Who doesn’t love chocolate? Chocolate I could argue is more of a feeling than a food. It has a way of making us happy (like Harry Potter warding off dementors with chocolate) and hot chocolate can conjure up coziness on a cold winter morning. And let’s not forget that some of THE best Halloween candy is chocolate (especially the giant sized bars).
So, on our family summer trip to Cologne, Germany, we just had to stop in to visit a real working chocolate factory at the Lindt Schokoladenmuseum. 
Before we even walked in the door, I envisioned something straight out of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with chocolate rivers and fountains at every turn mixing and churning the cocoa, sugar, and milk into a creamy, buttery, confection. And to some degree it was that… (minus the boat going down a chocolate river!) We were able to peak inside the process and view the roasting, grinding, mixing, and molding that happens inside the factory.
But that wasn’t my favorite part… it was the part that came before the factory ever gets involved. It was the whole first section dedicated to the cocoa tree.
From the moment we walked in, the smell of chocolate hit us – honestly, this is probably what heaven smells like and maybe that’s why the cocoa tree’s scientific name, Theobroma cacao, literally means “food of the gods.”
I guess even ancient civilizations knew this plant that produces pods the size of footballs was something special. There are an estimated 5–6 billion cocoa trees growing around the world, mostly within about 20 degrees of the equator.
Another fascinating fact? The fruit of the cocoa tree – the pods – don’t even grow on the branches. They grow directly from the trunk of the tree, making harvesting unlike almost any other fruit tree.
Did you know a single cocoa tree produces only about 25 cocoa pods each year? And it takes roughly 25 cocoa pods to make just one pound of chocolate (or about 8–10 standard chocolate bars)!
But this is where it got really mind blowing for me. Because the pods grow directly from the trunk of the tree – the pods must be harvested BY HAND. (You read that right. Every cocoa pod and all the beans that go into all the chocolate made worldwide are harvested BY HAND!) 🤯
We live in a world where drones can deliver packages, robots assemble products, and we can order almost anything with the click of a button. Yet one of the most common treats we casually pop in our mouths started with a farmer carefully cutting a single cocoa pod from a tree.
That completely changed how I see chocolate.
Every single cocoa pod begins its journey in someone’s hands! Around 40-50 million workers carefully harvest each ripe pod using machetes or specialized knives. Mass harvesting farm equipment can’t do the job because the trees are delicate, the pods ripen at different times, and the fruit grows directly from the trunk. Even after hand harvesting the pods, the pods are broken open by hand using wooden clubs or machetes.
Inside are the cocoa beans surrounded by a sweet, sticky white pulp and those beans are piled into wooden boxes and covered with banana leaves to ferment for several days to undergo fermentation.
Then the beans are spread across drying mats in the tropical sun, dried, inspected, and packed into breathable jute sacks to then be shipped across the world to factories. Want to guess how many cocoa beans travel from farms to chocolate factories every year? Around 4.5 to 5 trillion individual cocoa beans. That were all harvest, fermented, and dried by hand.
Incredible.
About one-third of the world’s cocoa is processed in Europe, with much of the rest processed in North America and elsewhere. Only after roasting, grinding, and processing do those beans develop the chocolate flavor we all know and love.
But, it took a trip halfway around the world for me to appreciate how fascinating chocolate really is. I walked into a chocolate museum expecting to learn about a chocolate process and instead, I left with a deep appreciation for farmers thousands of miles away, working near the equator, harvesting cocoa one pod at a time.
So the next time you unwrap a chocolate bar, remember how many careful hands helped bring it to you. I know I’ll never eat chocolate quite the same way again…
Awesome