• 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

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, http://iwaruna.com/

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, http://www.chow.com/stories/12243

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, http://www.7x7.com/eat-drink/big-sweet-sf-50-treats-eat-you-die

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, http://www.supermarketguru.com/

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, http://www.best-practice-business.de

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, http://designmind.frogdesign.com/

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, http://epaper.azione.ch/ee/azion/_main_/2010/07/12/001/

2010.05.30

TCHO Chocolate: killer bars & baking drops now sold here!

​Early on, San Francisco established itself as a hotbed of American-made gourmet chocolate, raising up the likes of Ghirardelli, Guittard, and Scharffen Berger. The city's latest entrant into the market, TCHO--pronounced "choh," as it's the phonetic spelling of the first syllable of chocolate--has taken a tech-geek's approach to the confection, on everything from its design to manufacturing processes. (For example, the company's product development phase involved issuing "beta versions" of its bars for sale with a request for feedback, then, a few days later, issuing a second version. A year and 1,026 iterations later, they had their first 1.0 bars for sale. I wasn't surprised to learn that one of the company's owners was the founding editor of Wired.) Anyway, TCHO is now being sold in Minnesota.

I first tried TCHO's dark chocolate bars for sale at Sugar, Sugar. The bars come in four single-source flavor profiles in two sizes of mod, square packaging. I was as enamored with the chocolate's smooth texture and piercing, distinguished flavors.

The company started distributing to Twin Cities retailers about four months ago, and it recently sent me a sample of the baking drops (Cooks of Crocus Hill carries them; for more TCHO retailers, look here), so I baked up a test batch of brownies using a recipe on the back of the package. The result was so good that I feared my household might binge and succumb to a chocolate overdose, so I brought a few to a friend's house to ensure our safety. The brownies were dense but soft, fudgy, and not at all dry. Often with brownies the complexity of the chocolate can't compare to that of a good bar, but with these, the flour and eggs didn't dilute the chocolate's nuanced fruity, nutty notes.

We're lucky to have a lot of great chocolate made here in the Twin Cities (in fact, my San Francisco friends always ask me to bring them bars of B.T. McElrath's Salty Dog whenever I visit), but if you're a chocolate freak, TCHO's is also worth checking out. more

City Pages blog, http://blogs.citypages.com/food/2010/05/tcho_chocolate.php

2010.05.26

TCHO: Seriously delicious dark chocolate

Fancy yourself a dark chocolate connoisseur — or want to become one? Bite into a TCHO bar — or four — to get an intense lesson on cacao flavors. TCHO bars come in flavors like “Fruity” and “Nutty” — but they don’t contain any fruit, nuts, or other added flavors — relying just on the carefully produced cacao bean itself to provide the subtler, purer flavors of the bars.

That means all four TCHO “flavors” are created with the same five simple ingredients: Cacao beans, cane sugar, cocoa butter, soy lecithin and vanilla beans. Yet sample these bars side by side, and you’ll be surprised to taste the unique flavors in each bar. “We believe that flavor — not vague terms like 'dark,’ ‘% cacao,’ or ‘origin’ — is the real key to savoring chocolate,” TCHO brags on its “Nutty” packaging.

And the company has certainly convinced me that not all cocoa is created equal. My favorite is the Fruity bar, which I recommend you start with if you’re concerned that your untrained palate won’t be able to taste TCHO’s subtle flavors. Fruity’s delightfully distinctive berry notes are so intense you can’t miss them.

TCHO’s chocolate bars are both organic and fair trade certified. In fact, TCHO credits deep fair trade practices — going beyond simply providing a premium price to really work with the cacao farmers in developing superior products that benefit all financially — for its delicious and unique chocolates. By forging longer-term relationships with cacao producers, the co-ops that grow the cacao and the people at TCHO are able to work together to tweak, refine, and improve the chocolate flavors. That’s why some of the flavors have had “2.0″ added to their names; the flavor profile was revamped enough to merit an upgraded status.

