My wife and I share our love for Chocolate. While she prefers dark chocolates, I am more of a sweet tooth and go for milk chocolates and chocolates with nuts. In 2018, my wife started a low-carb diet and preferred healthy fats from dark chocolate products. Despite being pricey and rare in the Ph market, she likes Spain’s ‘Valor’ Dark Chocolates. As much as we wanted to keep a stable supply of dark chocolates at home, we seldom get them in the market. Hence, the birth of an idea, why not create our own?
This is where the Alto Peak Chocolate journey begins. I researched on cacao industry and learned about the country’s Cacao Road Map. This journey entails attending necessary seminars; the first was the Cacao Farming class with CIDAMI (Cacao Industry Development Association of Mindanao Inc.). Another was the seminar for GAP (Good Agricultural Practices of Cacao Farming) and best practices for post-production processes and Chocolate Making. In October 2019, I was fortunate to have attended the very first “Kakao-Konek” Forum in Davao City that allowed me to have a glimpse of the Cacao Industry Supply Chain. After that, I started my production and constantly conducted product development. This led me to produce my first Dark Chocolate with 70% pure cacao and 30% sweetener.
My efforts and passion for chocolate-making paid off. Sometime in December 2019, I received two exciting offers. The first offer was from a Japanese customer who got wind of our Facebook page. He got curious about my product and proposed to order four tons of our Premium Unsweetened Tablea per month!
The second prospective client was a Filipino-American who wanted to sell and distribute our chocolates to the US Market. Back then, I still felt like a rookie in the chocolate industry. We still lacked equipment and needed more certification affirming our product standard and quality to qualify for international standards.
Though we have not reached a consensus with those two clients, here we are, we continued our dream and passion as the pioneer producers of excellent locally-made chocolates.
Whenever I look at our name and logo, ‘Alto Peak,’ I am reminded of my humble 1.2 hectares property in Cabintan, Ormoc City. We dream of converting this land to a cacao farm with a cafe that accepts future tourists and visitors. Like our dream to go global, this idea remains a vision for now. A grand vision that me and my wife close to our hearts.
We also put ‘Alto Peak’, the highest mountain in Eastern Visayas as our inspiration to produce only the highest quality chocolates that our customers would love and come back for.
We are still starting our exciting chocolatey flight and journey and are always brimming for more future adventures in the Big Chocolate world out there!