Chocolate has been considered precious, sacred, and worth paying for, for over two thousand years. That context doesn’t just make for interesting reading, it’s a genuinely useful selling tool.
One of the most common challenges for retailers stocking premium chocolate is the pricing conversation. A customer picks up an artisan bar, glances at the label, and says (sometimes out loud, sometimes just with their face), it’s just chocolate, isn’t it?’
It isn’t. And the history of chocolate makes that case better than almost anything else. Here’s the story, and at the end, some suggestions for how your team can use it.
Cacao has always been precious
The Mayan civilisation – flourishing from around 250 AD to 900 AD, with roots as far back as 600 BC – cultivated some of the earliest known cacao plantations across what is now Mexico and Guatemala. To the Maya, cacao pods were symbols of life and fertility. Cacao beans were exchanged as gifts, used in religious ceremonies, and treated with a reverence that feels remarkably familiar when you think about what chocolate means to people today.
Gifting chocolate isn’t a modern marketing invention. It’s a two-thousand-year-old human instinct!
| Cacao has been considered precious, sacred, and worth giving as a gift for over two thousand years. The instinct your customers feel when they reach for chocolate hasn’t changed – it’s ancient. |
It was literally used as money
For the Aztecs, cacao seeds became currency – used to buy goods, pay tribute to rulers, and make offerings to the gods. Emperor Montezuma reportedly drank 50 goblets of spiced cacao a day, reserving the drink for priests, nobles, and warriors. Chocolate was associated with wisdom, power, and vitality. If only it was still like that today!
When a customer hesitates at the price of a quality chocolate bar, it’s worth gently noting that cacao was once considered more valuable than gold. A £4.00 bar of single-origin Colombian chocolate is, historically speaking, something of a bargain 😋
The preparation was a ritual and it still is
Both the Maya and the Aztecs made their cacao drink with great ceremony: roasting the beans, grinding them, mixing with water, chilli, dried flowers, and spices, then pouring the liquid between vessels from a great height to create a thick, fragrant froth. The molinillo, the beautifully carved wooden whisk still used across Latin America today, is a direct descendant of this tradition. Many of your customers will have an electric machine to make the perfect hot chocolate, with the Velvetiser being recognised as one of the most popular versions. The great thing is, you can reassure your customers that Choc Affair drinking chocolates work beautifully in a Velvetiser.
There’s something worth saying here to customers who ask about hot chocolate made from flakes rather than powder: this is the older way. The more considered way. Powder is the shortcut; flakes are the ritual. That distinction resonates with people who care about what they’re buying.
The story is still alive in the cacao fields
Perhaps the most powerful thing about this history is that it hasn’t ended. As part of the Chocokids programme, run by our cocoa supplier Luker Chocolate in Colombia, children and young people in cacao-growing communities recently took part in an Ancestral, Myths and Legends workshop, exploring the old stories that have been passed down through generations of cacao farmers.
These communities still grow the cocoa that ends up in Choc Affair bars. The legend of Quetzalcoatl who was the god who brought cacao to humanity, is still being told in the same places where our single-origin Colombian Cacao Fino de Aroma is harvested today. Now in our humble opinion, that’s not a marketing story, it’s a living one.
Why this matters for your customers
History gives permission. When customers understand that chocolate has been considered sacred, precious, and worth paying for since the time of the Maya and Aztecs, the price of a quality bar stops feeling like a luxury and starts feeling like a continuation of something very old.
Your team doesn’t need to deliver a history lecture at the till. But a single well-placed fact such as ‘did you know cacao was literally used as currency by the Aztecs?’ can completely reframe a customer’s relationship with what they’re holding in their hand.
And you and I know just how precious chocolate is. It’s journey that begins way way back, in far reaching countries, at the very root of an ancient civilisation, and continues today in much the same way – now that is worth paying for.
Fun talking points for your team |
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• ‘Chocolate has been used as a gift in ceremonies for over two thousand years – so you’re in good company.’ • ‘Cacao was once used as currency by the Aztecs. Emperor Montezuma drank 50 cups of it a day – reserved for priests and nobility.’ • ‘The way we make hot chocolate from flakes rather than powder is actually closer to the original Maya method – it’s the older, more considered way of doing it.’ • ‘The cocoa in this bar comes from Colombia – where communities are still passing down ancient stories about cacao through generations of farmers.’ • ‘Chocolate has always been considered worth more than its weight & was valued higher than gold. The Maya and Aztecs were onto something.‘ |
From ancient ritual to artisan bar
At Choc Affair, we use single-origin Colombian Chocolate – grown by Luker Chocolate, a family business founded in 1906, in the same country where chocolate’s most enduring mythology was born. It travels across the ocean, to be crafted into bars, flakes, and lollies, here in York by our team.
So, there you have it, a story that stretches from the Aztec empire to a family-run production kitchen in Yorkshire. That’s quite a journey for a cacao bean. And it’s one worth sharing with your customers.
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Everything we make starts with single-origin Colombian Cacao Fino de Aroma – the finest flavour category of cocoa in the world. www.trade.choc-affair.com |