Wouter Tjeertes
Pure Chocolate Jamaica - Starting From the Bean
The Bakery Excursion
I was six years old when I decided what my life would be. My school took us on an excursion to a bakery in town, and I remember standing there, small, watching people take flour and butter and sugar and turn them into something you could hold in your hand and share with someone. Nobody had to explain it to me. I just knew. That was the work I wanted to do.
I grew up in the Zaanstreek, in the Netherlands, a place that has been processing cocoa for generations. As a boy, I didn’t think anything of it. It was simply home. It’s only now, standing in a chocolate factory in Ocho Rios, that I look back and think how strange and wonderful it is. The cocoa was all around me long before I understood it would become my life.
Grams, Guests and the Hundredth Dessert
For years, pastry was everything. I worked my way through kitchens, and eventually I became an Executive Pastry Chef and then a Director of Pastry at resorts. Those kitchens teach you things you never forget. You learn precision, because a few grams can ruin a recipe. You learn discipline, because the guests are coming whether you feel ready or not. You learn consistency, because the hundredth dessert has to be as good as the first. I loved it. I still love taking something simple and making it into a moment for someone.
But after enough years, a question starts to sit with you. What else could I build with everything I’ve learned?
The Beginning of the Book
The answer found me in St. Lucia. Rennae and I went there and learned how chocolate is made, really made, from the bean. As a pastry chef I knew chocolate well, but only as an ingredient that arrived in a box. Now I was seeing what came before. Fermentation. Drying. Roasting. Every step changed the flavour, and I was fascinated. It felt like I had been reading the last chapter of a book my whole career, and suddenly someone handed me the beginning.
I remember thinking that there was something special about making chocolate in the place where the cocoa grows. Jamaica grows beautiful cocoa. Why should all of the craft, all of the value, happen somewhere else?
A Home Kitchen in 2017
In 2017, Rennae and I started Pure Chocolate Jamaica. I would love to tell you we opened the doors of a factory, but that isn’t the truth. We started in a home kitchen. No established brand, no guaranteed customers, no proper equipment. Just the two of us, an idea, and everything we had put into it. I had left the structure of resort kitchens, where there was always a system and a team and a budget, and now every decision was ours. I was making chocolate in the morning and trying to understand finances at night. I had to learn how to find customers, how to build a team, how to create a market for something many people had never thought about: Jamaican chocolate, made in Jamaica.
When the Planes Stopped, and Then the Wind Came
Then COVID came, and almost took it all.
So much of our business depended on tourism. When the planes stopped, our customers disappeared nearly overnight. We still had bills. We still had obligations. I won’t pretend it was anything but frightening. We came very close to bankruptcy. You lie awake at night thinking about everything you’ve sacrificed and wondering if it’s about to vanish. We made hard decisions. We kept searching for a way through. And we kept going, because we believed in what we were doing and in what Jamaican cocoa could be.=
We worked our way back. Slowly. And when we were finally strong enough, we invested in a brand-new manufacturing facility. For me, that building meant years of effort. It meant we had survived. It meant we were ready for the next chapter.
Then Hurricane Melissa damaged it.
I don’t know how to describe that feeling except to say that it hurts in a particular way when it happens just as you finally begin to look ahead with confidence. But pastry taught me something long ago. When a recipe fails, you don’t walk away from the kitchen. You clean up, you understand what happened, and you start again. So that is what we are doing. We are repairing, rebuilding, step by step. I still believe in this. That belief is what gets me up in the morning.
Chocolate That Belongs Here
Today we have a 3,000-square-foot factory and a retail shop and chocolate experience studio in Ocho Rios. We roast the beans ourselves. We work with coconut, ginger, cinnamon, lemongrass, rum, even jerk seasoning. The challenge is always balance, letting those flavours speak without drowning out the cocoa. I didn’t come here to make European chocolate in Jamaica. I came to bring what I know together with what Jamaica already has, so the chocolate truly belongs here. We work with Jamaican artists on our packaging, too, because a bar should carry the island’s creativity on the outside as well as the inside.
When someone buys our chocolate, they are supporting farmers, our team, our suppliers, those artists. That’s what building means to me. More of the value of Jamaica staying in Jamaica.
For the One Far From Home
And sometimes I think about a person in London or Toronto or New York who hasn’t been home in years, unwrapping a bar on Christmas morning. I grew up far from here myself. I know the place you come from never really leaves you. I hope one taste takes them back, even for a moment. I hope they feel proud.
Don't Underestimate a Small Beginning
To any young Jamaican with an idea and a fear: start with what you have. We started in a kitchen. Don’t underestimate a small beginning. You never know where it will take you.
Pure Chocolate Jamaica is available at Things Jamaican.
