When Life Gets Tough,
We Get Dark.

Ultra-dark cacao chocolate named after the things you tolerate daily. 95% cacao. 0% optimism.

The Bars

Each bar is named after something you've already survived today. Consider it a reward.

Waiting in Line

95% cacao

Espresso · Maldon salt · quiet resentment

For the eleven minutes you spent behind someone paying in exact change. You earned this.

Office Politics

92% cacao

Burnt caramel · black cardamom · a faint bitterness that lingers

Tastes like the meeting that should have been an email. Pairs well with a locked office door.

The Group Chat

97% cacao

Raw cacao · smoked vanilla · zero sweetness

147 unread messages. None of them are for you. All of them require a response.

Sunday Scaries

90% cacao

Tonka bean · roasted hazelnut · existential undertone

It is 4pm on a Sunday. Tomorrow exists. This bar does not fix that, but it understands.

Reply All

96% cacao

Charred orange peel · ancho chile · regret

Dedicated to whoever hit "reply all" to say "Thanks." to 200 people. We made you a chocolate. It is not sweet.

Philosophy

Most chocolate tries to make you happy. We find that suspicious. Happiness is a temporary state best achieved through low expectations and excellent cacao sourced from small farms in Ecuador and Ghana. We focus on the cacao part.

Our bars start at 90% cacao because anything less is candy, and candy is for people who still believe the printer will work on the first try. We roast in small batches, temper by hand, and name each bar after the minor indignities that define modern life. Not because we are pessimists. Because we pay attention.

Sugar has its place. That place is elsewhere. Here, we let the cacao speak for itself. It has a lot to say, most of it dark and complex, like a novel you pretend to have finished.

Stories

I ate the whole bar during a status meeting. No one noticed. The chocolate understood.

— Sarah K.

My therapist asked what brings me joy. I said 'Reply All.' She wrote something down. I meant the chocolate.

— David M.

I keep a bar of Sunday Scaries in my desk. On Sundays. And Mondays. And most of the other days, if we are being honest.

— Priya L.

Find Us

Available at independent grocers, specialty shops, and one very specific gas station in Portland that we are not at liberty to name. If your store does not carry us, consider that a sign. Of what, we cannot say.

Built by Design Frameworks

See How We Made Bitterness Beautiful