• Flavor Wheel
• How to Pair Chocolate
• How Chocolate is Made
• How To Taste Chocolate
• Press and Reviews
• The Story of 1.0
• The Story of 1.0 design
• What happens to Beta?
• A Year in Beta Slideshow
• Glossary

 

Press

2011.12.29

Top Food Products of the Year

Chocolate snobs often think milk chocolate is inferior to the super dark, intellectually challenging stuff. San Francisco–based Tcho, however, took a brainy approach to two new bars they call SeriousMilk. "Cacao" is rich and fudgy, while "Classic" is a bit sweeter and creamier. Both redefine how good milk chocolate can be. more

Food and Wine, http://www.thedailymeal.com

2011.12.12

Tasty Holiday Gifts

Yes, I know there are a few out there who haven’t crossed over to the dark side yet.
For them, San Francisco’s TCHO has made two fantastic organic SeriousMilk chocolate bars: “Classic” and “Cacao.”
It’s mind-blowing trying them side-by-side because they are so different. The “Classic” has a sweet, caramel-toffee-like note, while the “Cacao” tastes like an old-fashioned, creamy fudgesicle.
Even dark chocolate lovers will be tempted to switch teams temporarily to enjoy these bars made by San Francisco’s only bean-to-bar chocolatier. more

http://www.foodgal.com, http://www.foodgal.com

2011.11.23

12 Unique Holiday Gift Baskets

Maybe you've heard? A dose of dark chocolate a day is exactly what the doctor ordered. Each indulgent individually wrapped square in this smart little gift jar is a sweet pill to swallow indeed.
more

Oprah, http://oprah.com

2011.11.22

Our American Chocolate love affair

When we announce that we’ve “Gone American” it often evokes a double take. People say, “Haven’t you always been?” Well, yes. Sort of.
The Secret Chocolatier is an American company, hailing from Charlotte, North Carolina where our family does all the work. But we haven’t always been able to source our chocolate from American sources. Until now, that is.
more

Homemade Chocolate, http://homemadechocolategifts.com/

2011.10.19

Chocolate Maker Uses Technology to Boost Quality

Bloomberg's Cory Johnson reports on TCHO chocolate and how the San Francisco-based company involves technology in the making of its artisan chocolate. Emily Chang also speaks. Video

Bloomberg, http://www.bloomberg.com

2011.09.01

New York Times: Hoping Chefs Will Melt for TCHO Chocolate

ALL summer and fall, as candidates battled across the country, a different campaign was being waged in the restaurant kitchens of New York.

The chief strategist was not a politician, but rather a middleman: John Magazino. In recent months, he has presented samples of a new high-end chocolate called TCHO to 40 or 50 of the city’s premier pastry chefs. more

New York Times, more...

2011.08.22

TCHO: The chocolate scientists

TCHO was set up in 2005 by Childs and Louis Rossetto, founding editor of US Wired and something of a post-digital-revolution guru. The pair never expected to find themselves making chocolate. Childs had been developing virtual-reality systems and Rossetto, since leaving Wired in 1998 on its purchase by Condé Nast, had been investing in high-tech start-ups. But a chance conversation led them to the industry's as yet unfulfilled quest for the perfect dark chocolate. The challenge, which spanned agriculture, genetics, chemistry, biology and logistics, proved irresistible. Along the way they would reinvent ancient supply chains, use the internet to improve the lives of Peruvian hill farmers and, if Rossetto is to be believed, help usher in a new age of social responsibility. more

Wired , http://wired.co.uk

2011.08.18

Chocolate.com

Its founders believe there is vast scope for innovation in the way chocolate is made and sold. Most cocoa farmers have never tasted chocolate, and produce cocoa beans without any idea of how they will be used, says Timothy Childs, Tcho's founder. The resulting chocolate is classified and sold in a very unsophisticated way, labelled at best by country of origin and percentage cocoa solids. (It is rather like labelling a wine "France, 13% alcohol".) So Mr Childs wants to put things on a more technical footing -- just as Americans formalised techniques for winemaking in the 1970s. He has developed ways to analyse and grade beans, and a six-segment "flavour wheel" to map out their natural aromas. Using a variety of jury-rigged spice grinders, heaters and temperature sensors, he has worked out how to get cocoa beans to reveal their complex flavours and to get chocolate to solidify evenly. more

