “practical dreamer”
Alternative Careers for Lawyers
Sweet Startup: What Every Entrepreneur Should Know About Passion, Profit, and Persistence
Social Media Marketing
Chocolate 2032: Trends in the World of Chocolate
Topics are customizable for your group. And presentations come with chocolate!
Client categories include:
Conventions and association meetings
Law firms – particularly law firm women’s initiatives
Cruises
Executives
Students
Women’s groups
Corporate wellness days
Corporate motivational days
Valerie has spoken at organizations including:
Walgreens
Cigna
ASHRAE
other corporations ranging from small and mid-sized to Fortune 500
other large, mid-sized, and small non-profits
the Chicago Bar Association
The Law Bulletin
the U.S. Department of Education’s Council on Legal Education Opportunity
Northwestern Law School
her alma mater Harvard Law School
her alma mater Harvard College
University of Chicago
the Coleman Center for Entrepreneurship
Lexington College
DePaul University School of Hospitality
Loyola University
Kendall College
National Association for Catering and Events
National Customer Service Association
Illinois Chamber of Commerce in conjunction with World Chicago and the US Department of State
Illinois Diversity Council
Chicago City Treasurer business education sessions
Culinary Historians of Chicago
Women’s Innovation Network – WIN
Geneva Women in Business
eWomenNetwork
Professional Women’s Network
Daily Herald Business Ledger
Testimonials
“If you ever want to get fully enrobed in everything chocolate, then seek out Valerie Beck. She leaves no cacao bean unturned as she takes aficionados on a magic chocolate ride where one is dipped into artisanal producing, social awareness, and luscious tasting.”
Scott Warner
Culinary Historians of Chicago
“Valerie is an exuberant and extraordinary speaker who superbly involves the audience as she presents such interesting facts about chocolate and wellness. She is very friendly and personable, yet a cylinder of dynamite showering listeners with delightful energy! The manner in which she shares her heart, soul, lively humor and vast knowledge makes her presentations quite enjoyable. Valerie is highly recommended as a speaker to your group!”
Co-chair of ladies organization, Springfield, IL
“Valerie is an enthusiastic and engaging speaker who is passionate and knowledgeable about her topic. Her comprehensive, informative and fun presentation was well received by our audience of professional and executive women.”
Christine Osvald-Mruz
Co-chair, STRIDES, Advancing Women in Business
“Valerie’s positive energy is contagious and her delivery is vivacious and engaging. Every entrepreneur and professional can benefit from her uplifting messages and sensible business advice. Listening to Valerie’s stories and expertise is guaranteed to be an inspiring and invigorating experience.”
Erika Herrera
Co-Founder, Sandpiper Imports Inc.
“Valerie is charming, graceful and feminine. At the same time she is powerful, captivating and persuasive. She is knowledgeable about her subject matter and makes an excellent and very professional presentation. I’m looking forward to inviting her to speak to my group again..and again.”
Patrice Turner
Managing Director
eWomenNetwork
“Valerie Beck is an established speaker who is confident, well prepared and full of energy. She presents with enthusiasm, knowledge, and engagement. Her sunny perspective and will light up any room and is well loved by all. This bubbly professional is born to speak as getting in front of an audience comes naturally. I highly recommend Valerie for your next speaking function.”
Mary Doherty
Send Out Cards
“Valerie is energetic and welcoming. As a speaker, her passion for others, supporting individuals in their personal and professional growth and for making a difference in people’s lives comes through. She is sincere, believable and engaging. I wouldn’t hesitate to invite her to share fables, enthusiasm and inspiration as a speaker.”
Maureen Blaha
Executive Director, National Runaway Safeline
“Since I saw Valerie present over three years ago, I can’t say enough about her endless charisma, business intelligence, passion, and professionalism. Valerie is not only a successful business owner, but a leader and an effective speaker in the business community. I highly value her expertise and would recommend her presentations to colleagues of any level.”
Michael Moody, Author and Personal Trainer in Chicago (www.michaelmoodyfitness.com)
Fees
[In person:] Generally $1,500 for nonprofit organizations, or $5,000 for law firms and corporations, plus travel and accommodations. Negotiable.
See Valerie in action in our videos, and contact us about booking Valerie as a “sweet speaker” for your organization: chocolateuplift@gmail.com.
