By Lorrie Baumann

For the second year in a row, Goodnow Farms has swept the sofi Awards in the dark chocolate category with its single-origin bars. Last year, the company won six sofi Awards that included its sweep in the dark chocolate category – the first time a company had ever won six sofi Awards in a single year. The company has also won multiple Good Food Awards over the past three years as well as International Chocolate Awards and awards from the Academy of Chocolate.

This year’s sofi Awards are a welcome bright spot in a year that COVID-19 has clouded with uncertainties, both for Tom Rogan, co-Founder of Goodnow Farms along with his wife, Monica, and for the cacao growers from whom the fine chocolate-makers source the beans for their exceptional products.

The Vision Begins to Form

“Our vision from the beginning was to do single-origin and really highlight the flavors of each individual region and, by doing that, to raise awareness of the skill of the farmers and the fact that we need to pay them fairly for the product they’re producing,” said Tom Rogan. “From the beginning” was back in the early years of the 21st century, when Rogan was in the television production business and already thinking about what he’d do after television. In 2010, he sold his Los Angeles, California-based company on an earn-out agreement that gave him and his wife time to think about what they wanted to do next and where they wanted to do it. They did some traveling in Central America, where Monica, originally from Baltimore, Maryland, had worked for a company that built Central American eco-resorts. “She hated chocolate,” Rogan recalls.

Then, back home in Los Angeles, the couple stopped in at a small craft chocolate shop and had a taste of what Rogan now calls “real chocolate.” “It opened our eyes to the idea that it’s a food instead of a candy – that there’s a farmer who grows it,” Rogan said.

Both Tom and Monica Rogan fell in love with that kind of chocolate, and they started making it for themselves as a hobby, buying their beans online and roasting them in their home kitchen. By the time Tom’s involvement with his production company was history, the couple’s hobby was well established. “The idea of making chocolate grew naturally out of the idea that we love doing it, and it was something we could do at home, and we really got excited about starting a chocolate company,” Rogan said. It was time to get serious about finding farmers who could supply high-quality cacao beans grown and processed to order, something that small chocolate-makers generally do a year in advance. For the care that the farmers take with the beans that go into Goodnow Farms chocolate, Rogan pays the farmers a substantial premium over the regular fair trade price. “The challenge has been that people aren’t paying farmers enough for cacao. Fair trade is 10 percent more than the commodity price, plus a 10 percent premium that goes back to the community,” Rogan said. “We pay anywhere between two and four times the commodity price, which goes a long way toward ensuring the farmers receive a fair and sustainable price for their cacao.”

Monica had lived in Central America long enough to become fluent in the Spanish dialects spoken by farmers who lived in cacao-growing areas, so she was – and remains – the company’s lead for interactions with them. “We always travel together,” Rogan said. “I can get by, but I can’t have a long, detailed conversation with a farmer like Monica can. When she was living in Central America, she was living in remote areas, so she was able to pick up on the dialects.”

Making Chocolate in Massachusetts

With an initial supply chain established and the freedom to live where they wanted after Rogan’s involvement with his production company had ended, the Rogans decided to take their family to the East Coast, where they’d already decided that they wanted to raise their two children. They looked for a place where they could live and build a chocolate kitchen right next to the house. They found Goodnow Farms, a historic farm in Sudbury, Massachusetts, that had both the space they needed for their business and a community with the kind of small specialty shops that would support a local artisan.

It took them a little over a year to build out the chocolate kitchen and fine-tune the recipes they’d been using to make chocolate on a cottage scale into the formulas for making fine chocolate on a scale that would support an actual business. “We started selling our first bars in November, 2016, mostly selling locally to small gourmet and specialty stores. We started selling on our website, too. It was a combination of both,” Rogan said. “There was a lot of cold-calling and sending samples to stores. Once people tried it, they loved it and usually brought it in.”

A Whole Foods buyer was one of those who loved it and brought it in, and that allowed Goodnow Farms to expand throughout the northeastern U.S., but as more specialty stores across the U.S. adopted Goodnow Farms, Rogan had to tell Whole Foods that they just couldn’t keep up, and they were going to have to let some of his customers go. As a result of that decision, Goodnow Farms chocolate is no longer found in Whole Foods. “We really wanted to focus on the small specialty stores because they were the ones who helped us grow to where we are now,” Rogan said.

Focusing on production for distribution only to the customers who mean the most to their business allows the Rogans to refuse to compromise on the quality standards for their products. Goodnow Farms is still pressing its own cocoa butter to add to the nibs as they’re turned into chocolate, so that the extra fat will enhance the chocolate’s texture and speed the transfer of flavor from the chocolate to the tongue.

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For Rogan, though, chocolate shouldn’t be just a commodity; it can be a unique expression of a specific place, since cacao grown in different places develops different flavors. It’s also an expression of the skill of the farmer and of the agreement between the Rogans and that farmer to grow a specific quantity and quality of cacao beans for Goodnow Farms, and, in some cases, even to harvest and ferment them according to the Rogans’ instructions.

