Longtime Airdrie resident Andrew Bennett is inspiring others to chase their dreams, regardless of age or what stage of life they’re at. The 47 year-old recently quit his 30-year career in the IT industry to become a craft-chocolate maker.
Bennett discovered through a specialty coffee shop that coffee roasters were using creative techniques to make high-end coffee, and that sparked an idea to try the same with cacao beans, he says.
“I always had an interest in chocolate and desserts. And craft chocolate is a very new industry — especially to Canada,” says Bennett. “I flew to Belize and travelled the whole country to visit farmers and locals and see the process. I came back with 40 kilos of cacao beans and started experimenting.”
He began making chocolate from bean to bar in June 2024, and says the process can take anywhere from three days to one month. It entails infusing the ingredients and processing, grinding and moulding the chocolate.
The passionate chocolate maker named his business CacaoWorks and works out of a commercial kitchen that was built for his business earlier this year. Cacao beans come from the same tree as cocoa beans, but they are raw and unprocessed, whereas cocoa beans are typically dried and roasted.
“I get the cacao beans directly from the smallholder farms in countries such as Peru, Madagascar, Vietnam and Thailand. I take the beans and I break them down and make the chocolate itself,” says Bennett. “A lot of chocolate just tastes like chocolate. But chocolate can taste like so much more. It can be like a fine wine or a great coffee, where it has dimensional flavours. I wanted to bring that to the local market.”
Bennett has travelled around the world to attend chocolate shows and bring home commercial equipment for his business. He offers a variety of craft chocolate bars with unique flavours that are hard to find elsewhere, including saskatoon berry pie, black garlic and dark spruce. Each bar comes in specialty packaging and can be purchased online or at All Things Pretty Market on 1st Avenue N.W. (featured on page 62).
“One cool thing about craft chocolate is you eat less and enjoy more,” he says. “It’s meant to be an experience, as opposed to a snack.”
Bennett’s flavour inspiration comes from challenging the norms of what chocolate should taste like, and from popular treats or flavours, such as peanut butter and jam, he says.
Bennett is building his chocolate business while balancing life with three children and his wife in full-time school. And a puppy.
“We’re putting it all in to make this happen,” he says. “It poses challenges every day, but it teaches me patience and perseverance to keep going. The vision is greater than all the challenges.”
For more information, visit cacaoworks.ca or follow CacaoWorks on Instagram.
