About Ombar

Let The Bean Shine

POWER TO THE CACAO

We’re here to change what chocolate stands for:

From junk

To Joy

From Commodity

To Craft

From sugary same-old

To rich, radiant cacao

We celebrate cacao as nature’s feel-good fuel.

how we make our chocolate

Our story

Ecuador

The cacao wake up call

Back in 2007, our founder Richard had a revelation: the humble cacao bean isn’t just an ingredient, it's a natural powerhouse.

But modern bars chase sugar and sameness, burying the cacao under layers of over-processing, diluting and compromise.

Let the bean shine

Today, we’re a small but mighty team crafting cacao-led chocolate in Cambridge, sourcing fairly from Ecuador, and now stocked in supermarkets across the UK — proving chocolate can taste good and do good.

Cambridge

Our process

1Harvesting

Farmers who own small-holdings in Ecuador harvest the pods from cacao trees and scoop out the beans.

2fermenting

These beans are taken to a post-harvest station nearby where the beans are carefully fermented in wooden boxes for 3-4 days under the watchful eye of Paola.

3Drying

Once fermented, the beans are left on raised beds to air dry in the sun before being transported to our partner in the capital of Ecuador, Quito.

4Gentle heat

We lightly warm the beans for a few minutes - just enough to loosen the outer husk, but still far from traditional roasting, keeping the cacao close to nature.

5Winnowing

The beans are cracked open and the papery husk is separated from the cacao nibs - the pure heart of the bean that becomes chocolate.

1Grinding

We then carefully grind the cacao nibs into a smooth paste called cacao mass. This is our starting point for chocolate.

2Refining

The mass is pumped into another machine called a refiner-conch where it is mixed with the other ingredients and ground for up to 24 hours until the consistency is silky smooth. This is liquid chocolate.

3Tempering

We then pump the chocolate into a machine that cools it to a very specific temperature that forms a crystal structure in the cocoa butter.
This is what gives chocolate a nice snap. It’s more stable too.

4Moulding

The crystallised chocolate is deposited into our special Ombar moulds to form bars (or buttons) with a swanky hi-tech Swiss depositing machine and the bars are then cooled in a giant fridge for about 40 minutes.

5Wrapping

Finally, the chocolate bars are packed on our classic, Swiss wrapping machines.

Cacao hits different

Cocoa? We don’t know her. We use cacao — the bean in its truest, tastiest, most powerful form. (Yes, they sound similar. But that tiny switch of letters = a big shift in flavour, feel, and philosophy.)

Most modern
choc

Cocoa

High-temp, high-processing

High heat & alkalising reduces natural compounds

Flatter, sweeter, same old flavour

Cacao

Lower-temp, minimally processed

Stays close to natural state aka lets the bean shine

Deep, complex, real-bean flavour

We think
nature
knows best

We Put More Cacao in

It’s chocolate with taste dialled up to 100.
To get there, we start with high-cacao recipes — from rich 55% bars right up to 100% pure cacao. More of the real stuff, less of the filler. Simple.

we keep our cool

We take a gentler approach to cacao. Instead of the high-heat roasting used in most chocolate, we take a gentler approach to keep its naturally bold flavour, compounds, and character intact. It’s cacao that’s closer to nature, letting the powerhouse bean do its thing.

we Raise the bar

We make chocolate that’s good for people and planet — sourcing sustainably from Ecuadorian farmer co-ops, paying more than fair trade prices, and crafting with care in our small Cambridge factory. We use organic, real ingredients too: nothing artificial, no shortcuts.