“..All my life I was involved in corporate careers — finance, marketing, or insurance. I graduated with a master’s degree in Urban Development in London and 2008 was the year I came back home to Lithuania, all arrogant and self-confident. I was expecting high recognition and a full-speed career, but the credit crunch turned everything upside down. And here I was — jobless, socially isolated, with no personal life, in poor health and with savings running out. When I look at that period in retrospect, I can clearly say that it was the lowest point of my life. For more than two years I literally struggled to survive.
The solution was obvious: what else if not chocolate? Shall I go from uber negative to super positive paradigm? I bought one ton of cacao beans and threw myself into chocolate very spontaneously. The beans arrived at my warehouse: a bunch of jute bags full of aromatic cacao beans. I had no idea how to process them, where to process them and what machinery I needed, but from that very moment on, we started assembling the puzzle very quickly.
First of all, we moved to the beautiful countryside near the lake. We secured a business loan and the first machinery started arriving to our rustic homestead in the middle of nowhere. Robust chocolate bars were born with the help of our very first employee Kristina, a mother of seven, who was the head of production. Some time after her daughter Sabina joined the team, so now we can say that it was a family operation.
Here was our end vision: to manufacture the most sophisticated chocolate and bring back the crown to the Food of Gods; to spread joy, peace of mind, and to educate people about the importance of finding their Chocolate of life.
It was always about loving the food and the people. We were keen to follow the principles of slow food movement. Naive believed in knowing food suppliers personally and supported them by buying their produce also helped them to reach local and international eaters. But we also liked gardening ourselves and we loved animals too! We grew herb gardens and kept goats, fermented cheese, collected birch sap, and foraged. Foodies from Paris or London came to visit our little homestead to see this bizarre zoo for themselves. But the best is yet to come..”
Domantas Uzpalis, founder.
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