Find TCHO bars in many Whole Foods stores, other specialty food stores across the nation, and online at TCHO.com. A 2-pack of 60 gram bars costs $11 — but I recommend getting the $20 sampler 4-pack to try all four flavors side by side.

more

Mother Nature Network, http://www.mnn.com/lifestyle/responsible-living/blogs/tcho-seriously-delicious-dark-chocolate

2010.05.25

TCHO: Pure Dark Chocolate Made Decadently Flavorful

Fancy yourself a dark chocolate connoisseur — or want to become one? Bite into a TCHO bar — or four — to get an intense lesson on cacao flavors. more

www.greenlagirl.com, http://greenlagirl.com/tcho-pure-dark-chocolate-made-decadently-flavorful/

2010.04.30

Louis and the Chocolate Factory

Before taking me on a tour of his state-of-the-art factory, Tcho CEO Louis Rossetto insists that I sample some of his product.

I don’t have a problem with that.

As I bite into a square of Tcho’s “nutty” dark chocolate, I catch Rossetto watching for my reaction. My “mmmmm” elicits a sly smile from the longtime Berkeley resident, and I’m reminded of Gene Wilder in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, watching Charlie Bucket taste his first Everlasting Gobstopper.

But as 50-something Rossetto begins my tour of Tcho’s 30,000-square-foot factory at Pier 17—the only bean-to-bar chocolate plant in San Francisco—comparisons to Wonka’s wild fun house of invention go out the window. There are no Oompa Loompas or chocolate rivers. Instead, Tcho’s setup is an antiseptic, precisely planned operation—a hybrid of old-school confectioner and high-tech Silicon Valley start-up.

Which makes sense, since Rossetto and his partner, Jane Metcalfe, come from the high-tech world. In 1993, they launched Wired, the tech magazine once dubbed the coolest magazine on the planet by the New York Times. They also launched the first magazine website, Wired.com. They sold Wired to Conde Nast in 1998 and the website to Lycos in 1999. In 2005, they partnered with a former NASA techie to start Tcho. Cofounder Timothy Childs developed vision systems for the Space Shuttle, before getting into the chocolate biz.

“We have all the passion for chocolate at Tcho that we had at Wired for technology and publishing,” says Rossetto. “Chocolate is an ancient food but also a modern food. We feel chocolate can be reinvented the way media was in the 1990s.”

Leading me into Tcho’s small “flavor” laboratory, Rossetto points out his company’s mixture of technological invention and chocolate making. Metal tubes, grinders, and a small oven allow Tcho’s technicians to roast cacao beans at temperatures ranging from 250 to 350 degrees Fahrenheit, for 30 minutes to two hours. Different roasting times and temperatures elicit different flavors in the beans—fruity, nutty, citrus, floral, earthy, and chocolaty—as displayed on a wheel graph on the wall.

“We created this system piece by piece, much like what you would see in a Silicon Valley start-up,” Rossetto says. “We can monitor the beans with extreme precision to bring out exact flavor characteristics.”

Even better, the system has been reproduced for less than $10,000 in cacao bean–producing countries near the equator. “The beauty of this is that we can affordably transfer this technology directly to the growers,” says Rossetto. “We have a partnership with our growers; we want them to go from being commodity producers to premium producers. It’s a win-win situation for them and for us.

“This is still business, not charity. But we have a higher purpose—to take business to another level,” Rossetto explains. “That incentive is what makes us a 21st-century company: We want to make the world a better place while making the best possible chocolate.” more

Diablo Magazine, http://www.diablomag.com/Diablo-Magazine/April-2010/Louis-and-the-Chocolate-Factory/

2010.04.28

Chocolate Company Seeking Beta Tasters

Tcho, a bean-to-bar chocolate company in San Francisco, has a unique program where you can help "beta taste" their new products. (The company was started by Louis Rossetto and Jane Metcalfe, the founders of Wired magazine—hence the techie lingo.) What it means is you can buy a sample online of the latest chocolates the company is testing (right now it's two milk versions), receive them in the mail, then give your feedback on the company's website. You rate the candy based on traits like "caramel notes," "overall sweetness," "creaminess," and "overall chocolateyness." Ostensibly, the company makes tweaks to the product based on consumer feedback, but I suspect they mainly use the comments to name the final versions. (Tcho chocolates are named based on their predominant taste, e.g., "Citrus" and "Nutty.")