The Bars and the Beans

Today, Goodnow Farms has three lines of craft chocolate bars. Its Special Reserve line combines Goodnow Farms beans with complementary flavors of other craft food products. Goodnow Farms Special Reserve Putnam Rye Whiskey bar combines cacao from Ecuador with Putnam Rye Whiskey from Boston Harbor Distillery. Esmeraldas cacao nibs from beans grown on the Salazar family farm in Ecuador are steeped in the Putnam Rye Whiskey for several days. When the nibs have absorbed the complex flavors from the whiskey, they’re dried completely before being stone-ground into chocolate. “We’ve tasted a lot of different whiskeys,” Rogan said. “This pairs really well with our Esmeraldas cacao.” The Putnam Rye Whiskey bar won a silver sofi Award and best new product award in 2019 in the sofi chocolate candy category as well as a Good Food Award.

Similarly, the Goodnow Farms Special Reserve Las Palomas Coffee is the result of a partnership with single-origin coffee expert George Howell. Asochivite chocolate nibs from the small Guatemalan village of San Juan Chivite are soaked in a George Howell brew of Las Palomas coffee from Guatemala until they’re fully infused with the flavor of the coffee. They’re then dried before being stone-ground with added cocoa butter from Asochivite beans to make the chocolate. Las Palomas won a Good Food Award in 2020.

A smaller Inclusions line offers three bars: El Carmen with Coffee, Asochivite with Maple and Almendra with Almonds. The El Carmen with Coffee combines Nicaraguan cacao with coffee from Recreo Coffee and Roasterie, which imported its beans from Jinotega, Nicaragua. The 69 percent cacao bar was a finalist for a Good Food Award in 2019. For the Asochivite with Maple, Goodnow Farms adds maple syrup from Severance Maple in Northfield, Massachusetts, and for the Almendra with Almonds, Goodnow Farms adds almonds from Burroughs Family Farms. Asochivite with Maple won two bronze awards from the Academy of Chocolate – one in 2018 and one in 2019 – and two silver awards from the International Chocolate Awards in 2018, while Almendra with Almonds was awarded bronze awards by the Academy of Chocolate in 2018 and 2019.

Goodnow Farms’ sweep of the dark chocolate category in 2019 included Ucayali 70% Dark Bar, which won the gold award; Asochivite 77% Dark Bar, which won the silver; and Coto Brus, 73%, which won the bronze award. In addition to the two sofi Awards for the Putnam Rye Whiskey bar, Goodnow Farms also won a silver sofi Award last year in the coffee and hot cocoa category for its Goodnow Farms Single Origin Hot Cocoa, Almendra Blanca.

This year’s sofi Award winners have all come from Goodnow Farms’ Signature line of bars intended as pure expressions of a specific region of origin, including Goodnow Farms Chocolate Ecuador, Esmeraldas, 70%, which won this year’s gold award; Goodnow Farms Chocolate Colombia, Boyaca, 73%, which won this year’s silver award as well as the award for the best new product in the dark chocolate category; and Goodnow Farms Chocolate Nicaragua, El Carmen, 77%, which won this year’s bronze award.

COVID-19 Pandemic Poses Threat

It’s those single-origin chocolates that may be most imperiled by this year’s COVID-19 pandemic, which arrived in Latin America on February 26, when Brazil confirmed a case in Sao Paulo. Since then, cases have been confirmed across the region, creating significant uncertainties in the supply chain for the specialty cacao market. “Craft chocolate makers often have to commit to buying cacao beans a year in advance,” Rogan said. “When the next harvest season comes around – January through May, depending on which country you’re in, it’s really difficult – somebody might stop producing. Some of these origins could disappear. It’s challenging.”

Farmers in countries that have been hit hard by the virus have had to think about whether they’re going to have the manpower to harvest and process their beans during the next harvest and whether it’ll be safe to bring those workers onto their farms. At the other end of the supply chain, chocolate makers like Rogan are asking themselves how many Americans will still have the financial resources to indulge themselves with premium-priced craft chocolate as this country’s economy recovers from the pandemic. “For now, demand is strong,” Rogan said. “But there are many uncertainties about how the pandemic will ultimately affect consumer behavior.

Goodnow Farms, at least, has seen that, so far, the price of its bars hasn’t deterred American consumers who’ve found the company’s online store. “We’re having trouble keeping up. We ran out of our Colombian beans,” Rogan said. “There’s been a big increase in people consuming craft chocolate – at least, our craft chocolate – since this all started.”

Between the run on its chocolate from the American market and the uncertainties caused by the pandemic, the Rogans are scrambling to source the cacao they need for next year’s bars. While they’d usually be traveling to Central America to meet their farmers, taste samples and verify labor practices, they’re relying instead on long-distance communication from their home in Massachusetts. “For new beans, we have a few that are on the radar, but we’ll probably not be able to visit. We’ll do the best we can, but travel isn’t currently an option,” Rogan said. “It’s a very difficult business. There are endless challenges, and each time they come up, we need to figure out how to get past them. So far, we’ve been able to do that through sheer determination, since we’re so passionate about what we do. People really believe strongly in what we’re doing – the social, moral and passion aspects of it – and that contributes to a drive to figure out how to make it work.”
For more information about Goodnow Farms, visit www.goodnowfarms.com.