By Lorrie Baumann

FINE & RAW Chocolate Founder Daniel Sklaar can trace the inspiration that led him to start a company specializing in bean-to-bar chocolate made with sustainably sourced products, unrefined sweeteners and 100 percent organic ingredients, to a picture of a Carnegie Deli pastrami sandwich that he posted on his inspiration board in his childhood bedroom in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Today, that inspiration has led him to a a redesign of his signature FINE & RAW line with new wrapper artwork, thinner bars that improve mouth feel and two new flavors: Cashew Nut Butter and 70% Cacao. The new line perches on the market intersection between wellness and specialty gourmet and was introduced at the 2018 Summer Fancy Food Show in New York.
Sklaar grew up knowing that it was his destiny to come to the United States, so when he won a green card through the American lottery process after studying finance in college in Capetown and a year of backpacking in Asia, he packed up and came straight to New York, where one of the first things he did was head to Carnegie Deli to taste that pastrami sandwich for himself. “It was life-changing. Everything I’d hoped for and more,” he says. “To die for.”

His early days in New York were spent working in restaurants to pay the rent while he searched for a job in finance. “You kind of like crash-land in New York. I don’t think anyone has a soft landing in New York,” he says. Eventually, around 2003, with the American economy already suffering and Sklaar coming to grips with the realization that he was competing for jobs with graduates of Ivy League universities, Sklaar started to think about exploring other options. “I left that world in 2006, ahead of the real recession. I didn’t leave for any recession reasons at all,” he says. “I left for my own personal explorations and ideas of life.”

His restaurant experience and the savings he’d accumulated gave him the freedom to travel and free-lance as a chef. “Living on a shoestring and getting desperate makes you very creative,” he says. “I discovered the fascination and joy and intrigue of working in the kitchen and working with my hands.”

His travels led him to Patagonia, Arizona and the Tree of Life holistic medicine center operated by Gabriel Cousens, where he joined the raw food movement and learned about raw chocolate. “It was such a phenomenal time to be involved with that movement, with the discovery of raw chocolate,” he says. “It was just super fun – exploring with chocolate, living off salads and then eating cacao. You are truly bouncing off the wall. It’s like caffeine but merciful. It gives the same kind of energy boost but without a drop. It was a really cool time to be in that little niche of the world.”
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When he returned to New York, he saw two options for himself: he could either look for another conventional job, or he could roll the dice and start a chocolate company – he decided to take his chances and started making his chocolate in an artists’ loft in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood. “It was such a good thing when you’re out there on the periphery, and people don’t quite get what you’re doing, but they’re still supporting you,” he says. “All my friends came over and started making chocolate, and I would pay them in chocolate and beer.”

In that supportive community, word about Sklaar’s chocolate got around, and buyers for the neighborhood’s specialty stores started carrying his bars. “People really got into the chocolate, and one thing led to the next,” he says. “I legitimized the production and moved to a kitchen.”

Today’s product range encompasses Sklaar’s Brooklyn Bonnies line of bars, which feature artwork reminiscent of tattoo designed based on mid-20th-century pinup girls; Chunkys, which are a cross between a bar and a truffle; truffles; butters and spreads as well as the newly redesigned signature line of bars, which are now 40 percent slimmer at 4 mm thick but still weigh either 1 or 2 ounces. “The experience of chocolate is largely about the mouth feel and the melt. Having a thinner chocolate allows the melt to happen quicker.” Sklaar says. “You get a more rapid release of flavor, and the experience is heightened.”

New artwork for the signature line’s packaging incorporates floral imagery and vivid colors, and the line boasts the brand’s richest and most complex flavor profiles to date, with two new flavors: Cashew Nut Butter, which blends house-made raw cashew butter into dark chocolate for a creamy bar with notes of caramel cookie, and 70% Cacao, which blends cacao with coconut sugar and cacao butter.

The entire range is sweetened with coconut sugar, and the chocolate is never heated to temperatures higher than 150 degrees, which is accepted as the limit for nuts and seeds to be considered raw, since at temperatures below 150 degrees, nuts and seeds will still sprout.

Retail prices for the bars are about $4.99 for a 1-ounce bar and $8.99 for a 2-ounce bar. The truffles are available in 4-piece, 8-piece and 24-piece boxes in eight classic standards and about 12 seasonal rotating flavors. Boxes are available in either assortments or individual flavors. The FINE & RAW Chunky in Almond Chunky, Coconut Chunky and Truffle Chunky are 1.5 ounces and retail for about $7.99. The Hazelnut Chunky weighs 1 ounce and retails for $4.99.