NW Chocolate Festival 2025

Follow the  adventure of Tateyuki Adachi while sourcing one of the best cacaos in the world; Dive into the mysterious story of a cacao in extinction: it's history, discovery, rebirth and the unique chocolates created from it.  

Join a lively discussion to learn how a new collaboration among Seattle Chocolate Company, Three Mountains Cocoa, and Rikolto International is supporting women cocoa farmers in Ghana.  Seattle Chocolate’s “women-powered” ethos and support for women and girls locally and globally was the driving force behind the collaboration.  The partnership which is called "Women for Chocolate" has already provided increased access to water through well construction in two Ghanaian cocoa communities. The initiative is now setting up Village Savings and Loans Associations (VSLAs) and tree nurseries to benefit local farmers.

The panelists will discuss how the partnership was formed, how it is currently managed and how they plan to measure success and continue the collaboration, even beyond the life of the project.

Through the eyes of Masterclass Ghana, multiple actors in the value chain understand and explore the intricacies and challenges in the cocoa value chain of Ghana.  First hand experiences will be shared by each participant to help the audience understand the global issues facing cocoa and how they appear on the farm.  

Planning to have 8 different chocolates from Africa and the Caribbean to taste, and to talk about developing a global organization supporting and teaching chocolate production in the Global South.  We're located in Cameroon, Dominica, Ghana, Cote D'Ivoire, Trinidad and Tobago, Malawi, Uganda, Jamaica, Grenada, Nigeria, St Lucia, Tanzania and we'll be bringing chocolate from multiple countries and talking about our two and a half year old initiatives.  

Pono Cacao: Inspiring Human-Rights in the Cocoa Industry, being shared in a comprehendible way that honors your event and Hawaii, where I have first hand experience of the limitless nature of human-rights in cocoa.

During this talk I will share my vision of the future of cocoa/chocolate work and my vision for generational success for cocoa farms and chocolate-makers. The attendees of this talk will walk away correctly calculating how to stay in business and create generational wealth through nothing else, but human-rights in cocoa.

Planning to have 8 different chocolates from Africa and the Caribbean to taste, and to talk about developing a global organization supporting and teaching chocolate production in the Global South.  We're located in Cameroon, Dominica, Ghana, Cote D'Ivoire, Trinidad and Tobago, Malawi, Uganda, Jamaica, Grenada, Nigeria, St Lucia, Tanzania and we'll be bringing chocolate from multiple countries and talking about our two and a half year old initiatives.  

Mariano will discuss the impactful synergies and partnerships available within the cacao supply chain that honor connections to the earth, people, and nourishment. He will explore how modern landowners in the developing world are transitioning from environmentally harmful practices to cacao for its economic viability, and how their use of regenerative agroforestry systems is shaping the future of the global cacao supply. He will also explain the current zero-carbon shipping options, as well as new technologies and opportunities under development to further enhance sustainable supply chain systems and improve labor efficiencies.

Semilla EScuela de Cacao y Chocolate (@semillaescuelacacao) has been operating for 4 years in Nicaragua and Central America, offering field schools of good practices for the maintenance and harvest of cocoa and also training in quality and organoleptic evaluation of cocoa to producers and cooperatives.

Our growth has been very interesting, since we now have our headquarters in Managua where we offer professional bean to bar chocolate making workshops with a group of teachers and international collaborators who, together with our staff, contribute to the training of our students.

In this presentation we will talk about education, collaboration, teamwork and empowerment in the field to guarantee improvement in the quality of the transformed product in Central America. We wil present our methodology and way of working, which has been very positive for the producers. In this activity, cocoa paste and chocolates made with cocoa from the cooperatives and producers where the Escuela Semilla Laboratories are installed will be sampled.