Please click to watch my 3-minute “sizzle reel” video montage of TV segments, click here for my speaker’s one-sheet, and see below for my short and long bios. Thank you!
ABOUT
Chocolate expert and Harvard grad Valerie Beck is a chocolate industry entrepreneur, pioneer, and activist. Creator of the original chocolate tours — which she expanded to cities across the US while building a team of 50, creating first Chicago Chocolate Tours, then Philadelphia Chocolate Tours and Boston Chocolate Walking Tours, and more — she is also a chocolate consultant, broker, and speaker, as well as a cheerful and engaging media personality.
She founded Chocolate Uplift to provide chocolate services to the trade, to the public, and to cacao growing nations, such as wholesale distribution of bean-to-bar chocolate, consulting to craft chocolate makers, and speaking engagements for groups and organizations of all kinds.
Chocolate expert Valerie Beck is a pioneering entrepreneur in chocolate and hospitality.
Valerie created the original Chicago Chocolate Tours, which she expanded to 4 cities across the US, opening Philadelphia Chocolate Tours, Boston Chocolate Walking Tours, and Beverly Hills Bakery Tours. She grew the business to 50 employees and ran it for 10 years; she and her team educated and entertained tens of thousands of people about the history, health benefits, production, and selection of first-class chocolate.
Valerie’s business Chocolate Uplift currently provides delicious speaking engagements plus chocolate tastings, also brokers bean-to-bar chocolate made by craft artisan chocolate makers, and provides consulting services to cacao growers and chocolate makers, always with a focus on ethical chocolate and sustainability. In fact, her 5 Ss of first-class craft chocolate are: slavery-free, soy-free and industrial additive-free, sustainable, small-batch, and scrumptious!
A Chicago native, Valerie graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Law School. After practicing law in Europe and the US, she founded the chocolate tours and Chocolate Uplift, and is a popular speaker, writer, chocolate show judge, and media personality.
She started the Chocolate Freedom Project to end child slave labor on the cacao farms that produce cocoa beans for big chocolate brands, and supports formerly trafficked kids at a West African rescue center. She has also taught as an adjunct professor at Kendall College in Chicago and UCLA Extension in Los Angeles, spreading chocolate knowledge to new generations, and continues to work with students through her virtual tutoring business ProfessorValerieBeck.com.
Valerie’s mission is Uplift Through Chocolate, because chocolate can improve our mood and the world!
Longer bio
Valerie Beck, founder of Chocolate Uplift bean-to-bar chocolate tastings, brokering, and consulting, and of the original Chicago Chocolate Tours, Philadelphia Chocolate Tours, and more, later known as Valerie’s Original Chocolate Tours, is a cheerful chocolate expert on TV and radio and in print. Valerie has been profiled in multiple media outlets such as NBC, ABC, WGN TV, WGN Radio, USA Today, The Chicago Tribune, Crain’s Chicago Business, and The Philadelphia Inquirer.
She is an upbeat and engaging speaker and blogger on all things chocolate. She speaks frequently on topics such as the history and health benefits of chocolate, such as in her presentation “What’s in Your Chocolate: Making Conscious Chocolate Choices,” where she teaches how to interpret labels to discern what’s really in your chocolate bar, and discusses her 5 Ss of first-class craft chocolate, which are: slavery-free, soy-free and industrial additive-free, sustainable, small-batch, and scrumptious! She also speaks on business and motivational topics, with a chocolate twist, such as in her presentation on “The ABCs of Sweet Success: Attitude, Belief, Commitment.”
Her chocolate consulting work ranges from helping brands create and launch new chocolate bars, to helping cacao growing nations promote their products.
Valerie is also a popular judge at chocolate competitions such as the annual World of Chocolate event in Chicago, and at business plan and innovation competitions.
Valerie is a pioneer in the business of chocolate tourism and other chocolate services to the public, to the trade, and to cocoa growing nations. Chocolate Uplift is the umbrella for all of these offerings. Chocolate Uplift provides entertaining and educational services to the public including trips to chocolate festivals around the world, and chocolate wellness seminars. Chocolate Uplift also provides valuable services to the chocolate industry, such as consulting to chocolate brands particularly in the small-batch and fine chocolate categories, brokering bean-to-bar chocolate for distribution from makers to retailers, importing fair trade cocoa beans and chocolate baking discs directly from ethical sources, and arranging origin trips to cocoa farms for bean-to-bar chocolate makers and others. In addition, Valerie consults for cocoa growing nations such as Ecuador, to promote their ethical cacao and chocolate.
