This one is for the chocoholics

Rapt is Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, but one for adults, more inspired by Pop Art and maybe a hint of LSD than the Roald Dahl version for children. Not only in the décor and wall art, but the odd little chocolatey creations, the colours, the slightly unhinged imagination that’s been unleashed full-throttle in the shop-cum-studio that’s opened on Buitenkant Street, Cape Town.

In the back, where the factory’s a touch more industrial, less Andy Warhol, there are machines to mould chocolate into crazy designs. Some look like little robots. Others resemble miniature croissants in Day-Glo colours. There are machines that shape bonbons that are coated with natural vegetable dyes in such zany colours they look nothing like chocolates. Pop them in your mouth, though, and there’s little doubt.

Rapt is headed by Cape Town’s very own wild-haired Willy Wonka, David Donde, who kick-started the city’s second-wave coffee revolution about 15 years ago when he opened Truth Coffee — across the road from Rapt — with the motto “No sugar required”. His chocolate follows similar lines.

Donde says a vast divide separates “genuine chocolate” from the “rubbish”, that “the real stuff” is delicious without sweetening. He says Rapt chocolates provide “the flavours of your childhood”, without sugar.

Also at Rapt: Choc-O-Lattes, Sudden Nitrogen Ice-Cream and a DIY-type Build-a-Bar experience. Opportunities galore to have those childhood fantasies reawakened, though without chocolates that’ll make you fly, nor the lickable wallpaper.

Another difference between this space and the Dahl-imagined place is that there is also no exploitation. Donde says Rapt’s sourcing of cacao is more ethically stringent than merely picking a Fairtrade-accredited supplier.

With business partner Ken Walton, Donde had been eyeing the chocolate market since before the pandemic. They didn’t, however, plan to launch Rapt right in the midst of the chocolate industry’s most tumultuous price scare in decades.

Cacao prices over the past six months have sparked a “global chocolate crisis”. That’s of seismic consequence to millions of people whose livelihoods hinge on the commodity, more than two-thirds of which is grown in West Africa.

In that region, cacao crops have fallen prey to a combination of El Niño-related low rainfall, plant disease and ageing trees. Not only is the region undergoing long-term crop decline, but market insecurity is making farmers hesitant to replant.

Cacao prices started rising late last year and in April reached a record high of just under $11 per kilo. Analysts predict that consumers will feel the real impact only later this year — and price instability will likely continue for some time.

Donde believes what’s unfair is that while brokers gamble with the market, none of the price hikes is making any difference for farmers. He says all the money is being made by European brokerages and futures traders.

He’s happy to pay top dollar for “better-quality beans” sourced directly from places less affected by market volatility.

Rapt’s choice of where to source cacao came down to blind tastings; his team looked for cacao worldwide but were “blown away” by what they tasted from the tiny island nation of São Tomé and Principe, where a mere 3,000t is grown annually.

Once the world’s biggest cacao producer, São Tomé’s reputation is for quality, a result of having plantations that are isolated from fertilisation from hybrid trees. “Their cacao is unique, rare and genetically untainted,” says Donde.

By importing this rarefied cacao and sourcing directly, Donde is among a very small fraternity of local chocolate-makers seeking to put African chocolate on the global map.

It seems insane that on the list of the world’s best chocolates issued by the International Chocolate Awards, not a single African chocolate brand is mentioned. That’s despite the fact that more than 60% of all cacao comes from just two African countries, Ivory Coast and Ghana.

Topping the awards, which are overseen by the International Institute of Chocolate & Cacao Tasting, are Norwegian brands Fjåk and Vigdis Rosenkilde, with Germany’s Meybol Cacao and Hong Kong’s Slok Chocolate also top scorers.

The world’s priciest chocolate — one bar costs almost $400 (about R7,000) — comes from a tiny producer in Ecuador, To’ak, that uses only the oldest and rarest cacao varietals to create a limited-edition, single-origin dark chocolate. To’ak’s premium chocolate is aged for four years in a French-oak Cognac cask before being packaged in a handcrafted Spanish elm-wood box (engraved with a unique bar number). It’s sold with special tasting utensils and a 116-page booklet.

Keep in mind that brands and people such as To’ak and Donde are Davids in a Goliath-sized industry. Chocolate has exploded in recent years. According to market research firm Statista, the global chocolate market grew almost 20% in the five years from 2016; in 2021, its revenue was $980bn.

