AVANT GARDENER
Amid the pandemic, a friend sent me a care package of artisan chocolate from a then-new chocolatier Plentitude Chocolate. I like their single origin craft bars, the “single origin” referring to the farm the cacao used in each bar comes from, but what I fell in love with is their award-winning tablea. Adding three small discs to ½ cup of whole milk results in hot chocolate so thick, it would make Padre Damaso shudder with delight. Made with just stone-ground cocoa and cane sugar (both locally sourced), it is so rich that when it cools, it leaves a hardened ring of cocoa butter around the mug. I had to learn about the story behind the brand.
My friend connected me to Founding Chocolate Maker Tyrone Chua, who resigned from his IT job in Singapore to start a chocolate company in the Philippines. “We specialize in single estate bean-to-bar craft chocolate,” he said. “When we source from one single farm, we don't mix it with anything… from [other] farms.” This is done to maintain consistency in terms of taste, and also to enhance the subtle differences that the terroir of each cacao farm offers.
The company’s origins are serendipitous. Chua had been delving into chocolate making in Singapore as a way to cope with burnout. “We thought, hey, farmers in the Philippines have good cacao… and it turned out that my wife's friend is married to someone who has a chocolate cacao farm that… exports their beans,” Chua said.
Aside from doing a lot of research, he also took workshops under two chocolatiers.
Inspired by his father, who worked in the food manufacturing business, and encouraged by his wife, Daryl, the couple returned to the Philippines in late 2019 to create their own chocolate brand.
It was Daryl who came up with the name Plentitude, which stems from the abundance of harvests from Philippine soil.”Our tagline, “A chocolate love song,” is because everything we do is actually a love song for my wife and all the chocolate lovers,” Chua explained.
Little did they know that six months later, the whole world would be shutting down for two years while a deadly virus took hold. “I launched the website [on] the first day of lockdown,” Chua said, adding that his wife said, “Even though it’s lockdown, let’s try. Even if no one buys, at least we tried.”
It was a risky move, especially since they weren’t sure if anyone was going to buy from them. But as the lockdown continued and people looked for ways to thrive within the confines of their homes, coupled with the proliferation of delivery services, Plentitude found itself with a steadily growing clientele who purchased their products online at plentitudechocolate.com or on the company’s Facebook and Instagram accounts.
Chua has since purchased machines to increase production. “The problem is now there's a cacao shortage,” he said. West Africa, where the majority of cacao used worldwide comes from, has been experiencing a crop deficit for the past three years, leading to a global cacao shortage. This means cacao beans have been going for higher prices, a trend that is set to continue until the West African cacao harvests return to their previous numbers. And while Plentitude has made it a point to pay their partner farmers above the market rate, Chua admits that it’s getting difficult, given the already elevated cacao prices worldwide. “It's around two to four times more than what we used to pay before,” he said.
Plentitude currently sources from partner farms in Legaspi, Albay; Calinan, Davao City; Tupi and Polomolok in South Cotabato; and from the Mountain Province; the locations proudly indicated on each bar or bag of chocolate.
The partner farmers were discovered through word of mouth. The company buys fermented cacao. Quality control is crucial when it comes to buying beans because the quality of the raw material will determine the quality of cacao produced. Chua said that they take time to test each batch before they are bought because they’ve had previous experiences of getting subpar beans. Plentitude roasts its own cacao, and this, Chua says, is where the brand’s flavors begin to acquire their signature taste. “We… let people taste [cacao with] different origins, and then, because it's only two ingredients, cacao and cane sugar bars, people are surprised [that one] tastes so different from the other… they wouldn't have thought chocolate could be so complex… like wine or coffee.”
The company has also developed a peanut dark chocolate spread and a pistachio white chocolate spread, with all the ingredients except the pistachios locally sourced. “Right now, we're joining a lot of bazaars, but… right now our choice is just to ride… the cacao shortage and see how it goes,” Chua said.
Plentitude continues to produce in small batches under 10 kilos a week. “But,” Chua said, “We’re ready for big things.”