Economist.com, http://www.economist.com

2011.08.09

From Publishing to Chocolate Making

The world doesn’t need another chocolate company, acknowledged digital media pioneer Louis Rossetto, but that didn’t stop him from starting one.
Mr. Rossetto, the co-founder of Wired magazine, began his relationship with “chocolate garage startup” TCHO as its first investor and later became its chief executive. The high-end organic and fair-trade chocolate company, which launched in 2005, is the brainchild of former NASA space shuttle contractor Timothy Childs and Karl Bittong, a 40-year chocolate industry veteran. Mr. Childs’s idea behind TCHO was to apply innovative Silicon Valley startup methodologies to the chocolate industry. Central to the San Francisco-based company’s approach to making chocolate is a “flavour wheel” Mr. Childs invented to map the company’s six different flavours: chocolatey, nutty, earthy, floral, fruity and citrus.

more

Financial Post, http://business.financialpost.com

2011.07.19

Entreprenuer’s Edge: TCHO

Reuters Small Business profiles startups across the country. San Francisco-based TCHO, led by the co-founders of Wired magazine, fuses the innovation of Silicon Valley with the Bay Area's food movement to produce high-quality organic and fair trade chocolate. By Natalie Armstrong more

Reuters, http://reuters.com

2011.05.07

TCHO Chocolate Factory

Pay a visit to the TCHO chocolate factory and learn to make chocolate with the Best of the Bay crew. http://bestofthebaytv.com/view/1404/Tcho-Chocolate-Factory

Best of the Bay, http://bestofthebaytv.com

2011.03.02

Starbucks’ Private Label Chocolate Maker Tcho is Controlled By iPhones

San Francisco chocolate maker Tcho makes its own products as well as dark and milk chocolate for Starbucks, and can control essential factory and lab functions via an iPhone app especially designed for the company by Palo Alto's FXPAL [...] Watch the video to see one of the coolest iPhone apps ever created. more

http://www.thefeast.com, more...

2011.02.08

Right at Home: Chocolate with an artistic flair

Jane Metcalfe and Louis Rosetto, co-founders of Wired magazine, have turned their focus to chocolate technology with a new San Francisco venture, TCHO. Their team of chocolate industry vets has developed flavor categories such as "nutty," ''fruity" and "citrus" using just the characteristics of the cacao beans, with no additional ingredients. You can order an "Autoship" gift, which means TCHO will send a jarful of chocolatey goodness each month for up to a year. more

http://www.battlecreekenquirer.com, more...

2011.02.07

A la carte: Savory Sonoma County options for Valentine’s dinner

J Vineyard and Winery's Bubble Room will serve a romantic food-and-wine pairing for lovers this Friday through Sunday, Feb. 11 to 13, centered around chocolate-flavored cuisine paired with the single-vineyard estate varietal wines and vintage sparkling wines. [...]

On Saturday, chocolate specialists from the TCHO Chocolate Co. of San Francisco will be in the Bubble Room to showcase their limited edition chocolates. more

http://www.pressdemocrat.com, more...

2011.02.07

US chocolatier develops virtual factory world

“In the future, visitors will be able to choose avatars and interact with each other as well as the factory itself,” said Del Santo.
The technology will allow the company to create multi-user collaborative spaces for tasks like factory observation, virtual inspections, customer visits, employee training, process monitoring, and inventory tracking.

The software is being developed by FXPal, Fuji Xerox’s research lab in Palo Alto, California. Here researchers explore how new technologies like mobile augmented reality, virtual worlds, and social media can be applied in manufacturing.

The virtual factory is an exploration into an area called "serious games", which combines high-end game engines with robust media and data importation for “real-world purposes”. more

http://www.confectionerynews.com, more...

2011.01.28

5 best chocolate factory tours around the U.S.

Move over, Ghirardelli. TCHO launched a free factory tour just after Thanksgiving. Though each tour includes complimentary samples of chocolate, cocoa nibs, and biscotti, few people will be able to resist buying the best-selling chocolate-covered mango pieces ($4 for four ounces). more

http://www.gadling.com, more...

2011.01.26

Chocolate Shops: The Top 5 Chocolate Shops in San Francisco

1 TCHO

TCHO Chocolate is San Francisco's only bean to bar chocolate maker. TCHO (pronounced "cho") is a mecca for all things chocolate. Partnering with Blue Bottle Coffee Co, TCHO serves a variety of special cocoa and coffee drinks, as well as offers an exquisite line of chocolate products for purchase in the store. For Valentine's Day, TCHO is offering an array of special boxes with art produced by local artist Max Kisman. more

http://www.hauteliving.com, more...

2011.01.18

Hello, School Field Trips! Now You Can Take Tours of TCHO

Our love for TCHO, SF's own high-tech Willy Wonka operation that goes down on Pier 17, is certainly no secret. We've blogged about their sustainable sourcing practices, their Bay Area technology roots (its founders are Wired pioneers Louis Rossetto and Jane Metcalfe) and even their hot chocolate recipe.
And now you can check out all the choco-magic yourself with their recently announced twice-daily tours. more

http://fwix.com, more...