That’s a lot of bonbons. And South Africa’s artisanal chocolate industry is barely a blip on the world stage. There are just a handful of local bean-to-bar chocolate-makers, people who source the bean, roast, grind and make chocolate from scratch. Certainly, none of them can command R7,000 a bar.

‘Less sugar; less bad stuff’

“We’re not really in it to make huge amounts of money,” says Honest Chocolate’s Anthony Gird. “If we were, we’d have done something else.”

Gird says most chocolate-makers buy from big agents. “Already roasted and ground down, the taste’s pretty homogeneous. They’ll add flavouring, melt it down, put in more additives, and create a chocolate.”

By contrast, he and business partner Michael de Klerk started Honest with a mix of pioneering spirit and desire to produce a “healthier chocolate, with less sugar and less bad stuff”.

Gird, who began experimenting at home in 2008, made chocolate with raw cacao, agave syrup and coconut. He made little truffles and because friends and family loved them, he made lots. He saw a gap in the market and the brand was born.

“Our name guides us in business, being fair and transparent in everything we do, sourcing cacao from places without child labour or slavery, and where farmers are paid fairly for a premium product.”

Honest produces chocolate in small batches using old-fashioned, time-intensive techniques to better retain the nutritional value of unprocessed cacao sourced from Tanzania’s Kokoa Kamili, a fermentation facility that services about 3,000 farmers who operate organically.

“Their beans are beautifully flavoursome,” Gird says. “Lots of fruitiness and slightly more acidic, too.”

When you roast your own beans, he says, you get a flavour that is unique. “You won’t taste anything like it anywhere else. And because we don’t overroast them, we retain that fruitiness.”

Gird says that while Tanzania isn’t affected by the same weather issues that have hampered West Africa’s cacao harvest, the price increases will ultimately affect Honest’s cash flow. “Because our suppliers are being offered higher prices, we’ll pay more for our next purchase.”

His hope, though, is that the price frenzy will expose unfairness in cacao pricing and encourage a shift towards more ethical treatment of farmers.

Kyle Hickman, head chocolatier at Afrikoa, another artisanal Cape Town chocolate-making company, says the equitable treatment of farmers directly affects the quality of available cacao. “Control over bean quality is crucial, but is not possible if buying via a European auction,” he says.

Based at the V&A Waterfront’s Makers Landing, Afrikoa was co-founded by Rwandan-Swiss businesswoman Ingrid Karera, for whom ethical integrity is vital. Hickman says Afrikoa trades directly with farmers in Tanzania rather than going through a Belgian dealer, which is the typical route.

The direct-trade relationship ensures that the raw product is more carefully handled, free of defective beans. “Farms we procure from are all co-ops located in areas so rural they don’t even have access to pesticides and chemicals.”

Like Honest, Afrikoa sources top-tier Trinitario beans that produce “a less-mainstream tasting” chocolate, with “a beautiful red-fruit flavour” that’s also “a little more acidic than usual”.

South Africa punching above its weight

In Tshwane, bean-to-bar chocolatier Stephanie Ceronio founded award-winning Jack Rabbit Chocolate Studio with an all-woman team after she “accidentally fell in love with chocolate” while working as a baker and pastry chef.

So far she has remained “isolated from the chocolate chaos” because she “supports small businesses in Africa rather than buying from Europe”. Her beans come from farms in Tanzania, Uganda, Malawi, Togo and Congo.

She says that “with so much greenwashing and general misinformation, it’s tough to know what’s actually happening in the market, or whose opinion to trust”. While large chocolate companies are already feeling the impact of the crisis, she believes “the little guys will end up suffering most”. With her focus on bespoke and small-batch limited-release chocolates, Ceronio says the cost of her next supply of cacao beans is where the challenge will lie. “Price increases over the next four to six months will be difficult,” she says.

Nevertheless, she’s in for the long haul. “It’s not just getting the beans from smaller-scale farmers, but we are working with partners in the field who help farmers to improve harvests and assist with plant genetics — actions that help us in our journey towards sustainability and ensure we have high-quality, genetically superior beans for our chocolate. For us, these are long-game goals.”

Exports and expanding abroad could enable local artisanal chocolate to achieve a global foothold.

Afrikoa has export plans, and Gird says Honest Chocolate punches well above its weight. “Tourists we see in our café are blown away by what we do and are always asking us to open a shop in Europe.”

Donde shares that sentiment. “We’re trying to create something that isn’t just good enough for Cape Town, but that can stand on its own feet anywhere in the world,” he says.