A Chicago native, Valerie created the first chocolate tours when she founded Chicago Chocolate Tours in 2005, to introduce chocolate lovers to small-batch chocolate shops and bakeries. With her team of “Choc Stars” she grew the business to become a well-known and award-winning tour company serving tens of thousands of chocolate lovers, with 50 employees, which opened in Philadelphia and Boston in 2009, and developed footprints in additional cities such as Los Angeles by opening Beverly Hills Bakery Tours, and Washington DC by offering Chocolate and Cherry Blossom events. In 2016, Valerie relaunched the business as Valerie’s Original Chocolate Tours, with renewed focus on sustainable cacao and artisan chocolate.
Valerie invented the concept of the chocolate tour years earlier, when she was a 19-year-old Harvard College senior studying abroad at the Sorbonne in Paris. She had been focused on chocolate since announcing at age 4 that she would drink milk only if it contained chocolate. In Paris she fell in love with fine artisanal chocolate, and started taking her friends on informal excursions she developed to her favorite chocolate and pastry locations there and in Belgium.
Later, after graduating from Harvard Law School, Valerie practiced law in Chicago and Europe, and took the opportunity during her years in Europe to deepen her knowledge of chocolate and pastry.
Her awards include Influential Woman in Business from the Daily Herald Business Ledger, and Top 100 Woman Owned Businesses from the Philadelphia Business Journal. She has mentored many other entrepreneurs through Women’s Innovation Network – WIN, the Chicago City Treasurer’s small business program, and through private consulting.
Valerie has always believed that good chocolate can do good. Her philanthropy of choice for the chocolate tours was CARE, which helps women and families around the world exit poverty through entrepreneurship. She started the Chocolate Freedom Project to end child slave labor on the cacao farms that produce cocoa beans for big chocolate brands, and supports formerly trafficked kids at a West African rescue center. She has also taught as an adjunct professor at Kendall College in Chicago and UCLA Extension in Los Angeles, spreading chocolate knowledge to new generations. Valerie continues to work with students through her virtual tutoring business ProfessorValerieBeck.com.
Valerie’s mission is Uplift Through Chocolate, because chocolate can change everything from our mood, to the world!
Hello! Happy solstice, a day to mark planetary shifts!
Below are a couple of my social media posts on two other big days in June — Loving Day, and Juneteenth — plus chocolate to go with them!
Enjoy!
Valerie Beck is in Chicago, Illinois. June 11 at 2:19 PM ·
Happy Loving Day tomorrow, June 12!
No, it’s not another Valentine’s Day, though it could be! Loving Day celebrates interracial marriage, by marking the anniversary of the unanimous US Supreme Court decision in 1967 in the case of Loving v Virginia, which said no state can make interracial marriage illegal, and that blacks and whites and anybody else can legally marry each other or anyone of any background. This recognition of freedom to marry who you choose also underpins the later 2015 US decision recognizing same-sex marriage, so happy Pride Month too!
It always seemed like common sense or basic human rights to me, to live as you choose and love whom you choose, without interference from government, oligarchs, vigilantes, or anyone else. Maybe that’s in part because as you may know, I come from a mixed race and mixed religion family! In case you’re curious, this post in another one of my blogs, Diary of My Disastrous Law Career, gives you a bit of background on my family, plus fun vintage photos!
So, I’ve gathered here today some delicious craft chocolate that explicitly represents love — Chocolatasm‘s Hawaii salt chocolate hearts, the Xocolatl Small Batch Chocolate Love & Happiness raspberry orange olive oil chocolate bar, and the Violet Sky Onward & Upward Love rose and pistachio chocolate bar on which I collaborated, plus Love-themed snacking cacao by Good King Cacao — to say happy Loving Day, and here’s to our human birthright of love, liberty, and unity! May we deepen and expand these elements in our hearts and in our world, for the Golden Age of empathy and equality!
#lovingday
Valerie Beck is in Chicago, Illinois. Yesterday at 1:10 PM ·
Hello! Happy #Juneteenth!
This date [June 19] marks the ending of (1st-wave) slavery in the United States. President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, during the Civil War over slavery, yet enslaved people achieved liberation over an elongated period of time, culminating on June 19, 1865, in Texas.
