Chocolate makers, brands and manufacturers
Bean-to-bar, tree-to-bar, melters and private-label producers, from craft workshops to larger manufacturers. Each maker page shows what they make, where they are based, and the bars indexed on Chof.
Read our buying guide to choose better chocolate bars and makers.
Looking for a shortlist? See the Top 20 chocolate makers, browse makers by country or explore the makers map.
Types of chocolate makers
Not every chocolate brand actually makes chocolate. Here is the short version of what each label on Chof means, and why it matters when you read a wrapper.
- Bean-to-bar
- Owns the production chain from raw cacao bean to finished bar: roasting, winnowing, grinding, conching, refining and tempering. The signature of craft chocolate.
- Tree-to-bar
- Goes one step further than bean-to-bar: the maker also owns or directly manages the cacao trees and the post-harvest fermentation. Maximum origin transparency, but rare.
- Melter
- Buys finished couverture from a third party, melts it and reshapes it into bars. The bar quality depends almost entirely on the supplier's couverture.
- Private label
- Chocolate produced by one company and sold under another brand's name. Common for supermarket and retailer-branded bars.
- Industrial
- Mass-produced chocolate from large factories, also called chocolate manufacturers. These bars often use bulk-blended origins and longer ingredient lists, so the maker and origin story can be harder to trace.
Looking for chocolate makers in the Netherlands?
Chof is based in Amsterdam and tracks the Dutch bean-to-bar scene closely. See Original Beans, Heinde & Verre, The Chocolatemakers, Krak and other chocolade makers from the Netherlands.