farming practices

We know the quality of your chocolate and what you offer to your customers is of utmost importance to you. Certification can be an important component to ensure that quality, but it can also be a gatekeeper for many subsistence farmers using methods that follow stricter ecological standards than most organic certification programs require. At Choco Estates we are devoted to agroecology, we are farming beyond organic standards and we’re willing to show you. We invite all our customers to visit our farms, we also provide open access to our methods through our social media channels with plans to move even further in transparency in the near future through our packaging and QR codes. We hope our open communication with you begins a dialogue around farming methods and opens doors for dedicated farmers who are devoted to ethical land stewardship and ancestral food preservation

shipping and pricing

Cultivating real direct trade relationships means we can be up front and transparent with our customers about pricing and shipping. We use a fast, secure air cargo delivery service to send products from Ecuador at preferred bulk rates. In plain words, it costs less per item to ship a heavier box than a lighter one.

That means the more you buy, the less each item costs to ship. We give you an estimated price of every product with shipping included.

The exact price of your order is calculated when you order and will depend on two things:

  • The exact weight in kg

  • The USD/CAD exchange rate, calculated for the week

direct trade

Direct trade as a marketing term has shifted to mean many things in the chocolate industry.

At Choco Estates what we mean by direct trade is that you are buying directly from the farmers hands, we are not middlemen. The folks who handcraft our products, stand at our booth at a trade show and answer messages online are also the farmers growing cacao and tending to the land. We produce everything at our artisanal facility in Ecuador, we do not use other companies for any of our production. This enables us to give back at higher levels than most to our farmers and the fragile ecosystem that makes it all possible