But wait, you or people of the future may ask: aren’t all people born free, as expressions of the One Great Soul, and isn’t it true that no political or social (or tech-med) structure shall violate the fundamental principles that people are to care for people (e.g. love thy neighbor) and exercise their own liberty and free will while respecting that of others?
Of course!
To celebrate eternal inviolable liberty, how about a delicious liberation brunch of Crow & Moss Chocolate of Michigan, and Xocolatl Chocolate cacao nibs, on cinnamon toast with berries, all organic?
But wait, you may ask: what makes this a liberation brunch? Here comes one of my it’s-all-connected stories : )
My mother often made cinnamon toast for us kids when we were growing up, so I always think of her when I make it! She spent part of her childhood in Michigan, on a small family farm in a township that had been illegally racially integrated since its founding in the 1860s. That’s not a typo: racial mixing was illegal in the US, mixing of the One Human Family, in the North too. But people in Mom’s area did it anyway because it was ethical and practical, sending their black children and their white children to the same school for example. When my mother spent a summer with relatives in the South as a little girl in the 1950s (the time of 2nd-wave slavery: brutal “Jim Crow” apartheid), she was horrified by the abuses against black people. Now the laws have changed, and segregation is illegal, yet it happens in many ways including incarceration where prisoners work for the state or corporations for little or no pay (part of 3rd-wave slavery), or consider West Africa where over 2 million black kids work in hazardous or slavery conditions on cacao farms so corporations can sell cheap chocolate.
Mom never bought Aunt Jemima “slavery syrup,” and doesn’t buy slavery chocolate. Voilà! @ Chicago, Illinois
Your friend in chocolate,
Valerie
Valerie Beck
Founder/CEO Chocolate Uplift
Craft Chocolate Activism, Brokering, Consulting, Distribution
Click for my chat with “rad dad” bean-to-bar chocolate makers Matt Weyandt of Xocolatl Chocolate of Atlanta, and Mark Gerrits of Obolo Chocolate of Santiago, Chile, about craft chocolate and crafting equality [video on YouTube, recorded from our Instagram Live broadcast] and scroll down to the end of this post to shop.
Happy June!
This is the month of the Solstice, and of liberation celebrations such as Loving Day and Juneteenth, which all represent types of awakenings. June is also the month of Father’s Day, which could represent an awakening to equality and to what leadership could look like reimagined for an enlightened society.
For example, if we believe that Black Lives Matter, don’t we also agree that Black African lives matter, that it is monstrous that 2.1 million Black African children work as cacao farmers in hazardous conditions in Cote d’Ivoire so that big chocolate brands can take the local cacao and sell cheap global chocolate, and that these big brands and their sales and distribution channels must immediately stop using child slave labor? This is the #ChocolateFreedomProject I talk about: bringing awareness and an end to child slave labor on West African cacao farms that supply cocoa beans for 70% of the world’s chocolate.
Similarly, if we believe that white people should not have power or privilege over black or brown people (I would change words like white and black, by the way, to more accurate terms, less fraught with metaphor; any suggestions?), don’t we also believe that masculine should not have power or privilege over feminine, and, going further, government officials and corporate oligarchs should not have power or privilege over people; going all the way: no one should have power or privilege over anyone.
Implementing true respect for all in the human family necessitates a reimagining of not just individual relationships, but also of economic and government structures and of the patriarchal colonial capitalist oligarchy in which our world operates. Why not a new Golden Age of empathy and equality, where we care for people and planet, and believe in equal participation?
Maybe I should have warned you that when I put Equality in the title of this blog post, I meant it, all the way!
To explore our theme of equality, I invited two dear craft chocolate maker friends and clients of mine — Mark Gerrits of ÓBOLO Chocolate, and Matt Weyandt of Xocolatl Chocolate — to chat with me on Instagram Live as part of the Stay Home With Chocolate festival, Father’s Day edition. Thank you to these gentlemen-supermen for sharing their time and thoughts! Click for a low-tech video-of-a-video version of our IG Live, on my YouTube channel! [video on YouTube, recorded from our Instagram Live broadcast]
Craft chocolate gives us a delicious view into an equitable way of life, because it involves a supply chain and products that meet my 5 Ss of ethical chocolate:
slavery-free
soy-free and industrial additive-free
sustainable
small-batch and
scrumptious!
