Launched as a fun concept for a Machel Monday concert, Machel Montano chocolates are now set to find a place in the international market when the new Montanos Chocolate Company factory is completed.
The factory, says Elizabeth Montano, the matriarch of the Montano clan, will allow the company to build capacity as they focus on exports.
“We have been involved with ExportTT going to missions to push our product. We went to Germany, South Korea and Colombia and we were supposed to go to more countries but the pandemic came so we met with Panama, Chile and Atlanta virtually. Right now we are exporting to Canada and I have built a really good relationship with Latin American companies and we have signed up with a distributor who is trying to get us into Argentina,” she told Loop News.
Montano is a director of the company.
The Montanos Chocolate Company Limited this week received $250,000 in grant funding from the Ministry of Trade and Industry to assist with the procurement of equipment for the factory. The company also invested 50 percent of their own funds.
Machel Montano’s Chocolate was conceptualised in 2014 when Jillian Goddard, who makes the Suneaters brand of chocolates, approached the Montanos to have her product sold in the M Store at the Piarco International Airport.
“I said wait, Machel Monday was around Valentine’s Day why don’t we make a chocolate for that and we made one called Happy Nation and we sold it and it was good, it got good reviews so I asked her to make a Machel Montano chocolate for us to sell and we started,” explained Montano.
Goddard, through her company, the Alliance of Rural Communities (ARC), produced the Machel Montano 60 percent vegan chocolate made only with three ingredients — cocoa butter, cocoa nibs, Demerara sugar — and no preservatives.
“In 2018 we decided to form our own company called Montanos Chocolate Company. The word “Montanos” is plural and that is deliberate because it is three generations of Montanos involved in the ownership and working of the company,” Montano said.
While the chocolate bears the name of her famous son, the company is truly a family business with Machel and his brother Marcus as well as their children and wives involved.
Machel’s son Nicholas, for example, helps with video production while his daughter Meledi, who is fluent in Spanish, travels with her grandmother to assist in discussions with Spanish speakers.
“One of my first grandsons went with us to South Korea on a mission. Both Machel and Marcus’ children were in Carifesta to promote the chocolate and this weekend Marcus’ two children will go to meetings with me in Tobago,” she said.
“In July the family visited La Reunion Estate where we buy our beans and the Cocoa Research Centre where they did a workshop with us and we agreed that the whole family will go and learn to make chocolate and Jillian will also teach us and we will train the workers who will work with us.”
Montano, who goes by the nickname Lady, said on December 31, Marcus’ daughter Marli will feature on a show with Chef Jason Peru and Foodie Nation showing how to make hot chocolate with their brand.
The chocolate factory is being built on Marcus’ property in Arouca.
A consultant, Bran Cisneros, who they met in Seattle in 2014 at the Northwest Chocolate Festival, is assisting with the equipment.
Montano said with the size of machine they are buying, they could produce about 40,000 bars of chocolate a month.
She said other people have already approached them to manufacture their product as well and they would like to offer the facility to other communities that don’t have their own.
“We are offering training and we are looking at offering women, young people and farmers that opportunity to work with them. We are also looking at acquiring an estate to help the revitalisation of the cocoa industry,” said Montano of the company’s long term plans.
She said the machines will also allow them to expand beyond chocolate bars and look at products such as cocoa butter, cocoa powder, and nibs.
“We will see where we could go but we want to get the Machel Montano 60 percent dark chocolate well known. This weekend in Tobago is the first time we will be going out in person to promote it. Machel has really taken on the role of brand ambassador of the brand and has teamed up with a company called Gustazos. We will come up with a programme and a strategy but always backed by research,” she said.
Machel Montano chocolates can be found in major supermarkets and pharmacies across Trinidad and Tobago
