Frequently asked questions

Beyond Good is a craft chocolate and vanilla company that makes its products at the source, in Africa. We are, to our knowledge, the only chocolate made in Africa where the cocoa is grown that is available in national U.S. grocery retail as of 2026.

As of 2026 we work with more than 1,000 farmers across Madagascar and Uganda. They grow cocoa and vanilla in shade forests — the same forests that are critical habitat for endangered species. The chocolate is made at our factory in Antananarivo, Madagascar which employs over 100 people.

Our vanilla comes from the SAVA region of northeastern Madagascar, the source of most of the world's vanilla, and is 100% traceable to the farmers who grow it. It's cultivated in agroforestry systems, meaning the vines grow under existing forest canopy rather than on cleared land.

Making chocolate and vanilla at the source does two things. It cuts out layers of middlemen, so farmers earn more than they would under fair trade. And beans reach production fresh rather than after months in transit, which is most of what you taste in the finished products.

Yes. Beyond Good was formerly known as Madécasse. We announced the change from Madécasse to Beyond Good in late 2019 and started rolling out new packaging in 2020— same company, same farmer partnerships, same made-in-Madagascar model.

The name changed because "Madécasse" described where we're from, not what we're doing. Beyond Good describes the goal: not just sourcing good ingredients, but building a supply chain that's structurally better for the people in it. If you knew us as Madécasse, you're in the right place.

Beyond Good was founded in 2008 by two former Peace Corps volunteers in Madagascar. They did the unthinkable and built a chocolate factory in Madagascar without much experience or knowledge. Today, founder Tim McCollum serves as CEO from our Brooklyn, NY office. Our factory is based in Antananarivo, Madagascar.

Beyond Good chocolate is made at a factory we operate in Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar. The facility is called AMCHO — American Malagasy Chocolate. We run production ourselves rather than outsourcing to a contract manufacturer. As of 2026, our cocoa comes from two origins: Madagascar and Uganda. Cocoa from both is shipped to Antananarivo for manufacturing.

Making chocolate in Madagascar is unusual. Most cocoa-growing countries export raw beans and import finished chocolate, which means the profitable part of the process happens somewhere else. Manufacturing at origin keeps that value in the country and gives us direct control over fermentation, roasting, and flavor.

Beyond Good makes chocolate in Africa for two reasons: it produces better chocolate, and it keeps more economic value in the country where the cocoa is grown.

Flavor is the main reason. Cocoa quality depends heavily on fermentation and drying, and on how quickly beans move from harvest to production. Our beans travel a fraction of the distance they would in a conventional supply chain, so they reach us fresher. Being in the same country also means we can work with farmers on post-harvest processing directly, to our specification, rather than accepting whatever arrives at a port months later.

Africa grows the majority of the world's cocoa and vanilla, but most of it leaves the continent as a raw commodity. The value-added steps — roasting, grinding, conching, packaging — happen in Europe and North America. The growing country earns commodity prices; the manufacturing country earns the margin. Making chocolate in Madagascar moves those steps, and that income, to where the crop is grown. It also creates skilled manufacturing jobs rather than only farm labor.

Shorter supply chains mean farmers earn more. In Madagascar we buy directly from farmers. In Uganda we buy from a farmer cooperative. Neither route runs through the layers of buying agents, exporters, and importers that separate most cocoa farmers from the companies that use their beans. Farmer poverty is the chocolate industry's central problem, and the length of the supply chain is a large part of why. Removing those layers means more of what we pay reaches the farmer and lets us hold our prices below comparable premium craft chocolate bars.

Yes. Beyond Good is bean-to-bar craft chocolate.

Neither "craft" nor "artisan" is a regulated term, so it's worth being specific about what we actually do. We select the farms our cocoa comes from, ferment to defined schedules to develop flavor, roast in small batches to preserve each origin's character, and make the finished bar ourselves. In Madagascar we buy directly from farmers. In Uganda we buy from a farmer cooperative.

