During the first half of 2015, over 600 chocolate lovers and Camino supporters participated in surveys that were conducted to find the best flavours for our new chocolate bars. Thank you to everyone who gave us such great and insightful feedback! Our recipe development team went straight to work, to figure out which chocolates could be made that would both strongly support small-scale family farmers and delight Camino customers.
And now they are arrived and are rolling out to your local store!
The Intensely dark bar is nothing short of a super food. For centuries, marginalized, impoverished farmers had their cocoa taken by colonial and later corporate behemoths. Farmers were kept ignorant about the quality of the beans and corporate chocolate manufacturers buried the good and the bad of the cacao under layers of sugar and milk. Camino partners have and continue to work closely on educating farmers about quality from seed to bar and how the deliciousness of the cocoa beans can easily stand on their own.
Our supporters asked us and we have heard them loud and clear. GO DARKER. The Camino Intensely dark bar is 88% of pure premium cocoa, with just a small touch of sugar and vanilla, all fair trade and organic, to highlight the incredible flavours of this blend of Dominican Republic and Peruvian cocoa beans.
The second new Camino chocolate bar will certainly be a crowd favourite. Scores of Camino supporters noted their love for our current dark chocolate with caramel and a yearning for a dark version to Camino’s very popular Butterscotch and sea salt in milk chocolate. We brought those ideas together for the new Salted caramel crunch dark chocolate bar, which has a cocoa content of 55%.
These new chocolate bars are the result of great advice from fans of Camino and the partnership Camino has with Equal Exchange and Pronatec. Equal Exchange is a U.S.-based worker-owned co-operative dedicated to fair trade, and the Camino–EE partnership goes back more than a decade. Equal Exchange is working with cocoa farmer co-operatives in the Dominican Republic and Peru to create a cocoa quality control laboratory, to establish sensory analysis standards for heirloom varieties, and to promote training for farmers to improve yields.
-Tom Hanlon-Wilde
