Aroko Chocolate: From Home Melanger to Global Brand
Johonny and Dubraska are Venezuelan, and when they first became interested in making chocolate professionally, they wanted to work with cacao from Venezuela. The problem was they couldn't find couverture made from the origins they had in mind — so instead of settling for what was already on the market, they decided to learn how to make the chocolate themselves.
We sat down with Johonny to talk about how that decision turned into Aroko Chocolate, an award-winning bean-to-bar brand now sold in around a dozen countries.
Can you tell us how Aroko got started?
Our journey started back in 2018. We spent several years studying chocolate production before founding Aroko in 2021, and most of 2022 went into building our first factory in Italy.
From the beginning, we wanted the business to reflect a few clear principles — purity and honesty, not just in the finished product but throughout the whole chain, from the farms we work with to the way the chocolate is made. For Dubraska and me, it also became a way of rediscovering our Venezuelan roots.
"We want to be as transparent as possible."
What did those early days look like, practically?
Our first batches were made at home using a small 3 kg Premier melanger. We actually learned an important lesson early on almost by accident: we weren't sure how long the chocolate needed to refine, so we left a batch running too long. It became extremely smooth, but the viscosity changed — the mass incorporated air and the chocolate got very thick and hard to work with, even though the flavor itself was still good.
That showed us early on that starting with good cacao isn't enough. Every production decision affects the result.
How did you move from that home setup to more professional equipment?
The 3 kg melanger was fine for testing, but it had real limitations — especially the lack of precise speed control. As we learned more about refining, we got a lot more specific about what we actually needed from our equipment.
Around 2020–2021 we started researching machines from different manufacturers for a more serious setup. One thing that made KADZAMA stand out was how much practical information was available before we even bought anything — videos showing the machines in operation, explaining how to use them, showing the cleaning process. That gave us a much clearer idea of what working with the equipment would actually be like day to day. Ease of cleaning was already a priority for us, and with some other manufacturers it was much harder to get that level of detail before making a decision.
We ended up trying a 7 kg KADZAMA melanger, which became part of our first home lab alongside a SilkTemper. It exceeded our expectations and gave us the control we'd been missing.
"Controlling the speed and the pressure was an important factor in keeping more flavors in our chocolate."
That 7 kg machine became a real workhorse.
"I think it worked around 300 days last year. It never stopped."
Because we were happy both with its reliability and with the chocolate it produced, scaling up with KADZAMA felt like the natural next step. As production grew, we added 35 kg and 65 kg KADZAMA melangers — a big jump from a home-scale machine to equipment built for much larger volumes.
What changed once you moved from a home lab into an actual factory?
At home, making another small batch just costs you more time. In a factory, every extra batch also means repeated loading, unloading and cleaning — and rent, electricity and labor keep accumulating in the background regardless.
I like to put it simply:
"For grinding 7 kilos of product and grinding 70 kilos, it's the same time. With the small machine, you have to do it ten times."
Once you hit a certain scale, operator time becomes just as important as machine capacity. That experience really changed how we approached equipment purchases going forward. A smaller machine costs less upfront, but if you only buy for today's volume, you can create a bottleneck for yourself very quickly.
I reached the same conclusion with tempering equipment — looking back, we probably could have bought a larger tempering machine earlier. The price difference feels significant at first, but once your volumes grow, the extra capacity and convenience end up outweighing that initial saving.
My advice isn't just "buy bigger" — it's to think several steps ahead. Choose equipment for the business you expect to build, not only for the batches you're producing right now.
Aroko started with just two bars. How did the range grow from there?
We entered the market with two bars — Porcelana and Chuao — both made with distinctive Venezuelan cacao origins. From day one we chose to work with some of the best cacao we could source, and that's still true today.
Since then the range has grown to more than 20 products: chocolate bars, Piedmont hazelnut and pistachio spreads, drinking chocolate, and small 10 g tasting formats.
As the range grew, production efficiency became part of the product development conversation too. Filled bars, for example, come out at roughly 50–100 per day, compared to around 1,000 standard bars per day on our regular production line. The labor behind each product has to make sense.
Consistency matters just as much as making a great product in the first place.
"It doesn't matter if you do one great batch if you cannot replicate it."
Your launch wasn't exactly smooth, was it?
No — we officially started selling in early 2023, after a difficult first launch. Our packaging didn't arrive until November 2022, by which point many Italian specialty stores had already finished their Christmas buying.
So we had finished chocolate but not many customers yet. We ended up submitting our first two bars to competitions mainly to get professional feedback — and both were awarded. Porcelana 72% and Chuao 70% both received European Silver at the 2023 International Chocolate Awards, with Chuao also picking up the Gold Italian distinction and later Bronze at the 2023 World Final. We also won the Emerging Chocolatier award from Compagnia del Cioccolato that year.
That recognition gave us real visibility with specialty retailers. At this point Aroko is sold in roughly a dozen countries, including markets beyond Europe in North America and Asia.
What would you tell someone starting a bean-to-bar business today?
A few things we learned the hard way:
- Pay attention to winnowing if you're going bean-to-bar. Roasting can start with fairly simple equipment as long as temperature is controlled, but efficient winnowing is one of the harder stages to get right.
- Choose enough grinding capacity. Buy the biggest grinder that reasonably fits your budget — repeated small batches eat up a huge amount of operator time as you grow.
- Invest in tempering early. A good tempering machine can meaningfully increase your capacity, and it only becomes more important as volumes rise.
- Invest in good moulds. Cheap moulds wear out fast under real commercial use.
- Plan beyond your current volume. Equipment that's perfect for testing can become your bottleneck much sooner than you'd expect once the business starts to scale.
On grinding specifically:
"For any grinder, the bigger you can afford, do it."
We're proof of that progression ourselves — from a basic 3 kg melanger, to a 7 kg KADZAMA that ran almost every day of the year, to the 35 kg and 65 kg machines we run now.
Any final thoughts?
Good equipment doesn't replace craftsmanship — it gives you more control over the process and removes the limitations that show up once a successful product needs to be made at a larger scale. But craftsmanship on its own isn't a guarantee of quality either.
"Just because you're doing it the craft way doesn't mean it's going to be good."
We started out trying to make the Venezuelan chocolate we couldn't find anywhere else. Today Aroko has an award-winning portfolio sold across international markets — but the principle behind it hasn't changed: understand the product you want to make, build a process you can control, and choose equipment that can grow with it.
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