Finding Better Food Suppliers

Posted on: 31 August 2016

If you run a trendy little coffee shop, and are looking to expand your business, you might want to think about chocolate, or more accurately, the cocoa bean. There are lots of ways to use cocoa beans to expand your menu and attract new customers. Below are three ways to use cocoa beans, as well as a brief discussion about the type of cocoa beans you should get.

Super Fresh Mocha Latte

While that coffee shop down the block makes their mocha latte with powdered chocolate, chocolate syrup, or some other atrocity, your shop will offer freshly ground cocoa powder. You can have the cocoa beans on display the grind them like you would your arabica or robusta coffee beans. Then you can make the mocha latte from scratch. For customers who like everything to be from scratch, this is a huge selling point.

Fresh Hot Chocolate

You should also add hot chocolate to the menu if you already haven't. With cocoa beans, you can grind your own fresh coca powder and not rely on some store brought hot chocolate mix. This will let you offer different styles of hot chocolate. Much like chocolate bars come in dark, semi-sweet, and milk chocolate, you can offer a dark chocolate cocoa (one with less sugar) as well as a regular version. This will attract the healthy conscious people who don't normally drink hot chocolate but might if there was a very dark version available.

Brownies and Cookies

You should defiantly add some sweets to the menu. Offering homemade sweets is a great way to get people to come in for a coffee and sweet at night after they've had dinner. It can improve your night sales dramatically. Brownies and cookies are a bit easier to bake then cakes, so they are a great place to start. Instead of baking box cookies and brownies, you could find a recipe in a cookbook and then grind fresh cocoa powder to use. This will allow you to make super dark and rich brownies, and dark chocolate chip cookies. They will go great with espresso and coffee.

Fair Trade Cocoa Beans

It's important when purchasing cocoa beans that you choose ones that are fair trade. Many people are aware of the problem of slave labor in Western Africa chocolate production. This is why it's important that you purchase cocoa beans from a distributor who only deals with fair trade companies that do not participate in slavery or other immoral behavior.

For more information, contact companies like Transmar Group.