Our story

Cocoa is labour, chocolate is luxury.

For as long as cocoa has been grown as a commercial crop, there has been a divide between those who grow the cocoa and those who make the chocolate.

Rewriting the narrative

Growers do the labour. The chocolate, and the value that comes with it, gets made somewhere else. The Cross Atlantic Chocolate Collective is rewriting that narrative, and decolonizing the market bean by bean.

Its model lets members cultivate the fruit, process the beans, temper the couverture and sell their own chocolate. Members share information, skills and support with each other, across the Atlantic.

2014ARC, the Alliance of Rural Communities, is founded in Trinidad and Tobago.
13countries in the collective, across Africa, the Caribbean and North America.
5origins featured in our first drinking chocolates.

A project of ARC

Value that stays at home

Chocolate Rebellion is a project of ARC, the Alliance of Rural Communities, a non-profit founded in Trinidad and Tobago in 2014.

ARC supports rural communities to build collective production facilities, so they can process the raw materials from their own area. The value stays in the community, instead of leaving with the raw materials.

Why New York

The biggest table

The USA doesn’t grow cocoa. But it is the world’s largest chocolate consumer, and home to the largest African diaspora population. That’s why the collective has a US arm.

Chocolate Rebellion is that arm, based in New York City.

NYC neighbourhood / address TBD