When I was there, I tried one of the beta chocolates, and they told me what they thought it tasted like but made me vow not to print it. "We don’t want to influence what our beta testers think it tastes like," said Brad Kintzer, the company’s chief chocolate maker.

Tcho is releasing a new beta chocolate each week between now and late June, when the NY Fancy Foods Show takes place. I think it would be cool to show up to somebody's dinner party with a bunch of these little things (they cost $5 for a two-pack), taste them, and talk about them as a group. Oh, and by the way, the chocolate is really, really good. more

CHOW, http://chow.com

2010.04.19

Real Food Traveler’s Hot New Finds

There’s a lot of good chocolate in the world, dear readers, and we believe TCHO Chocolate is some of the best dark chocolate on the planet.

Keep in mind that RTF editor-in-chief Bobbie Hasselbring is the author of The Chocolate Lover’s Guide to the Pacific Northwest and The Chocolate Lover’s Guide Cookbook. And RFT editor/photo editor Anne Weaver served as a judge on many of those trips to evaluate chocolate for the books. So we know our way around chocolate and TCHO, in our opinion, is some really great chocolate. more

Real Food Traveler, http://www.realfoodtraveler.com/

2010.03.22

TCHO featured at FredTalk’s inaugural event: “The Power of Chocolate to Change the Future”

Conveniently hosted at the home of SF superstar chocolate maker, TCHO, and just in time for Valentine’s Day, FRED will feature a 17-minute FRED Talk, plus tours of TCHO’s factory and plenty of frivolity, revelry, eating (chocolate sampling) and drinking (chocolate-friendly red wine).

You can also pick up a sweet Valentine’s Day gift – the chocolate Martha Stewart Living called “the hands-down star in our blind taste test” – at a special FRED discount, courtesy of TCHO. more

FredTalks, http://fredtalks.tumblr.com/

2010.02.27

Chocolate 2.0

TCHO is decidedly different. This San Francisco-based chocolate factory was founded by Tim Childs (left), a Space Shuttle technologist-turned-chocolate maker and Karl Bittong, a world-renowned, bean roasting and chocolate manufacturing expert. Add to the mix Louis Rossetto (right), the co-founder of Wired magazine, and you have a team that is committed to making “obsessively good dark chocolate" using Fair Trade cacao beans from around the world.

While other chocolate makers were slapping cacao percentages onto every package, TCHO bucked the trend and conjured up a nifty “flavor wheel” that uses simple descriptors that hint at what the chocolate will actually taste like. These are not added flavors, they’re the palate-pleasing notes that come naturally from various types of cacao beans during the roasting process. (Chocoholic that I am, I thought all of the flavors were amazing, but those used to Hershey’s Milk Chocolate might be in for a surprise—this stuff is much more complex.)

If you think it sounds a little like wine, you’re right. The folks at TCHO have even hosted tasting parties where people can learn to appreciate the differences between “chocolatey” and “nutty,” “citrus” and “fruity.” In fact, it’s the kind of party you could throw yourself. Just remember to share the chocolate!

Video feature on TCHO: http://video.dailygrommet.com/services/player/bcpid37836813001?bctid=55432090001 more

Daily Grommet, http://www.dailygrommet.com/

2010.02.12

Chefs Collaborative TCHO Member Spotlight

There’s been a renewed interest amongst entrepreneurs in the “bean-to-bar” business model. TCHO is one of three Chefs Collaborative members that is working with raw cacoa beans and producing high-quality chocolate. Tell us about the process and how it makes your product unique. more

Chefs Collaborative, http://chefscollaborative.org/

2010.02.12

Want!: TCHO Valentine’s Chocolates by Max Kisman

Well, if you can over-intellectualize chocolate, I guess you can over-intellectualize anything. San Francisco-based chocolate producer TCHO sometimes seems to be selling ideas over your standard candy (they have a list of their "Operating Heuristics" on their website), but they do have beautiful packaging.