2011.01.13

An Exclusive Peek Inside The Tcho Factory and Flavor Lab, Starbucks’ High-Tech Chocolatier

Not only does Starbucks have a new logo, it now has a new chocolatier as well. San Francisco-based Tcho started manufacturing private label dark and milk chocolate bars for the 40-year-old coffee titan in October of last year. It's a huge coup for the independent, artisan company with strong ties to the tech industry [...] Watch the clip above to take a virtual tour of their factory and flavor lab. more

http://www.thefeast.com/, more...

2011.01.13

Chocolate Maker Controls His Candy Factory With iPhone

It includes a chocolate “lab” where Childs cooks up new flavors. It’s all controlled by a custom iPhone app. “Using iPhone, I can actually log into each of the machines and control the times and the temperatures, turn them on and off,” he says.

Check it out in the video above. more

http://www.cultofmac.com, more...

2011.01.10

Cocoa Origin Trip Report – Ecuador

I am with John Kehoe, a cocoa expert from TCHO who has dedicated his life to find the finest cocoas in the world. Our journey starts in Ecuador, a beautiful country with a long tradition of cocoa production. As is traditional in Starbucks sourcing practices, we want to establish direct relationships with the farmers, so we start by visiting a small farmer cooperative named La Fortaleza (which means “strength of a fortress”), located a couple of hours from the town of Portoviejo. [....]

This is where our friends at TCHO are at their best. John’s dedication to pursue the very best beans and his attention to detail are instrumental in getting the great quality chocolate bars we are currently offering in our stores. TCHO’s process involves monitoring fermentation times and temperatures to control the process as much as possible. The farmers are really excited to learn these new techniques and are even more excited when they taste the chocolate bars Starbucks offers that have been manufactured with their cocoa. more

http://www.starbucks.com, more...

2011.01.06

Secret Recipe: Hot Chocolate from TCHO

On cold days like these, nothing warms me over more than a mug of rich hot chocolate. The cuppa cocoa from TCHO's Pier 17 cafe is made with three varieties of sustainable chocolate to be stirred, not shaken. more

http://www.7x7.com, more...

2010.12.23

From ‘Wired’ to Willy Wonka: TCHO Uses Technology and Ethical Sourcing to Make Great Chocolate

But down at Pier 17, there also is an industrial enterprise -- a chocolate factory, owned and operated by none other than the team of Louis Rossetto and Jane Metcalfe, the visionaries who launched Wired magazine in SoMa back in 1993.

They are still innovators in technology, though no longer in the publishing industry. Instead they manufacture and sell premium chocolate with their company TCHO, which in its own way may prove to be as disruptive in the global chocolate industry as Wired was in publishing. more

http://www.7x7.com, more...

2010.08.12

TCHO: milk chocolate beta & citrus [review]

So I enrolled in TCHO’s milk chocolate beta. They didn’t want to be judged on texture yet, which made critiquing the creaminess aspect a bit tricky. As of this writing they have yet to release version 1.0. Overall, though the later betas did show remarkable improvement over the earlier samples.

But to answer some questions (or remarks) you might have lingering:

Yes, I enjoy both dark and milk chocolate. I’ve had excellent versions of both, as well as yucky ones best reserved for the trashbin.
Why pay for a beta program? (Aimed especially at those who get free TCHO tastings: Hey! Not all of us have that opportunity.) Well, I consider this on par with eating food that, like a restaurant, someone has shopped for (ingredient-wise) and produced — more so than with software betas. For example, a software beta might have big, annoying bugs worth tolerating. But food betas need to be free of big issues such as, oh, parasitic or toxic contaminants, or being spoiled. And unlike software which can be delivered online for free, food shipments do carry the cost of transportation.
Also, TCHO is one of the few (remaining) independent Californian chocolate producers, as opposed to confectioners. So far I don’t mind contributing to their efforts.
Moreover, I’ve already enjoyed several of their chocolates — an even stronger reason to support them. Of the four dark chocolates they offer, I recommend “Fruity v2.0″ (plum-y and round, like a good port) and “Chocolatey v1.0″ (lush, spicy coffee).

On to the results…
more

Iwaruna.com, more...

2010.07.30

How to Taste Dark Chocolate

How do you eat dark chocolate? Well, put it in your mouth and chew, of course. It’s creamy, sweet, bitter, and probably very enjoyable. But what if you want to get more out of your dark chocolate experience? Learn to tell the differences between the growing number of varieties? Like tasting wine, you’ll have to apply a little more thought and awareness. You must learn to recognize things like snap, aroma, texture, and finish.

