For my site visit I went to Williamsburg, Brooklyn. In Williamsburg there is Mast Brothers, a chocolate company. There I went on a tour of their retail factory. On the tour we saw how they make their chocolate, from the bean to the bar.
The Process: They begin with two machines. One that takes off the shell of the bean. The other grinds the nib (the inside of the bean) into tiny pieces. Then they put all of the ingredients into one grinder to mixes/grinds all of the ingredients together. Then they take it out and let it sit for one to four months in a container. Then, they move onto another machine that makes the chocolate the right temperature. When it is the right temperature it comes out of the machine into a chocolate mold. Then it goes into the fridge and when it is done you have your chocolate!
I asked the person who did the tour a couple questions after. She said that they get their cacao beans from Madagascar, Tanzania, and Peru during the tour. I asked why from those places. She said that the farms that they get their cacao beans from have organic cacao beans and the farms don’t do child labor. After that I asked why they don’t farm their own cacao beans and she said that they don’t need to own their own farms and they don’t have staff who farm cacao beans. And that the brothers know people and they buy the beans from the people that they know.