This Valentine's Day they've partnered with Dutch designer Max Kisman to create bold, colorful package designs for TCHO chocolate bars featuring vibrant oranges, purples, and pinks, iconographic imagery, and of course, great typography. And some of them are a bit... saucy.

Now this is my type of Valentine's treat! more

Just My Type, http://just-my-type.typepad.com

2010.02.01

TCHO

Technology meets the sweet stuff at San Francisco’s Tcho, founded by a former NASA technologist and a chocolatier, with a cofounder of Wired magazine as its CEO. The company uses beta testers to perfect four dark blends (Chocolaty, Nutty, Fruity, and Citrus) while temperature probes help monitor climate in South America to ensure their cocoa beans mature properly. more

Travel + Leisure, http://www.travelandleisure.com

2010.01.30

The Chocolate Wars

How does it taste? It is quite good, and it grows on me. There’s a fruity, bitter, dark chocolate bite that gives way to a milky, almost malt-ball aftertaste. The lingering taste in my mouth far surpasses the first bite. After the chocolate breaks down in your mouth, you get this taste vaguely reminiscent of brownies—the chocolate, yes, but that almost fudge or cake-like quality brownies can have.

Where the trend in boutique chocolate seemed to slamming crap into our chocolate a la Vosges (bacon and cheese in your chocolate, anyone?), TCHO is about a fetish for purity; no hiding the chocolate with flavors or nuts. Just really high quality, fair-trade chocolate. more

The Snack Basket, http://www.thesnackbasket.com/

2010.01.18

Chocolate company brings high-tech factory to remote cocoa farms

TCHO, a San Fransisco-based chocolate company, gets its cocoa beans from farmers in Peru, Ghana, and other countries. Although many of the families there have been growing cocoa beans for generations, some have never actually tasted chocolate, much less the products made from their own crops. Aside from not being able to enjoy the fruits of their own labor, they have no way to directly understand the relationship between their growing techniques and the final product.

TCHO has solved the problem by bringing the factory to the farm. Using what co-founder Louis Rossetto calls "appropriate technology," the company sets up "flavor labs" on farms in the developing world using about $8,000 worth of equipment consisting of a Macintosh computer, an off-the-shelf-grinder, a roaster that uses a hair dryer as a heat source, and other equipment that enables farmers and technicians to turn raw beans into chocolate. That way the farmers can get a better sense of what their product will taste like to consumers. That process, according to Rossetto, helps the farmer know which beans to pick and how best to process them. more

CNET, http://news.cnet.com

2010.01.16

The science of chocolate

I’ve been involved with TCHO, choco­late mak­ers in San Fran­cisco, as a designer and an investor, for a few years now. Susanna Dulkinys, my wife and busi­ness part­ner, has won sev­eral prizes for her work on the TCHO brand and pack­ag­ing. We have been inter­viewed about the design aspects, shown the project at con­fer­ences and talked to other clients about it. The story of how this amaz­ing choco­late is actu­ally made and why it’s dif­fer­ent from other choco­lates is told in a fea­ture in WIRED magazine’s UK edi­tion. As it hap­pens, Louis Ros­setto, CEO of TCHO, was co-founder of WIRED way back in the early 90s.
more

SpiekerBlog, http://spiekermann.com

2010.01.15

Hightech chocolate saves the planet

Founded by a a NASA space shuttle technologist and the co-founders of Wired magazine this is chocolate 2.0. Meet TCHO.

Using technology & science TCHO gets to unique flavors locked inside cacao beans from all over the world. They speak of these refined flavors as a sommelier would about the fine points of vintage wines. And the goodness does not stop there.

TCHO’s social mission is the next step beyond Fair Trade – helping farmers by transferring knowledge of how to grow and ferment better beans so they can escape commodity production to become premium producers. NO SLAVERY is part of TCHO's mission to make a better world. How cool is that?

