Our journey begins in rural India, not far from Mumbai, where Scott had been living on an all fruit diet, studying yoga and working with the local Adivasi people on an organic farming project. It was there that he met our Creative Director, Martha Butler. Industry had begun creeping into the area and many local farmers were selling their topsoil to brickmakers since agriculture just wasn't a viable source of income anymore. It was while reading David Suzuki's book From Naked Ape To Superspecies on the back of a bus that Scott had an epiphany. He realised that to really support these communities, the key was having a brand in the marketplace. Finding a way to support these people meant finding ways of commercialising their commodities in a way that not only honoured them, but also allowed them to do what they'd been doing for thousands of years.

Scott and Martha subsequently journeyed to Mexico, working with an indigenous Mayan co-operative to help them find a market for their coffee and cacao. It started to become apparent that the only real asset many of these communities had in the modern world were the crops that their ancestors had domesticated. It was the Olmecs, the ancestors of the Mayan cooperative that Scott was working with in Izapa, who first domesticated cacao thousands of years ago.

Three years later Scott & Martha were back in Melbourne with a child on the way and full of inspiration! Bringing with them the ingredients to create our very first chocolate bars. Their rental house in Coburg was the HQ, with night shift at a local bakery the manufacturing site. From day one the demand for our raw chocolate was far greater than the production capacity, and it wasn’t long before our first employee came onboard; Richard, who still manages our production today!