Most of the people who grow the world's chocolate live on the edge of poverty. Cacao changes hands so many times before it becomes a bar that the farmer who actually grew it is paid last — and paid least. Amao was built to break that pattern: farmers at our family farm in Samaná, Caldas, and at every farm we partner with, earn two to three times the commodity price for their cacao.

Colombia's armed conflict lasted more than fifty years and forced millions from their homes — families and children displaced, whole villages emptied. Samaná was one of the places it hit hardest, and the violence reached our own family's farm, leaving it in ruins. Everything growing there today was replanted by hand, tree by tree. We buy from the neighbors rebuilding beside us and keep the value right here — where it was lost, and where it's being earned back.