What makes us different from most craft makers is where the work happens. Nearly all bean-to-bar chocolate is made in Europe or North America from imported beans. We make ours in Madagascar, at origin. That shortens the supply chain, removes several layers of exporters and importers, and lets us sell craft-quality chocolate at a lower price than most premium bars.

Single origin chocolate is made from cocoa sourced from one place, rather than blended from multiple origins. There's no legal standard for how specific "one place" has to be — it can mean a country, a region, or a single farm. Every Beyond Good chocolate bar is single origin, currently Madagascar or Uganda.

Most chocolate isn't single origin. Large brands use bulk commodity cocoa, blended from many countries and largely untraceable. Beyond the supply chain issues that come with untraceable sourcing, blending also flattens flavor; the point of commodity cocoa is consistency, not character.

Single origin chocolate aims to celebrate the character of its variety and its terroir, the soil and environment where it grew:

• Our Madagascar bars are bright and red fruit-forward, thanks to their Criollo varietal and the unique terroir in beautiful Madagascar. Criollo is the world’s rarest variety, at less than 5% of world supply per Nutrada.
• Our Uganda bars are richer and more traditionally chocolatey, with notes of dried dark fruit, fudge and brownies. The varietal we use from Uganda is Trinitario, which combines the fine flavor of Criollo with the consistency of Forastero.

Variety and terroir are only part of it. What happens after harvest, specifically fermentation and drying, shapes flavor as much as genetics do. In the conventional supply chain, post-harvest processing is left to a chain of collectors and exporters with no stake in flavor. Instead, bean-to-bar chocolate makers like Beyond Good manage it to their own specifications, alongside the farmers who grow the beans.

Beyond Good makes chocolate from two origins and each tastes noticeably different.

Madagascar is bright, fruity, and naturally tangy — red fruit, raspberry, black cherry, citrus, and a clean finish. It's not what most people expect chocolate to taste like, which is part of the point.

Uganda is the counterpoint: rich, deeply chocolatey, and smooth, with notes of dried dark fruit like fig and raisin. Closer to a classic dark chocolate but with more depth.

Both are single origin and traceable. When we add other ingredients, or inclusions, like salt, nibs, fruit and other delicious elements, we choose them to bring out each origin's character rather than cover it.

Most chocolate brands, including many that position themselves as premium, don't make chocolate from scratch. They buy pre-made cocoa liquor, also called cocoa mass, which is essentially roasted and ground cocoa beans supplied by one of a handful of large processors. They then re-melt it and blend in sugar and other ingredients. These chocolate brands typically have little visibility into where the cocoa was grown, who farmed it, or how it was handled before it arrived.

Beyond Good does the opposite. The cocoa liquor other brands buy, we make ourselves. Beans arrive at our factory fermented and dried to our specifications, and everything after that happens under our roof: sorting, roasting, cracking the beans and winnowing away the husks, grinding the nibs into liquor, blending with sugar, conching to build texture and flavor, tempering, and molding the finished bar.

In Madagascar, nothing sits between the farmer and our factory. In Uganda, we buy through a farmer cooperative, still a fraction of the layers in a conventional supply chain. That's what "made at the source" means: control over every step, traceability back to the farm, and a bar that tastes like where it came from.

Flavor can vary between batches of craft chocolate because single origin cocoa is an agricultural product, not a standardized commodity blend. Flavor shifts with rainfall, seasonality, and which farms contributed most to a given harvest.

We run sensory analysis at our factory and target a consistent profile based on the particular bar but small variations between batches are expected rather than flaws. It's the same reason wine from a single vineyard tastes different vintage to vintage.

If you have any concerns or questions about the taste of your bar, please reach out to us at lenny@beyondgood.com.

The cocoa percentage is the share of the bar, by weight, that comes from the cocoa bean — both cocoa solids and cocoa butter. The rest is mostly sugar. For example, our 70% Cocoa Pure Dark Chocolate bar is 70% cocoa and roughly 30% sugar.

