Our Commitment To You & Cacao

As many of you know, we are in the middle of building an entirely new (and much bigger) chocolate forge in Northern California!

Thanks to our amazing partners and customers, we have outgrown our humble original facility.

While our new production space is changing and growing, our integrity as a leading global ceremonial cacao crafter will remain the same. 

We still believe that people want and desire 100% cacao that is healthy, tastes good, easy to use, and is alive in spirit; and that people want to heal themselves and their communities with approachable rituals. 

And we still believe that cacao is a vehicle for worldwide social impact with the ability to heal the planet, as well as fellow humans.

So, as we turn to our new cacao forge and our collective future, we want to take you on a fun journey into our past. 

We hope this creates feelings of trust, appreciation, and connection between us, and that you feel as excited as we do about the future!

It All Started in Mexico

After Jonas, our founder, completed graduate school, he left his job to follow his heart to Mexico. 

During this trip, he first encountered ceremonial cacao in Oaxaca Mexico in 2012. A Zapotec elder named Maria (pictured above), who has since passed away, introduced Jonas to the traditional and ancestral process of making cacao.

In the courtyard of her home over the coals of a fire, they toasted the cacao held by a clay comal and hand-peeled it beneath the village's sacred mountain. As they shared stories and laughter, they stone-ground and mixed the cacao with local honey.

This was the most flavorful and alive chocolate Jonas had ever experienced, and he felt more connected to the process than ever! 

Then and there, the dream of Firefly chocolate was sparked.

Firefly Is Born & Grown

When Jonas returned to the US, he began experimenting making his first batches of home chocolate, from scratch.

Cacao had taken over his heart and it became what he felt most alive doing. 

A couple of years later in May 2014, he incorporated Firefly Chocolate, and in November that same year, he signed a commercial lease and began building a chocolate studio from scratch. 

It was an unfinished 1,000 sq. ft. warehouse in northern Sonoma County, that needed paint, electrical, plumbing, flooring, and everything else to turn it into a commercial kitchen space. It was a big project, but well worth it. 

These were very humble origins. Jonas took no outside investment. He opened a crowd-funded presale, a crowd-funded loan, and a small business loan to get him started, while also working part-time job in solar until July 2015 to help pay the bills.

Eventually, he would quit to fully surrender to his blossoming passion for food, tropical ecosystems, and community.

Healing People & The Planet

The bean-to-bar phase of Firefly is where we developed our artisan craftsmanship and took the manufacturing process out of the hands of the big corporations, putting it back into the hands of small innovative chocolate makers like Firefly who care more about your health and the health of the planet.

Jonas describes this period as a "constant free-fall". Every day, he put everything on the line to keep his dream of cacao alive and to keep sharing his love through cacao with the world.

As we move into our new space, this is what we remain committed to doing: putting everything on the line to keep the dream alive of crafting and sharing ceremonial cacao. 

To make this dream a reality, we are in the process of opening a new 8,400 sq. ft. chocolate forge where all the new magic will happen. We are extremely excited that this will help us continue growing at home and abroad.

And we are humbled and honored to continue intentionally crafting ceremonial cacao as a unique and healing medicine for all. Stay on the lookout over the next months for more updates on our chocolate forge.

Thank You For Your Support

While there will always be challenges in our business (and there are many, such as custom equipment breaking down and cacaos going out of stock for longer than we'd like!), rest assured that the integrity with which we founded Firefly will remain the same.

And better yet, we expect that the quality of our ceremonial cacaos will improve!

Thank you for being a part of our journey. Thank you for your patience and understanding. Thank you for your continued love and support!

Here’s to many more years of sharing cacao with you and cacao lovers worldwide!

Cacaos We're Loving

Medicinal Mushrooms 100% Ceremonial Cacao Drink

100% Ceremonial Cacao Drink Sampler Kit

Tantric Rose Blossom 100% Ceremonial Cacao Drink