Meet Original Beans

WHY ORIGINAL BEANS?

Original Beans are Activists, Custodians and Connoisseurs. Every year they work to preserve cacao forests, build a climate-friendly supply chain, ensure fair compensation and empower Indigenous communities. Their chocolates contain no more than four ingredients – free from cacao blends, lecithins, vanilla, cheap sugar, untraceable cacao butter and industrial milk.

THE ORIGINAL BEANS STORY

Since 2008, Original Beans’ intrepid Bean Team has ventured into the most remote, most biologically diverse and most threatened ecoregions – the biodiversity hotspots – to bring original beans to the world. Every journey starts with a single bean, and knowing where cacao is from goes beyond pointing to a place on a map: it’s knowing the environment around it is protected, the people who cultivate it are empowered, and the plants from which it grows are regenerated.

CRAFT FROM BEAN TO BAR

Original Beans’ craft of cacao starts with regenerative farming and moves through fermentation (spontaneous), drying (sun only), storing (zero fumigation), roasting (slow and low), grinding (16 micron), conching (medium) and tempering (gentle, gentle).

VERIFIED IMPACT

In 2025 alone: 2,013M trees grown, 20,157 tons of CO2 drawn down, and 4,488 hectares of agroforestry growing their beans. On the social side, 4,001 farmers trained (1,011 of them women), paid 3x–6.9x above living income. In 2026, Original Beans was recognised in the Chocolate Scorecard’s 7th Edition – an independent assessment of the world’s 49 largest chocolate companies – for leading the industry in climate, forest, farmer-livelihood and transparency policy.