The Relevant Elephant: Why did you start Askinosie Chocolate?

Shawn Askinosie: Well, I was a criminal defense lawyer for about twenty years, and I really was just beginning to feel a sense that I needed to do something else, and that it was time for me to move on and to try new things and to develop a new passion for something else… 20 years is a long time to do something. So for about five years, I prayed that God would give me another passion, and I was about ready to give up on that when, in May of 2005, it came to me to make chocolate from scratch.

TRE: What kind of preparation did it take to go from defense attorney to chocolatier? How long did that process take?

SA: The process, from the moment of the idea’s inception to present, is a little over three years. It took a long time to study, first of all, where chocolate comes from, where the beans come from… where they’re grown, how they’re grown, how they’re harvested… how the harvesting process can affect the taste. It took a long time to learn the entire process. We do everything here, from roasting the beans all the way through packaging the chocolate. It took a long time, and I’m still learning, every day.

The first thing I did was to learn to make chocolate from the bean in my kitchen. I would make one-pound batches, and it was a very laborious process. Then the next thing I did was to go to the Amazon jungle and study how cocoa beans are grown, who the farmers are, how they fight off pests and diseases… Then I tried to make as many friends as I could within the industry. Then I went to work in a chocolate factory in South America and learned from them… Finally, it just took a lot of reading… a lot of google-searching.

A tour of the Askinosie Chocolate factory


TRE: What sets your company apart from other chocolate brands like Godiva, Ghirardelli, etc?

SA: Well the first thing is that those are industrial chocolate makers… they’re huge. We are a bean-to-bar artisan chocolate company. We make our chocolate in very small batches… that would be the first distinguishing factor… we’re an artisan chocolate company and they aren’t. I’m not saying anything bad about their chocolate, I’m just saying that it’s different.

The second thing would be the way that we trace the beans back to the farmer. We have the name of every single farmer in both countries that contributed to our crops of beans. That’s very important to us. First, it means we have direct contact with the farmers in order to influence the taste of the bean. Second, it’s traceable so you know where your chocolate is coming from. Third, we know their names so we can profit-share with them. This is something that sets us apart from almost any other chocolate company that I know of. We give our farmers a ten-percent profit-share from our chocolate. And we do this directly, not through a middleman or a distributor… I fly down there and hand the money straight to them. We also open our books to them. We translated our books into Spanish and I went line-by-line with the farmers to show them exactly how we calculated their ten percent.

Another difference would just be taste. We don’t add anything to our chocolate. We don’t put in any vanilla, any flavorings, chemicals, preservatives or anything. It’s just beans and sugar.

Another thing that sets us apart is that we make our own cocoa butter. We’re the first small-batch chocolate company in America to make our own cocoa butter from scratch. We do this because we want to add some additional texture and creaminess to the way the chocolate tastes.


TRE: How has the weakened dollar affected your chocolate business?

SA: Well, in a couple ways. First, the bad news. The bad news is that I have to buy equipment that is made in Germany. There’s kind of an ouch factor involved in that. Even though they’ve given me terms on buying the equipment, every week that goes by is a bigger difference between the euro and the dollar and a higher price for me if I don’t pay it off.

The good news is that we have spent considerable time and effort marketing our product in Europe, and so far we’ve been very successful. We shipped a metric ton of chocolate to Scandinavia. The weakened economy helps us because Europeans are essentially buying our chocolate at a thirty-percent discount. Australia is another example. They’ve already bought nearly a metric ton of our products, and they plan to reorder this fall. We’re literally just searching the horizon for strong economies outside of the US to help us turn this bad situation into a good one.


TRE: Does the government, in your mind, ever interfere unnecessarily with your business? What should the government’s role be in helping small businesses?

SA: Yes they do. I’ll give you a perfect example. I import my beans directly myself. I don’t use a commodities broker. It’s not easy, either. There are so many obstacles to importing an agricultural commodity that it’s not even funny. We’ve hired a “customs clearance” person to navigate some of the complicated legal issues involved with importing, and even still the process is hard.

Most of the problems start once the beans arrive at an American port. And every single complication is attributed to homeland security, bioterrorism, etc. Every time there’s a roadblock it’s attributed to homeland security, and I don’t believe that. I think it’s government fat. I think it’s red tape and bureaucracy, and I think it’s more prevalent than ever. That’s just one example, but it’s duplicated every day in the small business world in this country.