Hello,

I am new to this forum and have a few questions to all the bean-to-bar chocolatiers. I have a friend in Trinidad & Tobago who knows several cocoa farmers and would like to start a little trade business selling the beans to chocolatiers. I live in Germany and would like to help her.

Now I don't really know how to start. Where do chocolatiers usually get their beans from? Should we start a website, and then people find us and order from us? How many kilos or pounds does a chocolatier order on average? Should I import a large amount of beans to Germany, store them here and then send them to our costumers, or do most chocolatiers order directly from the country of origin?
How much do you pay for beans on average? (we want to sell organic beans)
Should I simply send small samples to different chocolate manufacturers?

Any kind of help would be highly appreciated.
Thank you in advance!!

updated by @franzi: 04/11/15 22:06:12

Hi Franzi - you're going to find that most cocoa beans are sold in bulk by large exporters, as they've got the advantage of economics of scale on their side, and understand the various trans-country regulations. You're going to need to first identify your market - i'm assuming you're scale will be quite small, so i'd recommend targeting premium, smaller manufacturers as you're not going to have the volume to do anything but that. Next you'll need to understand the range of flavor profiles you can generate - this answers the 'why should they buy from you' question - if you can deliver a premium product consistently, you've got something valuable. You're going to need to spend some time understanding import/export regulations, as transporting raw agricultural commodities between countries can be a tricky business i'm afraid ("I'm with the government, and here to help - please fill out these 13,456 pages of information. in triplicate. in a language you don't understand. and get back to us"....)

Hey Sebastian, thanks for your reply, it seems to be more complicated than we had thought I guess I'll just try to get more information on import and maybe I will start to contact small manufacturers. Thank you so much!