St Lucia, The Island Growers and The Roots of Chocolate

Seven years ago, Saint Lucia’s cocoa industry was close to extinction. Now, Saint Lucian farmers working with Hotel Chocolat grow some of the world’s most celebrated cocoa. Discover how we re-connected luxury chocolate with its roots.

When we first told farmer Laurence Auguste that we wanted to buy his beans at a price far above the normal rate – every year – he nodded politely. He told us he’d think about it. To Laurence, the offer sounded like a tale taller than an 80-year-old cocoa tree.
We could hardly blame him for not taking us seriously. In 2006, it was hard for Saint Lucian cocoa farmers to feel optimistic about anything. The island’s cocoa economy was in a death spiral.
Every harvest had become a lottery with a meagre jackpot. All the island’s cocoa was sold via a single export organisation, which worked like this: You left your cocoa at the warehouse and they would try to sell it on your behalf, with no guarantees. If they sold it, you got the world bulk-cocoa price, minus deductions for the middleman. And then you waited six months to get paid.
It was becoming a route into poverty. Growers couldn’t afford the risk of investing in good quality seedlings. Instead, they were tearing out old cocoa groves and planting crops like bananas and even carrots, which they could sell to local hotels to feed the growing tourism industry. It seemed only a matter of time before Saint Lucia’s once-prized variety of Trinitario cocoa disappeared into the history of chocolate. And we
didn’t want to let that happen.
In 2006, we bought our own cocoa plantation on the island: the 250-yearold Rabot Estate, a beautiful but distressed property dating back to the French colonial era. We wanted to connect growing cocoa with making chocolate, and we knew that Saint Lucian cocoa was good enough to bind the two together.
Although almost every single Saint Lucian bean was disappearing into characterless bulk sales, less than 100 years ago the island had been famed for its exceptionally fine cocoa.

If properly fermented, dried, roasted and conched, Saint Lucian beans could produce chocolate with a dazzling array of tasting notes, ranging from classically rich cocoa to black tea and ripe yellow fruit, grassy olive oil and dry red Burgundy.
We were in the process of classifying every cocoa tree on our estate and getting our plantation back to work. We wanted to put Saint Lucian cocoa at the heart of Hotel Chocolat, and we needed local partners who would grow us more.
But there was one slight problem: To do that, we’d have to rejuvenate the island’s entire cocoa economy. Over the years, none of the dubious schemes that had promised to fix Saint Lucia’s ailing cocoa industry had ever taken root, increasing the sense of cynicism that prevailed among farmers. So what could we do?
Our estates director Phil Buckley, never deterred by a seemingly impossible mission, worked with his team on a plan to make it happen.
Phil’s team travelled up and down the island meeting groups of 10 farmers at a time. They introduced Hotel Chocolat and Rabot Estate and asked farmers to join us as ‘Island Growers’.

The Deal

The deal we offered Laurence and other local farmers was this:
• We’ll guarantee to buy your whole crop each harvest, so you can be certain it’s worth investing money in your farm.
• We’ll pay you directly, with no middleman deductions, at a rate that is always higher than world bulk-cocoa price – and you’ll be paid within a week.
• We’ll provide free technical help to improve crop quality and give you access to top quality cocoa seedlings at a strongly discounted price.

The condition was that we would only buy their beans ‘wet’, just after harvesting, and do the fermenting and drying ourselves. We do that so we can keep the process consistent enough to ensure the high flavour quality we need.
It took him three months to be persuaded. Finally, convinced that we meant what we said, Laurence Auguste of the Ti’Deicer plantation joined us as our first Island Grower partner in Saint Lucia.
Laurence stuck with us, and his confidence inspired 70 more local farmers to join us in the first year. By 2011 we had 120 cocoa partners, ranging from start-up farmers to well-established estates returning to cocoa. And we kept our word on price. In 2013, we paid our Island Growers US$5.14 per kilo of cocoa, more than twice what they would have been paid on the world bulk cocoa market.
A key value in the scheme is helping Island Growers to keep farming. We buy their harvests at a fair price that lets them reinvest, and provide support to help them grow better quality cocoa, producing a sustainable win-win for everyone.
Sadly, Laurence passed away in October 2007, but his wife Angela has held on to the Island Grower partnership that he started with us.
Today, more than 150 Island Grower partners have joined us, and their beans now create some of the finest chocolate in the world.
We’ve won several prestigious awards for chocolates made with Saint Lucian cocoa, including a 2013 Gold Great Taste Award for our Rabot 1745 Saint Lucia Island Growers 70% Milk. “Hotel Chocolat has breathed new life into cocoa growing in Saint Lucia,” Laurence once said. “For the first time we have a fair price, prompt payment and a secure future.”
And we’re just getting started.