“We pay a lot more for the beans, but there are fine flavors and there’s a relationship and sustainability factor,” says Jim Elitzak, co-owner with wife Maureen of Zak’s Chocolate in Scottsdale.

Click here for cool video of our chocolate making process

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Chocolate-making is a lost art, Jim Elitzak says. It's also a messy one. When his wife, Maureen, with whom he co-owns Zak's Chocolate in Scottsdale, announced that she was going to start making her own chocolate, grinding beans by hand and using hair dryers to blow cocoa shells, he balked.

"I said, 'I will never do that. No, thank you,'" he remembers. Jim since has changed his mind: The couple opened Zak's Chocolate in a small Scottsdale storefront last spring. There, they create organic single-origin chocolate bars and sweets made from their own bean-to-bar chocolate. Everything is done by hand: the roasting, the separating, the melting. Even the paper each chocolate bar comes wrapped in is handmade. The business began as a hobby...click here for full article

Click here for accompanying video of our chocolate making process

Scottsdale Culinary Festival, Devoured Phoenix Culinary Classic

New Factory Tours & Chocolate Making Experience dates.

Just six months into our new venture, we are very excited and proud to have been Named Best Chocolate in Metro-Phoenix 2015 by Phoenix New Times.

Especially exciting is that this was not a popularity contest vote. It was an editor's choice. 

Thanks to Phoenix New Times and Chow Bella Blog for recognizing our craft. .Click here for Story

Imagine if we were led to believe there was only one kind of wine grape. Boring, right? Grab your favorite Zak's Chocolate bar & check out this great video explaining what real #craftchocolate is about. 

One of the most frequent questions we've been asked since opening our craft chocolate factory is, "doesn't chocolate have caffeine like coffee?"  Roxanne Browning of Exotic Chocolate Tasting in NY does a nice job explaining the difference between caffeine and theobromine in her article. http://exoticchocolatetasting.com/site/chocolate-health-benefits/

Hi everyone, we've been really busy the past few months and have accomplished so much, even though many things seemed to take longer than we had hoped...

Have you ever seen a cacao pod? Amazing that this is where chocolate begins...click here to check out this short video from Holland

Click the Headline above too see a picture of our roaster under construction by US Roasters in Oklahoma City.  It should be getting its control systems soon and coming home to Scottsdale in a few weeks!