Craft, Celebration, and a Year in Chocolate

When the last holiday wrappers settle and the world finally grows quiet, we pause.
The days between Christmas and the New Year have their own kind of magic — reflective, unhurried, warm in a way that has nothing to do with temperature. It’s the perfect moment to look back on the year through the lens of craft, flavor, and community.

This year began, as it always does, with cacao.
Single-origin beans from Uganda, Ecuador, and the Dominican Republic arrived in burlap sacks, each with its own story waiting inside. Some carried notes of coffee and fig. Others tasted of brown sugar, citrus, or warm spice. Before any bar was born, we spent time with these beans — roasting them, listening to their rhythm, and learning what each origin wanted to become.

In the kitchen, our team moved in familiar patterns:
melting chocolate, tempering, hand-cutting bark, filling bonbons one careful pour at a time. You can feel when something is made by hand — there’s a quiet softness to it, an honesty that machines can’t replicate. These small, intentional decisions shape every Makenu bar and every seasonal treat that leaves our café.

The heart of your year lived in the moments when chocolate connected people.
Someone tasting a new origin for the first time, children pressing their faces to the pastry case, friends sharing bars at dinner tables and gatherings big and small.

And then there were the moments that surprised us:
a new flavor that came alive unexpectedly; long nights preparing pies for the holidays; conversations around the roasting drum that reminded us why we do this work in the first place.

Chocolate can feel simple, but it carries a world inside it.
It holds land, labor, memory, and meaning in every square. When you savor it slowly, you begin to feel those layers — the people behind the beans, the hands behind the craft, the stories that traveled from field to fermentary to roaster to your table.

As we step into a new year, our hope is the same as it’s always been:
that Makenu chocolate brings warmth to your days, connection to your gatherings, and a bit of wonder to your palate.

Thank you for being part of this journey.
Here’s to the stories we’ll share — and savor — in 2026.