Cru Chocolate is an Artisan Drinking Chocolate Company.

Founded in 2016 by Karla McNeil Rueda, an Honduran Woman, Industrial Engineer, and Culinary Artist.

Karla couldn't find all-natural and sustainably-made chocolate drinks that were up to her high standard of quality, flavor, and purity. So, she started Cru Chocolate to make them for herself and for people like her who refuse to compromise their ethics and taste for a drink.

Working closely and directly with passionate and skillful farmers allows Cru to bring the freshest, most potent, and highest-quality ingredients from the farm to their workshop in Roseville, California. Where they are transformed into chocolate, formulated into unique recipes, manufactured and packaged into beautiful chocolate drinks. Warranting only the Best, all made by Cru, Not Outsourcing, Not Compromising.

Cru Chocolate is Deeply rooted in Mesoamerican Cacao and Chocolate Heritage, and is empowered to re-imagine a New World of Chocolate. Where Farmers and Chocolate Lovers can Drink Together to a Better Future.

Our story... us isn’t just U.S.

Yeah, there is a lot of history before us, so let's start in the middle.

Well, lets start by saying that

Chocolate has been to Central America what Blue Jeans have been to the USA;

You can go many ways from there; but we can all agree that these both have shaped our society, culture, politics, art, and it has surely helped define us.

Chocolate comes from a tree?

Made from those beautiful little seeds inside fruit pods that grow on the tree. Yes, chocolate can be traced back to a tree.... not from a cow, or milk or Europe or the Co-op.

Cacao is a tree that is native to the Americas and about 4,000 years ago her pods and beans fell into the hands of the Mayan people of Central America, they were the first ones to cultivate, ferment and dry cacao and to invent the process to make chocolate, a process that we still use today; that consists of roasting, de-shelling, stone grinding the beans and creating tablets that would be melted into drinks.

(So, We can thank the Mayans for that invention!)

Chocolate literally means Bitter Water.

Traditional metate used to stone grind chocolate

Chocolates origin is a cacao based drink, in some cases blended with corn and spices, that you drink for breakfast or in the afternoon following a long day of work. Cacao as well as corn have spiritual and cultural significance in Central America. They are plants that have evolved along with humans and that together have weaved and enriched the net of life as we know it today.

This is how our founder Karla, who was raised in Honduras, knows chocolate... surrounded by tales and stories written on the mountains and spoken by the wind bordering the magic and reality.

Connections Across Oceans.

Fast forward many years later and after migrating like fishes and butterflies do, leaving her home in Honduras and moving to the USA riding jet streams and chasing dreams, finding adventures, being creative and doing what migrators do.

After pursuing a degree in Engineering and an advanced degree in Sustainability, Karla McNeil-Rueda studied Cacao technology and fine chocolate confectionery at the Chocolate Institute of Latin America and the Caribbean in La Habana, Cuba.

She learned to integrate and combine her empirical and cultural knowledge of chocolate with her experience as an engineer, founded Cru Chocolate, a hand crafted bean to bar company that sources fine Cacao from Mesoamerica and the Caribbean to use in their chocolate and other Cacao based creations.

Cru Chocolate’s mission includes a focus on assisting people at origin in creating and growing their own business by providing education and facilitating small scale equipment.