​We met in 2004 and within the year knew we wanted to travel the world together, or at least start off with a chunk of it.  During those months of backpacking (with a duffel bag full of books and an accumulation of battle scars), we kept each other up under reed roofs and in rain-drenched shacks dreaming big, vague dreams.  In time, we came back, hunkered down, got married, worked hard for good causes, had a kid and then were expecting another when we remembered those big and vague dreams.  Feeling like our entire future hinged on this, we quit our jobs and whisked the family off into the jungles of Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica, as soon as our second child was born.

And we four sweltered in a fecund jungle.  It was beautiful.  It was challenging.  It was liberating.  It was also home to cacao. We met local chocolate makers using that same cacao to make dark chocolate that was intense, unadulterated & pure --nothing like the sweet flatness we thought of as chocolate.  Deciding we would return to Atlanta, we trained with the local chocolate makers, now friends, & came home to create Xocolatl Small Batch Chocolate ("chock-oh-LAH-tul"), a chocolate micro-factory in Atlanta where we could make dark chocolate free of fillers & unnecessary ingredients but full of flavor.  

With gratitude to the people & place that inspired us, we hope our chocolate brings you the same sense of contentment & adventure from which it originally came. 

                                                                                                                         -Founders Elaine Read + Matt Weyandt 

*Xocolatl is the original Nahuatl word, spoken by Olmecs, Mayans & Aztecs, for chocolate, which was first consumed as a sugarless drink made of ground cacao, water & spices.  "Xocol" meant bitter & "atl" meant water.  

Check out our Kickstarter video for more of our story!