When I find something this amazingly good, I must do a public service and share. Be warned one taste and you may be hooked. But think of it as a small & delicious way to do your part for goodness. more

Ignited, http://www.ignitedusa.com

2010.01.11

Cradle of Chocolate: Back to San Francisco

Tcho: If Brad Kintzer (the botanist-bean sourcer-chocolate maker who joined Tcho when Scharffen Berger decamped for Ohio) is telling you how to make chocolate, your chocolate's going to be good sometime soon. Customers and critics (myself included) have been hard on the four-year-old company for its aggressive techno-marketing before the product is really ready to go public, but Brad introduced me to co-founder Louis Rossetto (who curiously sampled some beans I'd brought back from Guatemala) and a host of other buyers, fondeurs, and rain makers who seem to be doing in earnest exactly what they announce themselves to be doing: taking advantage of technology to communicate with growers and customers as part of a process to reevaluate and improve the whole chocolate-making system. more

Chocolate in Context, http://chocolateincontext.blogspot.com

2010.01.01

Raising the Bar

I’VE MADE SERIOUS SACRIFICES for a free box of chocolate (don’t ask). But in this case, all that’s required is my opinion of the product. The goods—two bars wrapped in silver foil—arrive via FedEx directly from the chocolatier, a tiny San Francisco outfit called TCHO. I break off a piece of Sample A and let it melt on my tongue.

It has a hint of peach and bright currant notes. Then I log onto TCHO’s website and open a confidential survey. Question number one: “Please rate the sweetness.” I enter three out of five, which means just right. After several more questions, I move on to Sample B. Wow—way too sweet. I mark it a five.

It turns out the two chocolates are all but identical. They are made from the same Peruvian beans, with the same amount of sugar. The only diff erence is a touch of vanilla. “A minor tweak can have a huge effect on flavor,” says Timothy Childs, TCHO’s cofounder and chief chocolate officer. “If the majority of the people say they like the one with vanilla, the next iteration will have vanilla. Then we’ll send out more and dial in the exact amount of vanilla until it’s perfect.”

Modern food manufacturers have long used surveys and focus groups— not to mention the blunt edge of industrial science—to figure out what people like. How else would we have ended up with Combos or Lunchables? But it’s rare indeed for a boutique chocolatemaker like TCHO (pronounced cho) to employ the same principles of science and polling. more

United Hemisphere, http://www.hemispheresmagazine.com

2010.01.01

TCHO Chocolate

The last time I was in LA, George Ruiz (my agent) was telling me about a “techie chocolate” company called Tcho (tech chocolate), and he sent me some samples for Christmas. Being a geek, I was of course intrigued at how chocolate creation could be turned into something geeks would care about. Here’s a look:

It’s entirely different than what Americans are used to, so if you’re up for supporting them and giving it a try, you can order some from Tcho.com. Enjoy! more

The blog of Cali Lewis, http://calilewis.me

2010.01.01

Taste: The Final Frontier

TCHO, the company founded by former NASA engineer Timothy Childs, is bringing futuristic technology to an ancient process.

Only a small group of suppliers can provide the components Timothy Childs needs for his work. Weather-monitoring stations transmit data back to him at his headquarters, and a slight increase in temperature will send teams scrambling to compensate for the change. Cameras and infrared sensors monitor crucial chemical changes. His machines break down polyphenol molecules, creating new compounds. Another process creates the final form: a delicate triple-packed polymorphic triglyceride crystalline structure that lets Childs know his mission succeeded. The result of all this work? Chocolate.

People began enjoying cacao as early as 1100 BC, but it wasn’t until the Industrial Revolution that chocolate in its modern form became possible. The way Childs sees it, today’s chocolate is as complicated as rocket science. And he should know. A former software developer for NASA’s space shuttle program, he is the co-founder of TCHO, one of just a dozen US companies that produces chocolate (Hershey and Nestlé are among its fellow manufacturers). Many more companies—like Godiva, for example—are actually chocolatiers and confectioners that sell chocolate products, but don’t make their own. more

go AirTran Magazine, http://www.airtranmagazine.com

2009.12.23

Mmmm, Algorithmic Guilloche Patterns!

