We are excited to share with you this easy-reading report from our trading partners at Uncommon Cacao. We are proud to partner with Uncommon Cacao to source our Belize, Dominican Republic, Gutemalan & Haitian cocoa beans through this Direct Trade Network. 

Chocolate starts with the story of people. This report helps tell that story in terms of social, economic and environmental impacts on the lives of the real, hard-working smallholder farmer families that produce the wonderful cacao that we are privileged to turn into chocolate for you. We hope you find this report enlightening as well as thought-provoking. 

If you’re paying $1.99 for a candy bar, you’re not going to be able to support much of anything except the bottom line of the big manufacturer...click here to find out why

 The second live segment features our retail shop in front of our production area.

 Click here for Part 2 of the live segment on Fox10 News

 Check out this great live piece from Fox10 News/Corey's Corner. A behind the scenes look at how we make Zak's Chocolate...click here

From now until we publish the 2016 edition of Best of Phoenix,

New Times is naming 100 Tastemakers — 

members of our local culinary community who help shape the way we eat, drink, and think about food in Phoenix. Some you'll know, and for others, it'll be a first introduction, but each person on our list deserves a nod for helping make our city so delicious.

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“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

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.