Set-up on my kitchen counter for our Instagram Live chat.
Click for a low-tech video-of-a-video version of our IG Live, and click below to shop:
[video on YouTube, recorded from our Instagram Live broadcast]
Yahara Chocolate of Wisconsin — online ordering for shipment anywhere, use code chocolateuplift for 10% off ÓBOLO Chocolate, Xocolatl Chocolate, or other brands
Xocolatl and Obolo are also available at these retailers who are open as of the time of writing:
As always, if you are looking for a specific bar or brand or general type of craft chocolate, you can use my free Chocolate Finder service: just send me a message and I’ll help you find what you’re looking for!
As you may know, I typically don’t sell retail; instead my business Chocolate Uplift sells and distributes craft chocolate bars like the ones listed above wholesale to retailers, and I also provide consulting services to chocolate makers and cacao farm owners, and speaking engagements to the public and for meetings and events.
Thank you, and keep eating ethical chocolate!
Onward and upward!
Your friend in chocolate,
Valerie
With Mark of ÓBOLO (left) and Scott of Totto’s MarketWith Matt of Xocolatl (right) and team
Valerie Beck
Founder/CEO Chocolate Uplift
Craft Chocolate Activism, Brokering, Consulting, Distribution
A selection of women-made or -led ethical chocolate brands
What a blast to give a zoom presentation for an amazing group of my Harvard College women classmates today about *Women Entrepreneurs Making Social Impact,* and to share my journey and mission of Uplift Through Chocolate!
Here is the link to my slides; be sure to open them all the way to see the information and links in the Notes sections! Enjoy, and scroll down this page for online shopping links to woman-owned retailers and woman-owned or -led brands!
We are Harvard and proud: outside my former dorm Stoughton (left in photo) a couple of years ago for Convocation. Here are the slides to my talk today for Harvard women classmates.
We are celebrating the 100-year anniversary of women’s right to vote here in the US, and I applaud my classmates who organized a video chat series for us featuring stories of women’s activism! Our college reunion next month was canceled due to the coronavirus situation (stay well, and keep perspective: 11 million people die each year from poor diet — including from heart disease, cancer, and diabetes caused by eating industrial Big Food — that’s 1 in 5 deaths globally and that’s 50 times more than have died from covid-19, so why haven’t we shut down Big Food and the outlets like Amazon that sell it?), and we are moving forward with our own events, virtually!
I gathered beautiful and delicious craft chocolate bars shown here from woman-owned or -led brands, to wave around on-screen, along with the fascinating book 1491 (click for a related article by the book’s author in The Atlantic) about life in the Americas before Columbus — we can learn a lot from the societies of indigenous people, like the one that had a grandmothers council of wise women to approve or reject political plans — which includes information about the role of cacao and chocolate.
Good King snacking cacao of Honduras and Indonesia by way of Seattle
Most of the women chocolate makers and retailers I spoke with the other day in preparation for my presentation basically said the same thing: any income still coming in goes to their employees during these days of virus pandemonium. So whether you shop with a retailer or directly with a brand, you are helping their (mostly women) employees!
A selection of woman-made in-country chocolate: the chocolate bars were made in the same country where the cacao was grown, which means more profit and pride for local teams than if the cacao were exported without making a finished product
As you may know, my business Chocolate Uplift generally doesn’t sell chocolate to the public since closing the subscription box part of the business; instead, I sell and distribute craft chocolate bars like the ones listed above wholesale to retailers like the ones listed above, and also provide consulting services to chocolate makers and cacao farm owners, and speaking engagements to the public and for meetings and events.
I also operate a free “chocolate-finder” service: if there’s a type of chocolate or a flavor or a brand you want, and you don’t know where to order it, ask me and I’ll find out and tell you!
Thank you, and keep eating real chocolate!
Onward and upward!
Your friend in chocolate, Valerie
Sending you a chocolate hug, as we move toward a world that nourishes people and planet! That’s Uplift Through Chocolate!
Valerie Beck
Founder/CEO Chocolate Uplift
Craft Chocolate Brokering, Consulting, Distribution
Delicious craft chocolate made from ethical Kokoa Kamili Tanzania cacao, and Kokoa Kamili cacao nibs, gathered in my kitchen
Thinking of Earth Day, and dreaming of global health systems that work for people and planet, I’m excited to share an inspiring article in Saveur on cacao from the innovative Kokoa Kamili cacao social enterprise in Tanzania.
