Global Expansions: Team's reconnaissance in Ecuador led to chocolate supply

A husband-wife team from the United States is in Ecuador, driving through mountain villages in search of a rare variety of cacao beans, the primary ingredient in their new product. Their plan? Stop people and ask who might supply the beans. It's not the most sophisticated plan, but it is effective. The pair is pointed to a farmer who can provide them with what they're seeking. It's a story of international business that sounds too picture-perfect to be true. Yet that's the moment when things took a turn for Jose Meza and Barbara Wilson, the owners of Dexter, Mich.-based Mindo, Chocolate Makers LLC. It's somewhat misleading to say the business is based in Dexter. There are actually two businesses. There's Mindo, a craft chocolate maker that operates out of a house in the village of Dexter. And then there's the restaurant, El Quetzal de Mindo, in the village of Mindo, Ecuador, where the owners spend the vast majority of their time. The couple moved to Mindo in 2007 to retire, leaving behind the Ann Arbor auto repair shop, ArborMotion, that they ran for 30 years. They chose Ecuador because Meza is native to that country, though he hadn't been home since coming to the U.S. some 40 years earlier. Like all good entrepreneurs, they were soon running another business. And like many good businesses, it began in response to a need. Ms. Wilson and Mr. Meza needed a decent Internet connection, but in Mindo that meant $700 a month. So they opened an Internet cafe to spread out the cost. That led to serving coffee and brownies, the latter proving especially popular. But even though cacao is grown in that neck of the woods, high-quality chocolate that Wilson needed for her brownies was not readily available. Soon she was carting loads of European chocolate purchased from Whole Foods Market in Ann Arbor back to Mindo — a lot of work just to make brownies in Ecuador. So they started looking for local farmers to supply raw cacao, but it's "not like you can Google it," Ms. Wilson said. "We started driving to areas where people said they have cacao. We'd ask people in town, 'Where can we buy cacao?' " They pointed them to Pedro and his Mindo farm, where cacao beans grow in the shade, mixed in with other crops, such as citrus fruits and macadamia trees. The talked to Pedro about what they needed: the Nacional variety of bean, grown organically. He immediately agreed. "He was very excited," Ms. Wilson said. "We took him a chocolate bar made with his beans and he was so excited, he yelled and threw his hands up in the air. He couldn't believe something so delicious could be made with his cacao beans." Meanwhile, people back in Michigan wanted more of the small-batch chocolate Ms. Wilson was bringing from Mindo. In 2009, Mindo Chocolate Makers in Dexter opened to serve the market here. Finding that first farmer was just one step among many toward securing a reliable supply. The beans now are bought from a cooperative because business outgrew Pedro's capacity. But it took some effort to communicate quality standards. For example, the co-op liked to dry beans on the ground and let dogs laze on the piles. Mr. Meza and Ms. Wilson trained the farmers to ferment and dry the beans, and helped them build special drying beds to keep beans off the ground. They also started paying higher rates, Wilson said, in exchange for the improved quality. "We're still struggling with that whole thing," Ms. Wilson said. "We thought we could just go buy beans, but we couldn't find a good source," Ms. Wilson said. Mindo is experimenting with shipping the beans from Equador to Detroit. But a trial last summer didn't go well. A ship left July 8 with 8,000 pounds of beans Mindo expected to get by the end of the month. Instead the beans arrived Aug. 20, said Zack Crawford, general manager at the Dexter location. The beans first sat at a port in New Jersey as customs sifted through them. Then it sat in Detroit as U.S. Food and Drug Administration agents sent out samples for testing. "The FDA said it was cracking down on shipments coming from that region — not news we wanted to hear," Mr. Crawford said. Perhaps it shouldn't have been a surprise considering the shipment was coming from a "red-flag area," Mr. Crawford said. It hardly would be surprising if someone tried to mask a shipment of cocaine in a container of cacao beans, especially a container ordered by an unknown new small business. "My understanding is it's pretty common, especially when sending your first container," Mr. Crawford said. "We bear some blame, but our broker could have informed us a little more." This story first appeared in Crain's Detroit Business.