Impact
With Apapacho, impact is not a chapter of the story. It is the whole story.
Food is more than nourishment: it's culture, art, politics and identity. Apapacho exists to shift recognition and value back to its origins, so local expertise, authentic taste, and traditions can flourish and inspire a fairer food system.
We believe cacao should create value for the people and places it comes from, which is why we build on trusted relationships with small-scale cacao farming families in Mexico, and on artisanal producers. We want to bring value back to the origin country and stay far from a neo-colonising approach.
Our work is guided by transparency, reciprocity, care, and fairness.
We want every product to reflect not only quality and flavor, but also a more respectful way of doing business. We grow all together along the value chain.
Our cacao is part of something bigger.
In Mexico, cacao is at a turning point. Over the past three decades, more than half of cacao farms have disappeared, lost to disease, land-use change, and more profitable crops like sugarcane, banana, and palm. At the same time, farmers are aging, and fewer young people are continuing the work.
50%+
of Mexico's cacao farms lost in three decades
Less than 1%
of chocolate is made at origin
Chocolate reflects this shift. Today, most products labeled "chocolate" are industrial, made with imported cacao and dominated by sugar and additives.
Yet a different path is emerging.
Over the last 15 years, a growing community of cacao producers and artisan chocolate makers has begun to open new possibilities: working with national cacao, using responsible practices, and creating fresh, nutritious products.
Artisan chocolate is different. It's made from real cacao and natural ingredients, crafted with care on a small scale. Supporting it means strengthening local economies, protecting biodiversity, and choosing a more just future.
The people keeping cacao alive.
The farming families we work with in the Chontalpa region are not suppliers. They are the origin of everything in your cup. A community of smallholder farmers who share a commitment to agroforestry, ancestral knowledge, and cacao grown without agrochemicals.
“In my small cacao grove there are avocado, banana, coffee, vanilla, and more than twenty other species. Monkeys, birds, bats, bees, squirrels. All of them create a symbiosis.”
“Knowledge and ancestral practices have been passed down from generation to generation. When to prune, when to fertilise, which moon to follow.”
Building trust from the ground up.
Together with the Cacaoterxs del Río Mazapa community, Diaspora in Mexico City, and the Slow Food Youth Network, we are setting up a Participatory Guarantee System for the cacao produced in the Chontalpa region.
A PGS is a community-led form of quality assurance. Rather than relying on third-party certification, it verifies farming practices through direct participation: farmers, producers, and buyers collectively define, monitor, and guarantee the standards they work to. Transparency built on trust and relationship, not paperwork.
For Apapacho, this means the agroecological practices of the Cacaoterxs del Río Mazapa community are not just claims. They are collectively verified by everyone in the chain.
What's better than changing the system with a cup of cacao?