Interview: Emily Stone, Co-Founder Of Uncommon Cacao

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“Because the craft chocolate market is currently very tiny, it is extremely unlikely that one or even five craft chocolate manufacturers would ever be able to acquire the whole crop from a single origin… They need the reliability of a buyer who can purchase cacao from the crop as it is coming out and as it is ready to ship, even if some of those particular individual chocolate manufacturers aren’t ready for it yet.

-Emily Stone, co-founder of Uncommon Cacao

Emily Stone is now regarded as a significant player in the cocoa sector on a worldwide scale. She helped establish Maya Mountain Cacao in southern Belize in 2010, then only a few years later, in response to customer demand, she and her team established Cacao Verapaz in Guatemala. Maya Mountain Cacao is located in Guatemala. Uncommon Cacao has grown considerably over the years, and as of the time of publishing, they now provide chocolate manufacturers of all sizes with high-quality cacao sourced from 14 different countries across the globe.

Immediately after the New Year, I had the privilege of doing an interview with Emily for the Cacao Brands edition of my podcast. Because she is such an articulate and informed character, I decided that I needed to share the rest of our conversation with the public. I really hope that you take as much pleasure in hearing about our talk as I did in having it.

Please take note that, as a direct result of the podcast episode for which I was interviewing Emily, the subject of cacao branding features prominently in my inquiries.

Emily with a local village head in Ghana, where Uncommon sources one of their cacao origins, many of which are cacao brands.

Topics We Cover

• The things about chocolate and cocoa that irritate Emily the most
• Some recent examples of how the business has served as an inspiration for Emily
• How Emily characterizes a cocoa brand, and an introduction to branding
• The function of chocolate industry middlemen and middlewomen in the supply chain
• The very beginning of Cacao Brands
• The market for speciality cacao is growing at a faster rate than that of specialty chocolate.
• Anybody who is interested in beginning their own cacao brand should read this.
• The number of agriculturalists with whom Uncommon collaborates.
• The several sources of Uncommon each have their own unique price differentials, and the following explains why those differentials exist:
• The difficulties associated with concurrently developing a company and its industry