Davao-based chocolatier Chokolate de San Isidro is the pioneer and frontrunner of single-origin chocolate in the local industry.
Davao is home to the best tablea, the country’s local chocolate, according to Toto Muyco, marketing director at Chokolate de San Isidro.
“Our tablea is made of 100-percent single-origin Trinitario cacao beans from the town of San Isidro, Davao del Norte. We are known to be the preferred cacao ingredient of food processors for cakes and pastries, powdered chocolate drink mixes, champorado [chocolate rice porridge], cafe mocha drinks, and chocolates. Breakfast Chocolate using our tablea is a regular offering of a number of hotel chains in the country as part of breakfast buffet,” he said.
Entrepreneur Theodore Garcia of CSI Trade Ventures saw the potential of growing cacao as livelihood despite large-scale political unrest, pest infestations and the absence of centralized quality controls in the 1990s.
He said the town refused to relinquish the dream to elevate cacao as a means to empower the community, while other municipalities were shifting to other crops.
Alongside business partners and the townspeople of the municipality, Garcia pooled P300,000 to buy farmers’ cacao at farm prices.
With the help of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) Davao, CSI Trade Ventures rallied cacao cooperatives to take part in forming Chokolate de San Isidro Inc. through collective production and processing to foster economies of scale.
Award winning product
“The Philippines’ cacao beans have consistently ranked among the world’s top 50 since 2017. While production volumes remain a challenge, the exceptional quality of our beans has carved out a niche in the global market,” said Muyco, who also serves as chairperson of the Davao Region Cacao Industry council.
Earning a coveted Silver Award at the 2021 Cocoa of Excellence Awards, Chokolate de San Isidro’s beans were recognized as one of the 50 best beans in the world, besting over 220 other international entries.
The prestigious Cocoa of Excellence is a program of the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, affiliated with the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), a leading international consortium for agricultural research.
The DTI also recognized the enterprise as an inclusive business, a social enterprise where all stakeholders along the value chain could actively participate.
Chokolate de San Isidro is a registered cooperative, with investors from Davao and Tagum cities, six farmers’ cooperatives across Mamangan, Linao, San Miguel, Dacudao, Mabuhay and Igangon and local investors from the municipality of San Isidro.
Predominantly women-staffed, Chokolate de San Isidro started producing cocoa liquor, eventually expanding the initial ten kilogram capacity into more than 10 tons of tablea per month, serving popular brands in Metro Manila such as Chocolat Cakes.
Today, CSI’s operations span the entire cacao value chain—from nursery and seedling production to cacao beans consolidation, fermentation, drying and trading.
European market
Chokolate de San Isidro is one of the pioneers in cacao export and commodity trading since 2009. The DTI and Arise Plus Philippine helped Chocolate de San Isidro scale up exports to the EU.
“Exports of cacao beans from the Philippines on a commercial scale were pioneered by CSI in 2009, initially trading with the EU. We created an alternative market for local farmers and started offering better prices, which became a template in trading cacao from the farms to the Netherlands, Germany, and Belgium. And later, to Australia and Japan,” Muyco said.
“The beauty of the cacao industry lies in its decentralized nature. Unlike many other commodities, it’s not monopolized by a single entity. This fosters a sense of collective responsibility across the entire value chain, leading to inclusive growth from manufacturers, traders to farmers,” Muyco said.
While the COVID-19 pandemic slowed exports in 2019, CSI Trade Ventures intensified sales engagements across the Visayas and Luzon-based establishments. Their products also found a place on department store shelves, including SM’s Kultura shops.
The company underscored the significance of consolidating products from smallholder farmers to facilitate market linkages and reduce long-term logistics costs.