How one Tanzania chocolate company is helping farmers grow better cacao—and demand a better price.
Hilary Hueler
April 7, 2020
Working with 4,000 farmers in the lush Kilombero Valley, Kokoa Kamili ferments and dries the cacao, providing quality cacao to many of the craft chocolate makers I work with — such as those whose chocolate bars are pictured here and below — and uplifting growers with higher pay in the process!
The cacao and the resulting chocolate meet my 5 Ss:
slavery-free
soy-free and industrial additive-free
sustainable
small-batch
scrumptious!
Additional wonderful craft chocolate brands I work with who buy cacao from Kokoa Kamili (also gathered in my kitchen)
Enjoy this wonderful article with excellent descriptions and photos of the cacao process and of the beautiful local environment, and keep eating real chocolate that supports people and planet!
Your friend in chocolate,
Valerie
Introducing Kokoa Kamili co-founder Simran Bindra (back right) to Lan (front right) and Brian (back left) of 9th & Larkin Chocolate, who had already purchased his cacao and made delicious chocolate from it, at the Northwest Chocolate Festival in Seattle
Valerie Beck
Founder/CEO Chocolate Uplift
Craft Chocolate Brokering, Consulting, Distribution
Normally I sell craft chocolate wholesale to stores, and lately I have also been asked to sell it direct to you because some stores have had to close — only temporarily we hope — due to the current virus situation. To help our dear chocolate makers, cacao growers, and other small businesses, as part of the #stayhomewithchocolate initiative launched by our community, and to help you get the best chocolate from around the world without leaving home, here you go!
Until or unless I get a shopify page or the like set up, you can order as follows:
Choose your chocolate bars from below my signature, and pay via my Paypal link.
Prices are as listed, or choose 4 bars for $50, or 10 for $100.
Free shipping at $50+.
Philanthropy partner tbd.
You can also email me or send me a Zelle payment at chocolateuplift@gmail.com, or
Let me know your mailing address, or the mailing address of your gift recipient and any note for a gift card, and I look forward to sending your chocolate!
All of the chocolate I represent is slavery-free, soy-free and lecithin-free, sustainable, small-batch, and scrumptious!
Also as part of this initiative, I’ll be doing a fun Instagram Live presentation, which will be posted to YouTube, on *Chocolate For Breakfast: Surprising Health Benefits and How-Tos,* Wednesday, March 25, 2020, at 11:00 am central time. Details to come here and wherever #stayhomewithchocolate is used! : )
Thank you, keep eating real chocolate, and I wish and send you courage and compassion!
Your friend in chocolate,
Valerie
Valerie Beck
Founder/CEO Chocolate Uplift
Craft Chocolate Brokering, Consulting, Distribution
Let me know your mailing address, or the mailing address of your gift recipient and any note for a gift card, and I look forward to sending your chocolate!
All of the chocolate I represent is slavery-free, soy-free and lecithin-free, sustainable, small-batch, and scrumptious!
**Update: three wonderful craft chocolate bars made with Caribbean cacao, by 9th & Larkin Chocolate, Crow & Moss Chocolate, and Sirene Chocolate, are in the April 2020 issue of Luckbox Magazine in a clever piece on rum, chocolate, and cigar combinations, along with chocolate tasting notes by yours truly; click for the digital edition and see pp. 36 – 38! Thank you LuckboxMag and TastyTrade! **
Yes, they all meet my 5 Ss of first-class craft chocolate in that they are:
slavery-free
soy-free and additive-free
sustainable
small-batch and
scrumptious!
In addition, they are all made from cacao grown in the Caribbean!
When you think of food and drink of the Caribbean, maybe you think of excellent rum, cane sugar, jerk chicken. Cacao and chocolate also have important and delicious roots in Caribbean soil.
Cacao from Guatemala…
…in a small-batch grinder for 72 hours, to become chocolate.
The Caribbean islands became a major part of the cacao industry in the 1500s, after European colonizers brought cacao from native lands in South America to the islands for cultivation and export to Europe. Spain controlled most of the trans-Atlantic cacao trade from South America, so by growing cacao in the Caribbean, the English — and Dutch pirates — were able to compete. Slave labor was often used, and when slavery was abolished in Puerto Rico in 1873, profits went down, and commercial cacao-growing in the Caribbean became less important to Europe, especially as West African farms were being exploited and people there were finding themselves slave laborers.