Dark chocolate is a short recipe: cocoa beans, cocoa butter, and sugar. Cocoa butter is pressed from the bean itself, and we add a small amount back to control texture and the way the chocolate melts. Milk chocolate, which we don’t current make, works the same way; the percentage still refers to cocoa but the remainder includes milk powder along with sugar.

As a general rule, a lower percentage is sweeter and milder, and a higher percentage is more intense and less sweet.

When a bar includes another ingredient, like our 73% Cocoa Hazelnut Dark Chocolate, for example, the percentage refers to the chocolate itself, not the finished bar.

Today, Beyond Good makes chocolate that ranges from 60% to 100% cocoa.

No. The percentage tells you the proportions of a recipe, not the quality of what went into it. Two 70% bars can taste entirely different depending on where the cocoa grew, and how it was fermented, dried, roasted, and conched. A high percentage made from commodity beans is just a more concentrated version of ordinary cocoa. Flavor comes from the bean and the process, not the number.

They taste noticeably different. Madagascar is bright and fruit-forward; Uganda is rich and classically chocolatey. The difference comes from cocoa variety, growing conditions, and how the beans are handled after harvest.

Madagascar tastes of red fruit, raspberry, and cherry, with a lively acidity that occurs naturally in the bean rather than being added. Our Madagascar cocoa is Criollo, the world's rarest variety at less than 5% of global supply per Nutrada. Criollo is scarce because it's low-yielding and highly susceptible to disease; it survives where flavor is valued more than volume. Its pods are distinctive: deeply grooved and bumpy, in red or yellow.

Uganda is richer and more traditionally chocolatey, with deep cocoa notes and hints of fig and raisin.  Our Uganda cocoa is Trinitario, a cross between Criollo and Forastero bred deliberately to combine the two: Criollo's flavor with Forastero's yield and disease resistance. It's classified as a fine flavor cocoa.

Most American chocolate, premium and mainstream alike, is made from Forastero grown in West Africa — the commodity variety, and about 85% of world supply. It's bred for volume and consistency rather than flavor. If you think all chocolate tastes more or less the same, it's because nearly all the chocolate you've had comes from the same supply chain.

Our two origins showcase very different expressions of what great African cocoa can be. Both are single origin, both are traceable, and both are made into chocolate at our factory in Madagascar.

No. Dutch processing, or alkalization, treats cocoa with an alkaline solution to reduce acidity and mellow flavor. It's used mainly to standardize cocoa powder, and it plays no part in how we make chocolate.

We make our bars from whole cocoa nibs, roasted and ground in their natural state. Alkalization exists to make cocoa taste neutral and consistent. Ours isn't either of those things: each origin has a character of its own, and that's the point. We ferment and roast to preserve it rather than process it out.

Cocoa naturally contains trace amounts of cadmium and lead, as do many plant foods like leafy greens, legumes, and root vegetables. All chocolate contains some. The meaningful questions are how much, and what a maker does to keep levels low.

We test our products regularly through an independent third-party laboratory (Eurofins) and is in compliance with FDA and Prop 65 standards.

Cadmium and lead reach cocoa by different routes, so we address them differently:

Cadmium is taken up from soil through the plant's roots and ends up in the bean itself. Levels are determined largely by where cocoa is grown.

Lead is not absorbed by the plant. It settles onto beans from air and dust, primarily after harvest during drying and transport, which makes it a question of handling. We dry beans in rural areas away from industrial pollution, on raised beds that keep them off the ground, and our farmers use wooden tools. Our beans also travel a short distance to our factory rather than spending months in transit through a conventional supply chain.

Beyond Good dark chocolate bars are dairy-free and vegan, with one exception as of this writing. Our bars are dark chocolate — cocoa, cocoa butter, and sugar — so they're made without animal ingredients. The exception is our 73% Cocoa Salted Caramel Dark Chocolate, which uses a real dairy caramel.

All of our chocolate is made on shared equipment, so even while the production facility is thoroughly cleaned between each production we do include an advisory "may contain tree nuts, milk, and sesame" on all of our chocolate products.

