Next Big Thing: TCHO Chocolate

You heard it here first: I'm predicting a sweet future for TCHO chocolate. At the moment, the barely-opened, employee-owned chocolate company is only selling it's TCHO Beta chocolate directly from the Pier 17, San Francisco factory, but come February 2008 the yumminess will be ready for nationwide delivery. Here are some facts, courtesy of the site...and here's to hoping the chocolate is as good as their copywriter!

• TCHO is a direct, transparent connection between the farmers and the consumers, from the pod to the palate, from high concept to sensual experience.

• TCHO’s social mission is the next step beyond Fair Trade – helping farmers by transferring knowledge of how to grow and ferment better beans so they can escape commodity production to become premium producers.

• TCHO will be the only chocolate factory in San Francisco.

• TCHO’s tasting room will be a gracious and remarkable space in which to experience TCHO’s chocolates and drinks.

• TCHO is serious about chocolate, we aren’t just “re–melters” (like the majority of people who work with chocolate), we are manufacturers, with our very own factory capable of producing 4000 metric tons per year — joining only a dozen other major manufacturers in the US.