Educating consumers on chocolate is not an easy task.

Lectures and presentations can be boring and quickly forgotten. Social media posts last less than a few minutes on people’s minds. And too much information inside the store can actually jeopardize sales.

But try putting consumers right in the middle of the action, making chocolate themselves in a factory or opening cacao pods directly on the field, and you have the best formula for unforgettable lessons and long-lasting brand loyalty.

Cacao and chocolate experiences attract curious consumers with the promise of a good time. Simultaneously, attendees get a good dose of chocolate education and witness all the efforts behind their favorite food, from cacao growing to chocolate making. This kind of education tends to be more effective than other methods, as the consumer is the absolute protagonist in interactive and engaging activities.

After these experiences, consumers will return to their daily lives with a deeper understanding and a higher appreciation for chocolate. But the benefits aren’t only for attendees.

These activities provide extra income for chocolate makers and cacao farmers, together with the possibility to turn attendees into future loyal customers and buyers.

Let’s check out the most popular cacao and chocolate experiences in 2023.

Large and Tiny Chocolate Factory Tours

Since rent and bills are running anyway, chocolate makers have found a great way to optimize their time while machines are doing their thing on the background: factory tours.

Factory tours are nothing new. We have seen many chocolate makers, usually of medium sizes, showing their working space to curious attendees and making this activity a regular appointment on their schedule. Usually there is an employee dedicated to the task of guiding and educating the attendees for about one hour of blissful chocolate immersion.

The news is that even those craft bean-to-bar chocolate makers with the tiniest laboratories and the smallest workshops have now decided to open their doors. Even if their space can physically welcome at best 5 people at the time, there is no stopping the opportunity to acquire new customers and new income. In this case, the leading guide is the craft chocolate maker, perhaps with a less regular schedule and whenever he/she can take a break from chocolate making.

These experiences usually include the explanation of the entire bean-to-bar process, the storytelling of the chocolate company and the enjoyment of lots of samples at the end. Some of the challenges include preventing the factory tours from messing up with the production schedule, and restraining attendees from creating mess, chaos and broke things around the factory.

For a craft chocolate maker, factory tours are the best way to:

create trust in the brand. Nothing better than showing the behind the scenes, be totally transparent about the operations and proving that craftmanship is not just a buzzword.
attract new potential customers. Who doesn’t like a chocolate factory tour? Allured by a fun experience, many attendees can turn into loyal customers.
increase in-store sales. After seeing the entire bean-to-bar process, attendees will feel more attached to the brand and willing to buy products at the end of the tour right in the store (a final chocolate sampling is a must to achieve this goal!).

Cacao Tourism in The Countries of Origin

Cacao farms around the world are now building rustic hotels, bohemian lodges and environmentally-friendly accommodations to welcome guests. While only professionals in the chocolate industry used to visit cacao farms for work, now cacao farms are opening their gates to a larger audience.

Located in remote and rural areas around the equatorial belt, cacao farms are far from crowded capitals and tourist traps.

Guests can enjoy a full immersion in quiet nature and local wildlife while learning about cacao straight at its roots, all while experiencing homemade food, getting to know the locals and living a genuine adventure as tourists, but without feeling like “walking wallets”.

This type of experience attracts:

tourists, adventurers, bird watchers, nature lovers, chocolate enthusiasts.
professionals like researchers, agronomists, biologists, professors, food workers.
current and potential cacao buyers such as importers, distributors, and bean-to-bar chocolate makers. Instead of having them drive back and forth for many hours to reach the farm and only being able to stay for a day, welcoming them in a hotel right inside the farm can make potential buyers stay longer, get even more details on the cacao they are interested in, and day by day getting more convinced to make a purchase.

While cacao tourism represents an extra income for cacao farms, the challenge lays in acquiring hospitality skills and properly train the staff to not let guests disappointed.

Organized Chocolate Tastings (In-person and Online)

What’s a better way to make people understand the value of craft chocolate than putting it directly in their mouths?

These tastings can vary to suit different target audiences.