Be sure to check the ingredient statement for the most accurate information on the product at hand or reach out to us at lenny@beyondgood.com with any additional questions.

Yes. Our chocolates are Kosher certified through SIKS (Services International Kosher Supervision).

Beyond Good chocolate is made with organic cocoa beans, organic cocoa butter and organic cane sugar. Most of our bars are certified USDA Organic. A few inclusions aren't available in certified organic form, so not every bar carries the certification. Please check the wrapper or product page for more specific information.

Some do. We make bars with almonds and hazelnuts, and one with sesame. Our other bars are produced on shared equipment that's cleaned between batches, but we can't guarantee against cross-contact, so all of our chocolate carries a "may contain tree nuts, milk, and sesame" advisory.

Sunflower lecithin is a naturally occurring organic phospholipid (fat) molecule that gets cold-extracted from sunflower oil. For some of our products, we use it to stabilize the bar and create a smoother mouthfeel. It allows us to make consistent bean-to-bar chocolate at scale while remaining soy-free.

Some of our bars do not contain lecithin, like our Pure Dark bars and 100% Cocoa with Dates & Sesame.

For the most accurate ingredient information on a specific bar, check the packaging or product page at beyondgood.com.

Our Pure Dark bars contain four ingredients: organic cocoa beans, organic cane sugar, organic cocoa butter, and sunflower lecithin. Another popular option for folks concerned with ingredients: our 100% Cocoa bar with Dates & Sesame, which is sweetened entirely with dates, no added sugar at all, and contains no lecithin.

Store chocolate in a cool, dry place out of direct sunlight, around 65°F is ideal. A cabinet or pantry works well.

Avoid the refrigerator. Condensation and temperature swings cause bloom, the white or cloudy film that sometimes appears on chocolate. If you have no cool spot in summer, wrap the bar airtight before refrigerating and let it return to room temperature before opening.

If your chocolate has developed white or grey patches on the surface, it hasn't gone moldy, it's bloomed. Bloomed chocolate is completely safe to eat. The texture is just different from a well-tempered bar.

Tempering is the process of heating and cooling chocolate precisely so that the cocoa butter forms the right crystal structure, which is what gives a bar its gloss and its clean snap. Bloom happens when that structure is disturbed.

Fat bloom comes from heat. Cocoa butter migrates to the surface and recrystallizes there. Cocoa butter is white or cream colored at room temperature, so it shows up as white streaks or patches when this migration happens.

Sugar bloom comes from moisture, usually condensation after refrigeration. Surface sugar dissolves and recrystallizes as a fine gritty layer.

Neither affects safety, and neither means the chocolate is old. Storing chocolate somewhere cool and dry prevents both.

Beyond Good is one of the world's largest buyers of gourmet Madagascar vanilla beans and the only company turning them into finished products at the source in Madagascar. Most vanilla on the market travels a long, opaque supply chain from farm to bottle. Ours doesn't.

As of 2026, we work directly with 199 vanilla farmers in the SAVA region of northeastern Madagascar. SAVA is named for its four main districts — Sambava, Antalaha, Vohémar, and Andapa — and produces the majority of the world's vanilla. Every parcel of land is mapped. Every payment is documented. The result is a product we can trace from vine to jar, and one that tastes like it.

Beyond Good Vanilla Beans and Pure Ground Vanilla are prepared and packaged in SAVA. Our Vanilla Extract is currently produced at an extraction facility in the US, using our own Madagascar beans.

We make three formats of pure Madagascar vanilla, all are USDA Organic, gluten-free, Kosher, and 100% traceable to the farm:

• Pure Ground Vanilla: pulverized whole vanilla beans: one ingredient, no additives, a 2026 Good Housekeeping Kitchen Award winner
• Pure Vanilla Extract: a richer vanilla flavor you can see and taste
• Whole Vanilla Beans: Grade A gourmet pods that are noticeably more supple and have a higher vanillin level than others

Learn why all pantries should have three types of vanilla here.

