Taking a chance KAILUA-KONA >> Five years ago, Bob Cooper did not know that chocolate grew on trees.
on chocolate
A Big Isle company bets that
Rod Thompson
chocolate made entirely in Hawaii
will command top dollar
Star-BulletinToday he knows that so much work is needed to turn a chocolate bean into a chocolate bar that some people just leave the beans on the trees to rot.
But Cooper has pushed ahead, almost single-handedly creating the Original Hawaiian Chocolate Factory. It's "the original" because it's the only chocolate company in the state that grows, processes and markets its product entirely in Hawaii.
From a single acre of cacao trees at his home in Kailua-Kona and another 14 acres on the other side of the Big Island at Keaau, Cooper makes milk chocolate and dark chocolate, in quarter-pound and 1-pound bars.
"It's a cottage industry," Cooper says, and his factory indeed has the size and appearance of a cottage, although one with $250,000 of equipment stuffed into it.
This is not the life Cooper expected when he moved to Hawaii in 1997 after 20 years managing a country club in Raleigh, N.C., and periodically vacationing in Hawaii. He and his wife Pam bought a 6-acre Kona farm with coffee, macadamias and an acre of cacao trees.On his property Cooper discovered bags and bags of moldy cacao beans harvested by the former owner for another Hawaii chocolate company, which had not picked them up for a year.
Cooper started harvesting his beans every two weeks. "I told Pam, 'I'm going to start stockpiling those beans. I'm going to process them somehow, some way.'"
Through the rest of 1997, he tried to get financing, but banks had no interest in risking their money on a former country club manager with a sweet vision but no agricultural experience. Cooper finally got a $250,000 loan from the state Department of Business and Economic Development in 1999.
Meanwhile he contacted Florida chocolate consultant Jack Collins, who scoffed at Cooper's trivial stockpile of beans, about a ton. "You don't have any beans, Bob," Collins said. Typical processing machines work with seven to 20 tons at a time.
Collins urged him to blend his beans with foreign beans to assure volume and consistency of taste. Cooper refused, insisting on pure Hawaiian chocolate. It is an approach Cooper describes as "like climbing Everest with a pick and shovel."
But after Cooper sent a sample of dried beans to a taste-tester in Barcelona, Spain, and the assessment came back "prominent and forthright in flavor," Collins agreed to help.He set to work adapting machinery to a micro operation, Cooper said. One piece, a short conveyor belt for sorting beans, is actually a converted home exercise treadmill Cooper bought for $100.
Cooper's wife helped tend the trees and harvest the pods. A handyman helped set up the equipment. That was all the staff he had, and the handyman, more interested in machinery than farming, quit after everything was running properly.
In 1998, Cooper contracted with Sheldon Zane about his 14 acres of cacao trees in Keaau. Zane had bought the land from chocolate company owner Jim Walsh, who acquired it from the chocolate giant Hershey.
The first chocolate bars were produced on Sept. 21, 2000.
The chocolate sells for an average retail price of $8 per quarter-pound, but the hefty price does not seem to put people off.
"It sells like hot cakes," said Patti Cook, owner of Cook's Discoveries in Waimea. "(Customers) love it because it has great flavor. They're excited by something made in Hawaii."
Cooper said one woman from Hershey, Penn., home of the chocolate company, bought 20 bars to take home.
Cooper markets his product at select locations -- very select, since production is just 1,200 pounds per month -- on the Big Island, Maui, Lanai, Oahu and Kauai.
He would like to expand and knows of perhaps a dozen farmers putting in one to 20 acres each of cacao which he might buy. But their first harvests will not be for four years.
The new crop merits protection, Cooper says, particularly from diseases borne by foreign beans, should they be imported by other processors to boost local chocolate production.
U.S. Department of Agriculture official Mike Scharf sees little danger. Cacao pods can be imported into the northern United States only. Dried, fermented beans can also be imported, but both must be inspected by USDA quarantine agents for insects and diseases.
No beans or pods have been imported to Hawaii, Scharf said, but cacao seeds for planting have been imported here and were also subject to inspection.
But Cooper wants state protective legislation, and state Reps. Jim Rath and Paul Whalen of Kona share his concerns.
Rath pointed to other agricultural diseases, the tremendous losses caused by banana bunchy-top virus and papaya ringspot disease. "If I were in Bob's shoes, I'd be really concerned."
How Bob Cooper's cacao beans become chocolate bars: From bean to bar
>> Cacao pods are cut open by hand, the beans pulled out and placed in a wooden "sweat box." They are fermented for six days. Any more or less will ruin the taste. Acids are released that wake up the flavor of the beans.
>> The beans are sun-dried on racks 22 to 28 days.
>> The beans are sorted, roasted, then put into a homemade "flinger" which knocks off their shells, leaving the dried chocolate centers known as "nibs."
>> The nibs are ground to powder inside a "conche refiner," a machine with a whirling center that looks like a jet engine. Cocoa butter, sugar, vanilla powder and/or powdered milk may be added, depending on whether dark or milk chocolate is to be made. After a second grinding, lecithin is added to turn the batch fluid.
>> The chocolate cools in a tempering tank, a process meant to prevent the cocoa butter from "blooming," or separating from the chocolate.
>> The liquid chocolate is poured into molds to form quarter-pound and 1-pound bars.
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