There’s chocolate and there’s chocolate. While most of us will buy our chocolate in the supermarket, conaisseurs will get their fix at a local homemade chocolate juweler, or buy from high-end brands like Valrhona. What all of these have in common though, is that they’re sold in bars, and in varieties like, milk, dark, or white.
Enter TCHO.
At first sight, they’ve taken the common concept of chocolate and turned it on its head. TCHO comes in pots of daily doses, like pills, and it’s all black chocolate, but with different tastes according to the beans used. Much like coffee. Seems like a pretty good idea to me.
But there’s more: the company was founded by silicon valley techies and controls everything from sourcing to production to marketing of the product. To quote their website: “TCHO is a new kind of chocolate company for a new generation of chocolate enthusiasts.”
As they say: Anything worth doing, is worth doing well.
Here’s a movie about the company, how they’ve gone about their business:
and one about the actual process of chocolate production:
Great concept! I’m not sure where the whole ‘..for a new generation’ idea taps into, but given that they’ve changed the common form of chocolate and taken a hard look at the actual product and process, I’d say this is a cool new business in many respects.
[Update (8 Jan 2010): Wired.com has a great article about TCHO, right here.]
Rik is one of the founders of Klatergoud.
He's the marketing director of Intivation, a technology company that develops solar powered consumer devices, and a graduate of Delft University of Technology with degrees in Applied Physics and Strategic Product Design.
He writes about entrepreneurship, design thinking, business models, innovation and marketing.
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