SUDBURY, Mass. — If you’ve been buying Halloween candy, you’ve probably noticed that chocolate prices have gone up. The cacao harvest has been hit hard—affecting chocolate makers, large and small.
Boston 25 News found a local company that is working hard not to pass that cost on to consumers--all while earning national awards.
“The first part of making chocolate is roasting the beans,” said Tom Rogan, as he showed the process of how he makes chocolate at his home in Sudbury.
Tucked away on the historic Goodnow Farm in Sudbury, Tom and Monica Rogan craft their own chocolate.
“We start low and go slow because we want to really highlight the flavors and not roast them out,” said Tom.
The Rogan’s use just three ingredients to make their chocolate—cacao beans from Central America, their own cocoa butter pressed in house, and organic cane sugar.
“Chocolate isn’t just, you know, putting things together in a kitchen,” said Monica Rogan. “You actually have to go source the ingredients, understand where they come from. There’s a lot of creativity, relationships, and understanding the stories behind it.”
“These are the beans,” said Tom as he showed the cacao beans. “These are the seeds of a fruit.”
And the story behind these Goodnow Farms Chocolate bars is that they’re not a candy--they’re a food filled with nutrients.
“There are all these fantastic things inside,” said Monica. “And we don’t pull them out, we just combine them with a little bit of extra sugar in a way that makes it taste fantastic.”
“Creates a nice, smooth chocolate bar, ”Tom said as he showed the final chocolate-making process.
But what hasn’t been so smooth—the supply of cacao beans. Climate change has been impacting the crop, causing prices to skyrocket.
“And there’s been a shortage in supply for commodity cacao that the big industrial chocolate makers use,” said Monica. “So they’ve actually gone to our supply chains.”
Couple that with organic sugar surging by almost 50% due to the tariffs—and it’s been a difficult environment for the Rogan’s.
“The sand is shifting underneath our feet,” said Monica. “We don’t know whether to purchase now, purchase later. You can’t really make decisions. It’s really hard to plan, and our farmers really depend on us.”
For now, the Rogan’s are not passing the costs on to their consumers—and they are focusing on collaborating with local farms to produce all-natural flavors to create unique bars like Nantucket Fog and Caramalized Onion---the community can enjoy.
“We love making chocolate,” said Tom. “It’s fun to be up here, it’s fun to exercise our creativity, but also we love the fact that we get to work directly with farmers. We built relationships with them over the years. There’s a lot of stuff about this whole process we just love doing.”
Their love for making chocolate has turned into liquid gold. Goodnow Farms Chocolate has earned countless awards and just won the International Chocolate Awards ‘Best Bar of Milk Chocolate in North America’.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates as more information becomes available.
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