Chocolate Maker vs Chocolatier

In chatting with customers who visit our store, we often talk about the difference between chocolate makers and chocolatiers. It’s often a surprising revelation to many people that most chocolate companies are either one or the other. So what’s the difference?

Chocolate makers actually make chocolate, as the name implies. The work of a chocolate maker involves sourcing cacao, usually in the form of cacao beans, and processing them through many stages to create chocolate that is a consumable product. The final product could be a chocolate bar that’s designed to highlight a specific cacao, or flavor profile, or a chocolate couverture that’s designed to be used as an ingredient for other products. The job of a chocolate maker is not easy. It takes many steps, expert knowledge across disciplines and specialized equipment to process cacao.

Chocolatiers on the other hand, use the chocolate crafted by chocolate makers to create a wide range of confections such as bonbons, truffles, pralines, caramels, chocolate bars, etc. The expertise of a chocolatier is revealed by how they bring together all the ingredients which are paired with chocolate. In our case, each bonbon is an entirely different creation whereby a Chef Sandy selects a particular type of chocolate based on its origin, flavor, or taste and matches it with the right nuts, butter, dairy, fruit, or other ingredients to create the final product. Chocolatiers truly are chefs who bring years of experience in ingredient sourcing, preparation, knowledge, craft and presentation.

At andSons, we take the cacao we use very seriously as it’s such an important part of our product. Our primary partner is Valrhona, a certified B-Corp premium chocolate maker based in France. A favorite among Chefs and professionals, Valrhona has built a transparent business model for their cacao sourcing and manufacturing that provides ethically, sustainably and socially responsible products.

We’re proud to be a part of the chocolate industry and admire the work of all the various people that bring cacao to life. In whichever form it is consumed, the result always makes people happy.