Chocolate is an incredibly complex product, but tasting can be broken down into a few components. Brad Kintzer, chief chocolate maker at TCHO, says that one of the most important things is taking your time. He brings a rather Jedi Master approach: “Pretend like you’ve never tasted chocolate before,” he says. “Monitor the experience from the time you break open the wrapper.”

In fact, you should monitor the experience even earlier. Start in the store: Buy different brands, different percentages, different origins. Buy organic and fair-trade chocolates. Taste widely and agnostically until you find brands and types that you like. There’s been a lot of emphasis placed on percentage, but Kintzer points out that one 80 percent bar can vary wildly in flavor and texture from another. Michael Recchiuti of Recchiuti Confections says that the exact same percentage can differ in every other aspect: sugar content, flavor, acidity, texture. Tasting is the only way you’ll discover the differences. more

CHOW, more...

2010.07.21

TCHO in ‘The Big Sweet SF: 50 Treats to Eat Before You Die’

#29 TCHO chocolate bar (plain and simple)
Pier 17, 415-981-0189, tcho.com more

7 x 7 Magazine, more...

2010.07.21

TCHO Receives a Score of 95 on Supermarket Guru

This product is a HIT! The marketing of chocolate has come a long way - now it's typical to see the percentage of cacao listed on the front of the package. Tcho does one better with their Dark Chocolate Citrus, not only do they tell you how much cacao, but also the country that it comes from - in this case Madagascar. The citrus flavor is a nice accompaniment to the dark chocolate and neither have no bitterness and no aftertaste. This is one terrific chocolate - also very important is this is a company that believes in education (where it tells you the story of the individual flavor on the inside of the package), but they believe strongly in working with farmers. It is expensive just 2 ounces will set you back six dollars but if you are chocolate lover you will not mind the price one bit. Retails for $6 for 2 oz.

Scoring Breakdown:

Taste-30
Value-17
Health-15
Ingredients-15
Preparation-5
Appearance-5
Packaging-5
Sustainability-3
Total-95 more

Supermarket Guru by Phil Lempert, more...

2010.07.15

TCHO-Schokolade: Das Experimentieren geht weiter

Im letzten Posting habe ich darüber berichtet, wie Konsumenten eingebunden werden können, um eine neue Senfsorte zu kreieren. Das hat mich veranlasst, über den weiteren Werdegang von TCHO zu berichten. TCHO setzt sich aus den Wörtern Technoloy und Chocolate zusammen. Das kommt nicht von ungefähr. Die Macher des Projektes, darunter u.a. Louis Rossetto, Gründer des weltbekannten Wired-Magazins, hatten vor fünf Jahren die Idee, Schokoladenproduzenten zu werden und dabei ähnlich wie Softwareentwickler vorzugehen. Die Idee war, im Rahmen einer Beta-Test-Phase die Schokolade ständig zu verbessern und dabei die Kunden eng einzubinden. Letzlich wurde Ende 2008 die erste Schokoserie von TCHO auf den Markt gebracht. Wir haben im Dezember 2008 hier im Blog ausführlich darüber berichtet. Seitdem sind viele andere Blogger und Journalisten in Deutschland auf diese etwas andere Schokoladenmanufaktur aufmerksam geworden. more

Best Practice Business, more...

2010.07.10

Easy Score

If your dogs are barking, crack the laptop. TCHO is San Francisco’s first true chocolate factory (don’t let Ghirardelli Square fool you), but for now, their dark, delectable wares can only be purchased online. New beta batches are produced as often as every 36hrs, based on customer testing (and yes, the tech lingo is intentional). more

Design Mind, more...

2010.06.16

Reti di Cioccolato (Translation: Chocolate Networks)

(Note: article is in Italian)
By Marco Faré

Mondoinrete Louis Rossetto, fondatore della rivista americana «Wired», è un cioccolataio. Letteralmente: la sua ultima creatura è la start-up Tcho, un cioccolato che sa di internet

Lezioni di cioccolato dagli americani? Non si dica che siamo chiusi. Al contrario, siamo disposti a imparare sempre e comunque, da chicchessia. E quindi andiamo a sbirciare nella più europea delle città targate USA: San Francisco. Che allo stesso tempo è il cuore dell’innovazione tecnologica mondiale, quella Bay Area californiana che da Berkeley e dalla sua prestigiosa università scende fino alla Silicon Valley, dove si trovano luoghi leggendari come Palo Alto, sede dei laboratori che furono della Xerox. Oppure Mountain View, da un decennio sede di Google. Il tutto non lontano da un’altra prestigiosa università, quella di Stanford. more

Azione, more...

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