The venture began with the coming together of an Italian craft chocolatier with a social entrepreneur working with cacao farmers in the Philippines.
In search for a direct source of cacao, Simone, an Italian craft chocolatier, had travelled to the Philippines, which he found had the oldest history of cacao in Asia. He moved to the island country and settled in a surf town in San Juan, La Union and started making his own line of artisan craft chocolate, Tigre y Oliva.
After having been awarded as the top social enterprise selection by the British Council, Rob Crisostomo had founded Seed Core which aimed to provide farmers with income through sustainable cacao production. Among the projects were reforestation initiatives through tree planting and farmer trainings which equip farmers with agronomic knowledge and best practices. While the social enterprise linked farms and exported to global chocolate manufacturers, it was a dream to produce Philippine-made high quality and premium chocolate. Simone had shared his knowledge to develop and produce fine craft chocolate which highlights flavour characteristics from beans.
In 2018, the Chocolate Outpost was established in San Juan La Union through the collaboration with awarded Spanish chef Luis “Chele” Gonzales. Chef Chele had brought in his team of pastry and R&D chefs to create recipes using the local cacao of various micro-origins.
This year, we established the chocolate factory in Mandala Park where we continue to experiment for new innovations and creations in our chocolate lab.