Our Story
We created Apapacho to bring the real taste of cacao to everyday life.
We want to shift value back to its origins by delivering top quality products that connect people to culture, sustainability, and the joy of food.
REAL FLAVOUR, REAL CULTURE, REAL IMPACT.
Our products are rooted in authentic Mexican cacao traditions. We source premium cacao mass through trusted relationships with small-scale agroforestry farming families in Tabasco and work with artisanal production in Mexico City. This allows us to stay close to what matters: transparency, reliability, care, fairness, sustainability, reciprocity.
For us, chocolate is not just something sweet or seasonal. It is cultural, social, comforting, and meant to be enjoyed often. That is why we create products that feel real, delicious, and nurturing. Products that bring pleasure, meaning, and an Apapacho moment you can feel.
Apapacho is an invitation to slow down, discover real taste, and bring value back to origin.
The founders
Sal y Chocolate was born from a friendship.
Valentina Gritti, an Italian gastronome based in Rotterdam, and Raúl Mondragón Segura, a Mexican agroecologist and entrepreneur in Mexico City, collaborated for more than eight years within the Slow Food Youth Network. What unites them is a shared conviction: food is never just nourishment. It is culture, art, celebration, community, and a political act.
They have also seen the other side of the global food system. An extractive trade model where most of the value of crops like cocoa is captured far from the countries that grow them. A system that drives biodiversity loss, deforestation and soil degradation, while small-scale farmers and indigenous communities carry the social and economic burden. Sal y Chocolate is their response to this: it exists to shift recognition and value back to origin, so local expertise, authentic taste, and traditions can flourish and inspire a fairer food system.
This is not just chocolate.
It's a movement, and there's a place for you in it.