Hi friend! I’m Jonas, founder of Ora Cacao.

After roasting cacao beans on an open fire, hand peeling them beneath a sacred mountain, and grinding them to paste with stones under the guidance of a Zapotec elder in Oaxaca in 2012, I couldn’t stop thinking about cacao.

There was a wild essence to the cacao that I had never felt from chocolate before. An aliveness and a spirit.

That’s why I started Ora Cacao, inspired by the wisdom of ancient traditions in which cacao was revered as a medicine and treated with love, care, and integrity.

The truth is, cacao can be life changing. Its mood boosting compounds can alleviate depression and anxiety, its gentle stimulating effect can reduce or replace coffee, and it can be a beautiful way to find greater meaning through ritual.

We built our own cacao factory so that we could stay true to our values and make the best pure 100% cacao available. Today Ora Cacao stewards direct trade relationships with thousands of small farmers so we can buy regeneratively farmed and ethically sourced cacao. And everyday we’re building community with folks like yourself who desire a more meaningful connection to cacao.

I’m thrilled you’re feeling the call to connect with cacao. I hope it’s as transformational for you as it has been for me.

Love, Jonas

We craft cacao as medicine, which requires full energetic integrity across the supply chain and the business model.

This means we engage in long term, direct, and ethical trade for premium quality beans from regenerative cacao farms, and we insure our farmers with our Farmer Climate Resiliency Fund.

By sharing how to work with cacao intentionally, with gratitude, and reciprocity, we exit unconscious consumerism and come into right relationship with the living world.

Like this, cacao reweaves us back into the web of life as stewards of this beautiful earth.

The Ora Team

  • Mama Cacao

  • Jonas Wonka, Founder

  • Nik, Operations

  • Shaina, Marketing

  • Brian, eComm

  • Connor, Production

  • Lake, Community

  • The Cacao Van

Honoring Our Cacao Teacher

  • Maria, Zapotec elder teaching Jonas traditional cacao preparation

  • Jonas with Maria and her husband Felix

  • Maria & Jonas in Teotitlan del Valle

In April 2012, I traveled to Oaxaca Mexico. Shortly into my stay there, I was invited to stay in Teotitlán del Valle, a Zapotec town with strong chocolate traditions.

When I visited Maria, she asked me if I had ever made chocolate before. I had barely said no and she was already on her way to get the cacao beans. So began an afternoon of making chocolate the traditional way ‐ open fire roasted, hand peeled within sight of their sacred mountain, and stone ground with a molino.

The result? A honey sweetened chocolate paste, fresher and more delicious than any chocolate I had ever tasted before.