Today, 2.1 million children work on cacao farms in Cote d’Ivoire, most in slavery or hazardous conditions, generally without schooling and often away from their family homes, so that we can have cheap chocolate in the west. The big brands are complicit, as articles and more articles reveal.
Good news: the rise of artisanal bean-to-bar chocolate made from ethical, traceable, single-origin cacao, provides a new opportunity for growing cacao in the Caribbean, in a way that supports people and planet.
For example, Reserva Zorzal in the Dominican Republic is a sustainable cacao farm plus bird sanctuary, where plants and animals live in a mutually beneficial ecosystem. The cacao is grown for quality, not quantity, and you can taste this in a chocolate bar like the one made by Crow & Moss Chocolate of Northern Michigan. The chocolate bar contains just 2 ingredients: cacao and sugar — all you need to make chocolate! My tasting notes:
Deep notes of cherry, caramel, and cinnamon, opening into earthy fudginess, and coming up to conclude on a lightly grape-meets-fennel finish. Long finish. Some complexity, yet relatively straightforward, with clarity, without muddiness. True to the bean. No bitterness. Ultimately interesting, balanced, accessible.
Those flavors are all from the cacao, and from how Mike Davies, founder of Crow & Moss and a professional baker and hobby farmer, roasts and grinds the cacao into chocolate in his 2,000 square foot manufactory.
Tasting the Caribbean through chocolate is exciting, and let me know if you’d like to travel with me to the source, as I am talking with Zorzal founder Chuck Kerchner, a PhD in forestry, about special upscale agri-tours to his cacao estate in the Dominican Republic.
My brief tasting notes on these bars: *Crow & Moss Chocolate, Zorzal Dominican Republic 70% — fruity, rich, complex, fudgey. *Sirene Chocolate, Lachua Guatemala 73% — fruit notes open to herbal, gentle spice, and caramel notes; a very sophisticated bar. *Bixby Chocolate, Guatemala 70% — grape and raisin notes, deep, solid feel. *9th & Larkin, Dominican Republic Oko-Caribe 72% — bright notes, subtle, precision-focused.
In the meantime, you can find selections of the four brands featured here at stores like these:
9th & Larkin — The Grail Cafe, Totto’s Market
Bixby Chocolate — Beacon Hill Chocolates, Honeycreeper Chocolate, Rare Bird Preserves, Spilt Milk Pastry, Yahara Chocolate
Crow & Moss Chocolate — The Grail Cafe, Totto’s Market
Here I am (left) with Chef Kate McAleer of Bixby Chocolate, at last year’s Sweets and Snacks Expo in Chicago. My dress just happens to match the brand. Kate matches on purpose.
Valerie Beck
Founder/CEO Chocolate Uplift
Craft Chocolate Brokering, Consulting, Distribution
Three beloved bean-to-bar brands I shared at my talk at the Northwest Chocolate Festival were highlighted in the New York Times this month: Dandelion Chocolate, Dick Taylor Chocolate, and Fruition Chocolate.
It’s all about love, and I love this recent New York Times article:
…bean-to-bar chocolate makers obsess over the character and ethical origins of their beans.
This is in marked contrast to mainstream industrial chocolate, in which the beans are a commodity product, bought in bulk for price, not quality.
…
The best bean-to-bar chocolate makers (also called craft or micro chocolate makers) choose beans the way chefs choose tomatoes — obsessively, often visiting the farms where the beans are grown. They roast and grind the beans themselves before making them into chocolate bars.
The pastry chef and author David Lebovitz, who wrote “The Great Book of Chocolate,” compares bean-to-bar chocolate to natural wine. “It’s exciting and alive in a way that even really great regular chocolate isn’t,” he said. “It can surprise you.”
Beloved Taza Chocolate was also a favorite in the New York Times, and on a route of my Boston Chocolate Walking Tours back in the old chocolate tour days.
Onward and upward!
Your friend in chocolate,
Valerie
With Leah Hammerman and Paul Primozich of Dandelion Chocolate
With Dahlia Rissman Graham and Bryan Graham of Fruition Chocolate
With Dustin Taylor and Adam Dick of Dick Taylor Chocolate
Valerie Beck
Craft Chocolate Brokering, Consulting, Distribution
Chocolate Uplift 