Krissee D’Aguiar owns the bean-to-bar chocolate factory and retail shop River-Sea Chocolates with her husband, Mariano, in Chantilly, Virginia. She landed in the chocolate business eight years ago after a summerlong trip to Brazil to visit her husband’s family. One afternoon during the trip, her 11-year-old son climbed a cacao tree in the backyard where they were attending a barbecue. He pulled off a pod. “Oh, this is the chocolate plant? How do you make chocolate from this?” he asked. It’s a question that led to weeks and months of experimentation and ultimately changed Krissee’s life.
Krissee makes all her chocolate from cacao beans, unlike most chocolate makers in the U.S., who buy it pre-made and melt it down to form delicious candies, truffles, and chocolate-covered things. Making chocolate from beans is far more difficult—a long process that involves fermenting, drying, roasting, and grinding the cacao seeds, then adding in sugar, and tempering to make it snap. But it’s well worth the effort. Doing things this way is less energy intensive, eliminates the need for refrigerated container ships, and makes for some super yummy chocolate.
Tell Congress: Hold the Line on Progress to Cut Air and Climate Pollution
We talked to Krissee at one of her busiest times of the year—leading up to Valentine’s Day—about her midcareer transition to chocolate making, how the climate crisis is changing every aspect of your favorite candy bar, including its price, her relationships with small farmers and landowners, and why sustainability is an intentional pillar of her business.
How did you become a sustainable chocolate maker?
I entered into a bean-to-bar training course through Ecole Chocolat while I was traveling in Brazil with my family after being laid off from my job in IT. All the classes were online. The course taught about good manufacturing practices for making chocolate on a larger scale.
So when we got back to the states, we just hit the ground running, starting with making little batches of chocolate and inviting my friends over to try them. Then we rented a space in a commercial kitchen. And by the end of the year, we had our certifications from the Virginia Department of Agriculture to legally sell it.
What’s your job title, and what do you do on the job on a daily basis?
I’m the Chocolate Executive Officer at River-Sea. I work on business development, I check in on chocolate production, and I taste a lot of chocolate. I make sure that everything’s matching our recipes, and that everybody has what they need to do their jobs.
Sometimes I make chocolate. I do still make the truffles; I really like doing that.
How does your job fight the climate crisis?
I studied natural resource management and Amazonian ecology while I was in college, and I met my husband in Brazil, where he grew up, doing a study abroad program down there. Because of my degree and my passion for environmentalism and my husband’s firsthand experience growing up in a region that’s very lush, we built sustainability into the ethics and mission of our business. For pretty much everything that we do, we’re thinking, “What’s the impact of that?” From the packaging to the way the cacao is grown to the way the pods are transported here.
We’ve done shipments on sail cargo ships, which is a totally carbon neutral way of transporting products. We try to avoid plastics in our packaging at all costs. We work with farms that have environmental and social missions associated with them. It’s actually economically enticing for people to grow cacao because it’s a shade plant. You don’t need to cut down the forest; you can grow it in existing canopy. So now eight years into this business, we’re seeing landowners turning from cattle ranching, paper milling, and soy—really detrimental agricultural practices—to dedicating space to grow cacao instead.
Last year, the price of cacao skyrocketed because of climate change. Because there were multiple years of drought, exacerbated by global warming, in West Africa, and that’s where most of the world’s cacao comes from. And because the price is going up now, more people are wanting to get into it. So there are more reforestation efforts in places like Mexico, Brazil, and the Dominican Republic to modify cacao and turn degraded old cattle pastures into food forests.
So while climate change is making this product more expensive, it’s a good thing in the long run because we want the farmers to make more money. We want cacao to be a sustainable product that is worth their effort.
Was there a specific moment when you decided you wanted to turn this chocolate business into a climate business?
It was on a bus ride during that trip to Brazil. I thought, “This is something where we can actually engage directly with small farmers and landowners.” It was kind of perfect.
We also made part of our business model educating people on this transparent life cycle that we’re following to bring this very special plant, cacao, in an eco-friendly way to consumers. That resonates with a lot of people. We use chocolate tastings to bring people in and teach them about this upstream conduit that’s healthier for the environment. It works because people can actually taste the chocolate we’re producing this way; they can taste how good it is.
What do you love about your job?
I love that I get to eat as much chocolate as I want. I eat chocolate every day.
Tell Congress: Hold the Line on Progress to Cut Air and Climate Pollution