From alcohol-based pairings (whisky, rum, wine, beer and beyond) to comparative tastings (between different cacao percentages, origins and brands), the host has infinite possibilities to entertain the guests at the table. The most experienced ones will bring along cacao maps, tasting wheels, cacao pod sculptures, chocolate books and all sorts of educational and decorative material. Even the mood of the tasting can be chosen, from creating a laid-back and friendly environment to organizing a more elegant and pretentious experience.

Since 2020, chocolate tastings have found their space also online. The organizer ships the necessary material to each attendee’s house. Usually this kit includes the chocolate bars that will be tasted, brochures with details about each bar, and tools for tasting such as flavor wheels and other guidelines.

Chocolate tastings can be organized by independent chocolate sommeliers (to showcase their skills), by chocolate retailers (to promote their assortment) or by craft chocolate makers themselves (to increase brand awareness).

The challenge is to plan the tastings in detail and keep the guests entertained and amused from start to finish without awkward silences, unnecessary pauses or boring lectures.

Spiritual Cacao Events and Gatherings

Inspired by the Mesoamerican rituals and celebrations that involved the consumption of cacao, there are now different types of occasions to combine the veneration of cacao with spiritual practices like mediation, journaling, yoga, prayers, chanting, and more.

These spiritual events and gatherings are centered around cacao beverages that are seen as the vehicles for spiritual growth and increased awareness. The cacao used for these occasions is usually pure cacao paste that has been ethically sourced, lightly roasted and minimally processed to retain all its flavors and health properties, sometimes also enriched with superfoods, spices, herbs, adaptogens or nootropics. In this occasion, cacao is idolized and appreciated for its beneficial effects on the body, the mind and the spirit.

While some chocolate makers adhere to the high quality standards that this high-vibration cacao should have, others are more sneaky, try to cut corners and use commercial products. So it’s always good practice to research both the event organizers and the cacao they are going to use.

As with any spiritual practice, cacao ceremonies and events also bring with them a halo of mystery that makes them a frequent subject of criticism and skepticism, which is probably their biggest challenge to overcome.

Make Your Own Chocolate Workshops

What’s better than tasting chocolate? Definitely making it yourself!

When attendees become chocolate makers even just for a few hours, you can bet that’s an experience they will never forget. Instead of being lectured about the bean-to-bar process, they get to be the protagonists and discover for themselves the challenges and the fun of making chocolate from scratch.

These amatorial bean-to-bar workshops can be specifically dedicated to kids, reserved for adults, marketed as a romantic occasion for couples, a group activity for friends and colleagues, or simply open to everybody at any time. No matter the target audience, the factory has to be adequately organized and equipped to give everybody the right amount of attention, space and tools to work.

For a small craft chocolate maker, giving bean-to-bar workshops might be challenging, as the amount of machines available is usually limited, together with the free time of the artisan. The best solution is to have smaller machines (for very tiny batches) in an area dedicated solely to the workshops, so that the machines for the actual business can keep running undisturbed and unaffected.

Chocolate Festivals Around the World

If it seems like chocolate festivals are now popping up in every corner of the world, it’s because they are.

In 2023, small and large chocolate festivals work pretty much the same: you pay an entry fee (anywhere between $20 and $40), and can then shop at the vendors’ booths. Together with the products of the vendors, attendees can also enjoy cooking shows, hands-on workshops, tasting classes and presentations depending on the festival.

There are large festivals that welcome over 30.000 attendees in the span of a weekend, have hundreds of exhibitors and attract an international audience. Some others are instead smaller, cozier, and have a local or at best national range of attraction. There are those that focus on commercial chocolate, while a few of them are entirely dedicated to craft bean-to-bar chocolate.

Chocolate festivals are reference points for everybody in the industry: consumers get to enjoy days filled with chocolate and activities, discovering new exciting brands and meeting the people behind their favorite food; chocolate makers get to sell their chocolate while strengthening and enlarging their fanbase; other players in the industry (importers, distributors, retailers, sommeliers, writers) walk around the festivals looking for new business opportunities.

The challenge with chocolate festivals is to organize an event that is safe, satisfactory and fun for all the different kinds of attendees involved.