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Visit www.fortunatochocolate.com to learn more.

Visit www.fortunatochocolate.com to learn more.

We're starting to get on a roll now with doing these podcasts weekly. On this episode, we take a trip through the city of Cajamarca, Peru. We both met our lovely wives in Cajamarca. Brian lived in Cajamarca with his family for 15 years, splitting time between there and the jungle for 10 of those years. I lived there for several years myself. It is an extremely charming and fascinating city, and almost nobody who travels to Peru ends up going to Cajamarca. Given that we are intimately familiar with the city and that most people won't have a chance to visit, we figured it would be fun and entertaining to take you on a tour through Cajamarca. In this episode we talk about how we ended up in Peru in the first place. We initially planned to sell air filter cleaners to the big gold mine outside of Cajamarca. When we learned that the mine didn't want what we were selling, we pivoted into selling hydraulic hoses and nuts and bolts to the mine's maintenance department. They went for that and as a result my dad, my brother, and I were Cajamarca bound. This is back in 2002. In the podcast, Brian talks about what it was like to fly in an 8-person prop plane through the northern Andes. I tell about how I was kicked out of college for excessive alcohol abuse and required to go through a rehab program right before visiting Peru for the first time. I talk about how going abroad completely changed my perspective and helped me turn my life around. We talk about food and people, the beauty of the countryside, the communal charm of Cajamarca at night, the road from Lima into the mountains, and much, much more. Not to brag, but I do think this is one of our best episodes yet.

Visit www.fortunatochocolate.com to learn more.

Brian tells stories about life in campo buying and processing cacao.

An episode about buying cacao in Peru and all the hard work that entails.

In this episode we talked about the best way to do business in a completely foreign environment. The most important thing to realize is that it is the outsider who needs to adapt to the locals, not the other way around. There is no surer, faster way to alienate the community you want to win over than attempting to impose your beliefs on them. And in order to really understand local customs and culture, you need to watch and listen. You need to be a sponge, and you need to willingly participate in the traditional way of doing things. Only after a long period of time, once you are an accepted member of the neighborhood who has earned the trust and respect of your peers, can you think about offering up modifications. In order to make sure that our company never ended up in any controversies, Brian had 4 operating principles that he lived by while out in the jungle buying cacao and running our processing facility for more than a decade. They were: No debating religion. No debating politics. No getting drunk or partying. No non-business interaction with any women whatsoever. These rules served to keep our company out of any petty disputes and allowed us to always maintain a respectful and professional presence. The other big thing to take away is that if you are willing to embrace awkward situations and adapt to foreign ways of doing things, the world is yours. The world is a big place with so much to see. And believe me when I tell you, nobody will stop you from going where you want to go and seeing what you want to see. If a couple of gringos from San Diego, CA can end up doing business in northern Peru for more than twenty years, marrying Peruvian women, and starting a chocolate business with no prior chocolate experience, anybody can do pretty much anything they want. If it is in your heart to travel and see how other people live, get your passport ready, buy the tickets, and go! The biggest thing stopping most people are their own mental barriers. Lastly, Brian and I want to thank all of our wonderful customers and friends and supporters. Everything we do here at this company is to serve you. I assure you that this is the truth. Our job is to act as a conduit between our customers and our wonderful cacao farm partners. The vehicle that allows us to do that work is delicious chocolate. From the bottom of our hearts thank you.

Brian and Adam share some of their favorite memories from 15 years in the chocolate business.

It is deeply underappreciated how big a role logistics play in the life of each and every one of us. Just about everything that keeps us alive gets to us on a truck or on a boat. It comes from some of the world's 8 billion people and goes to some of the other 8 billion people, traveling from one place to another, along roads and across oceans, frequently traveling thousands upon thousands of miles. The are millions of products and millions of preferences. Given all the complexity, humans have done a remarkably good job at producing and distributing the fruits of labor. This is especially true given how rugged many of the places our favorite products come from. It takes extreme ingenuity and endurance to get these things from one place to another. Of course, for those folks born and living way off the beaten path in remote locations, managing logistics can be darn near impossible. After more than a year's hiatus, my brother Brian and I have recorded a new episode of our Chocolate Bros podcast. The topic is logistics. In particular, we discuss the 2023 cacao harvest and what it will take to get our latest container of cacao out of the jungle and to the port of Lima in Peru.

In our latest episode, we discuss how recent world events are dramatically aggravating supply chain issues. We also talk about bribes. It is a little hard for Americans to get our head around, but bribes are a normal part of doing business in Peru. Brian talks about several of his bribe negotiations and it is pretty funny. There is much more and I honestly think it is a funny and interesting episode and that you will enjoy it. Click here to give it a watch or listen.

Yesterday, I did something that I haven't done in more than 5 years. I rewatched the Peru episode of Parts Unknown with Anthony Bourdain. I bought the season on Amazon Prime, but it is available for free on Youtube as well. Back in 2013, Anthony Bourdain, Eric Ripert, and one other partner decided to buy chocolate from us and launch a chocolate bar. They wanted to do that because Eric Ripert, who is one of the most celebrated chefs in the world, said that our chocolate was the best he had ever tasted in his life. The bar was called the Good and Evil bar. But the project was short lived as the bar retailed for $18 for a 2 oz bar. The Peru episode of Parts Unknown was filmed in conjunction with the launch of the chocolate bar. It is a really good episode and gives an excellent little look at the culinary scene in Peru. You also get to see a lot of footage about what our operation is like in Peru. A few things stood out when I watched the episode again yesterday for the first time in a long time. The first thing is that occurred to me is that back in 2013, we had already been in business for 5 years. And the episode was filmed 9 years ago. We've been doing this a long time..... The second thing is that we are still selling the exact chocolate that was used in that bar 9 years ago. Our 68% dark chocolate is made with the exact same cacao and using the exact same recipe. It is literally the exact same chocolate. Along those lines, the third thing that I noticed is that we are still buying cacao from the exact same cacao farmers who are featured in that show. Our business has grown some, but the underlying fundamentals of our production have been the same this whole time. The last thing I noticed, and this is the biggest thing, is that my brother Brian didn't get enough credit. In fact, he didn't get any credit. The name of our company isn't even mentioned. We signed off on it at the time, because our business needed the boost, but in retrospect we should have insisted that Brian be featured on the show. Because what happened is that the stars of the show told Brian's story as if it was their own. But he had lived it and paid his dues for more than 5 years in the jungle. And it would have been good to have that show as a tribute to Brian that could live on through the ages. So here is what I want to encourage you to do if you have the time and interest. Give that Peru episode of Parts Unknown a watch and just keep in mind that everything the three main characters say about themselves, is actually true about Brian, not the people in the show. Everything else is accurate and a great look about the operation that we continue to run to this day. Oh yeah, we just recorded a full 50 minute podcast about this topic as well. In the podcast, we also calculate how many cacao pods it takes to make on bar of our chocolate, per a request from a wonderful friend and customer named Greg.

On this episode we meet with Luka and Daniel Church. Luka is our new 5 year old chocolate taster! And Daniel is his dad, a friend, and customer...not as exciting as being the official chocolate taster, but still good.  Tune in and enjoy!