Why is bean-to-bar chocolate so expensive?
As Parson illustrated how his company makes their chocolate, he explained why it costs more than your average Hershey bar: • Economy of scale. As a ginormous chocolate-manufacturer, Hershey can buy massive machines and produce everything on assembly lines. Parson showed us some of the equipment from his shop and described how difficult and expensive it was to obtain just those few machines. Some of their equipment had to be custom-made. • Handmade. Because the equipment is so expensive, the owners and employees of Escazu chocolates end up doing a lot of steps by hand. For example, all of their chocolate bars are hand wrapped. Also, Parson and his partners hand select the beans that go into their bars. • Time. A quality chocolate bar takes time to prepare. For example, mass produced chocolate bars often use unfermented beans. Fermented beans are more expensive and take time to prepare, but they taste better. Also, a good chocolate bar will have aged for at least 30 days.