Pure Ground Vanilla is exactly what it sounds like: whole Madagascar vanilla beans, dried and pulverized into a fine powder. One ingredient. Nothing else. It's more versatile than extract because it works in both wet and dry applications — sprinkle it on French toast, yogurt, or fresh fruit; stir it into oatmeal or smoothies; add it to spice rubs or marinades; or use it in baking. In recipes, half a teaspoon of ground vanilla equals one teaspoon of extract.

The SAVA region of northeastern Madagascar, centered around Antalaha — the heartland of Madagascar Bourbon vanilla, the varietal most prized by pastry chefs and bakers worldwide. Our vanilla is hand pollinated, cured, and sundried in the forests of Madagascar, then processed nearby. We work with 199 dedicated vanilla farmers, and every parcel of land and payment is documented. That traceability isn't a marketing claim — it's infrastructure we've built over years of working at origin. Learn more on our Farmer page.

Yes, all of our vanilla products are Kosher certified.

Direct Trade is a sourcing model where buyers purchase goods directly from the producers or farmers rather than through traditional commodity markets or multiple middlemen. In a Direct Trade model, farmers producing quality cocoa (or coffee, tea, etc.) generally make significantly more than the standard market or even Fair Trade. For Direct Trade buyers, like Beyond Good, it means that we are able to work directly with our farmers to improve cocoa quality and flavor.

While our goals may be aligned, we have a different view of how best to empower our farmers.

Fair Trade is a certification with a price floor — and it’s important context to understand what that means in practice. The floor is often still very close to poverty-level wages. The certification also places compliance costs and administrative burdens directly on farmers, who are among the least resourced people in the supply chain. And it doesn't eliminate middlemen — the traditional chain still runs from farmer to collector to exporter to importer to co-manufacturer to brand.

Beyond Good's model is structurally different. We buy directly from farmers — no middlemen, no collectors, no exporters taking a cut, so more of that money ends up in the farmers’ hands. When farmers have more income, they are able to invest in their businesses: planting more trees, acquiring more land, hiring more support staff. The downstream benefits of this are significant both from a reforestation and biodiversity perspective and in the economic development of their community. Learn more about our farmers and see how they are reversing deforestation on our Farmer page.

Our Direct Trade program is independently certified by Quality Certification Services (QCS).

Yes. In Madagascar our partner farmers use agroforestry methods: cocoa grown under shade trees without synthetic pesticides, in a way that supports habitat for the country’s endangered species, including lemurs, and contributes to biodiversity. We purchase on stable annual contracts at premium prices, giving farmers the financial security to invest in their land long-term rather than converting it. In Madagascar, cutting trees for charcoal is a primary driver of deforestation. Our model creates a direct economic incentive to keep trees standing.

We are working with our partners in Uganda to expand agroforestry methods there as well and will be investing in building a support team in-country in the coming 12 months.

Beyond Good has a comprehensive Child Labor Monitoring and Remediation System (CLMRS). Our team visits farms weekly, maintains direct relationships with farmers and their families, and has established clear reporting paths. One of the clearest indicators of a model that's actually working: in 2023, 88.9% of our cocoa farmers' children were in school. By 2025, that number had risen to 97.7%. Properly paid farmers don't need to send their children to work — that's the most durable solution to child labor in cocoa, and it's what our pricing model is designed to enable.

As of 2026, over 100 people work in our factory in Antananarivo. Madagascar is one of the poorest countries in the world, and we're providing skilled manufacturing jobs there — not just sourcing raw materials for someone else to process elsewhere. That economic contribution is part of what 'made at origin' means in practice.

Beyond Good chocolate and vanilla are available at major retailers across the US, including Whole Foods, Target, Sprouts, Kroger, Albertsons, and others. Please check our store locator to find a location near you.

You can also order directly right here, on BeyondGood.com where we ship to addresses in the lower 48 states and DC. We also sell through Amazon.com.

At the moment we do not ship internationally.

For wholesale purchases please find us on Faire, or write to us at lenny@beyondgood.com.