From the TCHO Chocolate website, a tasty example of designer bafflegab:

A TCHO Chocolate bar, with its algorithmic guilloche patterns, looks like a modern form of currency. “Modern” was always part of the brand brief — no faux traditionalism, but resolutely forward-looking for a new generation of chocolate enthusiasts.

So the TCHO brand language is deeper. Color, pattern, shape, the TCHO Flavor Wheel, and typography all serve to distinguish the TCHO visual brand. more

Fritinancy, http://nancyfriedman.typepad.com

2009.12.22

WOW: TCHO

There’s chocolate and there’s chocolate. While most of us will buy our chocolate in the supermarket, conaisseurs will get their fix at a local homemade chocolate juweler, or buy from high-end brands like Valrhona. What all of these have in common though, is that they’re sold in bars, and in varieties like, milk, dark, or white.

Enter TCHO.

At first sight, they’ve taken the common concept of chocolate and turned it on its head. TCHO comes in pots of daily doses, like pills, and it’s all black chocolate, but with different tastes according to the beans used. Much like coffee. Seems like a pretty good idea to me.

But there’s more: the company was founded by silicon valley techies and controls everything from sourcing to production to marketing of the product. To quote their website: “TCHO is a new kind of chocolate company for a new generation of chocolate enthusiasts.” more

Klatergoud, http://www.klatergoud.com

2009.12.21

TCHO: The chocolate scientists

It’s 4am, and in a silent warehouse on San Francisco’s dockside a light goes on and a wall-mounted webcam casts its eye around a cluttered room.

To the right there’s a desk with a PC, files And documents. On the far wall, translucent plastic Tupperware boxes are stacked on a shelf, each sporting a short alpha-numeric code. But the camera stops on a row of food mixers, softly whirring away and fed from above by shiny silver ducting.

There's a pause and a minute change in the room’s ambient hum as a motor is slowed. Then the light goes off and the warehouse is bathed again in the soft blue of a pre-dawn Bay Area night.

Across the city, in his bay-view house on the Filbert Steps, Timothy Childs clicks off his iPhone, returns it to the bedside table and goes back to sleep. In the morning he’ll be able to see if his recipe tweak has worked. Welcome to TCHO, the world’s most technology-obsessed chocolate company.

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.co.uk , http://www.wired.co.uk

2009.12.21

12 Days of Local Christmas: TCHO Chocolate

Ooh, lucky us! We were walking down the waterfront, between Pier 39 and the Ferry Building, and practically stumbled into TCHO Chocolates at Pier 17 in San Francisco. What a lucky find!

I had first seen their chocolates at Calafia in Town & Country, Palo Alto. They have a cute gift box supplying the recipient with a TCHO-a-day for 14, 30, 60, or 90 days. Very cute, I thought.

But, at the Pier 17 location, I was finally able to taste their chocolates, and boy, what a revelation. Instead of obsessing over cacao percentages, TCHO has set out to create flavor-driven chocolates. My family had a great time trying the four different blends – Citrusy, Fruity, Chocolatey, and Nutty. Fortunately, each of us had a favorite, which means we can share a sample box very easily.

For the holidays, TCHO has so many gift options, I don’t really know where to start. My sister and dad are receiving the 8-bar tester, so they can figure out their favorite flavors. My dad is also receiving chocolate drenched macadamia nuts, in honor of our vacation this summer. Personally, I hope Santa will tuck a tin of hot and cold drinking chocolate in my stocking!

In addition to their Pier 17 flagship store, you can also find the chocolates at Calafia Restaurant in Palo Alto, Draeger’s in Menlo Park and Los Altos, Bianchini’s in Portola Valley, and a host of places in San Francisco and cities north. Check here for a complete list. And if you prefer, you can order online, which actually looks better to me, since they offer loads more options! more

Kitchen Gadget Girl Cooks, http://networkedblogs.com

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