Sustainable Colombian Chocolate

I was delighted to meet Sergio Restrepo of Casa Luker chocolate at the London Chocolate Forum last week. Casa Luker supply us with their wonderful dark chocolate, which together with Chocolat Madagscar forms the cornerstone upon which our dark chocolates are made. Like Chocolat Madagscar Casa Luker make all of their chocolate in Colombia keeping more of the money and higher skills in the country of origin. For Chocolat Madagascar this is termed Raisetrade.

Sergio told of the journey Casa Luker had made in their Chocolate Dream from family kidnappings in the 1990s to replanting 2.8 million trees by 2020 in former cattle ranches situated in areas of armed conflict.

I was inspired by Sergio’s statement that he learnt long ago that

aspiration towards pure monetary goals does not bring happiness.

There is a longer term goal creating sustainable Macondos providing employment for local farmers, encouraging wildlife back into the forests and working with visitors from around the world to help with a range of expertise.

The Chocolate Dream is a vision that is made up of 15 scenarios constructed under principles that are closely aligned with global sustainable development goals. The effort to make these 15 dreams come true will be CasaLuker’s grain of sand towards Colombia’s rural development.

At Lick the Spoon we have also been working to the UN Sustainability goals and I have been studying Concepts in Sustainability with the University of Leicester.

We will be visiting ourselves in early 2019 and hope to contribute our own part to Casa Luker’s Chocolate Sustainability dream.