Move over, chocolate

What’s your story?

I moved from LA to New York to cook in fine dining restaurants. I remember stumbling across Relae [the book by Italian-Danish chef Christian Puglisi, featuring recipes from his restaurant of the same name], and I was so curious that I decided to spend a month in Copenhagen, working as a stagiaire at the restaurant Amass.

I was used to kitchens where you would slice out the brightest green sliver of an avocado and discard the rest – but at Amass we didn’t throw away vegetable skins. We kept citrus peels. Coffee grounds were not a waste product. I worked my way through the kitchen, ultimately becoming head chef and head of R&D.

With Endless Food Co., we made the same journey with chocolate. THIC is an abbreviation for This Isn’t Chocolate… although we know it doesn’t really line up! It’s a sustainable alternative to chocolate, made with the upcycled leftovers from the beer-making process. A number of bakeries and restaurants are using it, and it has already replaced the choc chips in cookies sold at Danish branches of 7-Eleven.

Unfortunately, when it comes to climate change, chocolate is both a contributor and a casualty: demand for cocoa drives deforestation, while cocoa harvests are getting hit by ever hotter weather. Our hope is that THIC can be a solution to future-proof the chocolate experience.

Chris: There’s something deeply playful about chocolate, which was magnetizing for us. As you peel back the layers, you realize there are labor and social issues, but also long-standing sustainability and supply issues driving up cocoa prices – and it’s all connected to rising global temperatures. Repurposing waste products into something that created value, flavor and experience gave us the gratifying feeling of taking practical environmental action. We saw that it resonated with people outside of the walls of Amass. So, we asked, why don’t we do this on a bigger scale, create more impact and reach more people?

Is there a moment on your journey that stands out in your memory?

Chris: I distinctly remember the first time somebody said, OK, we’ll buy it from you for the price that you’ve asked. Up until then, we had done a lot of taste tests with people and groups, but packing something and delivering it to the back door of a restaurant and then letting it go – that felt wild.

What’s the impact you hope to make?

Chris: We always say we want to coat every Mars bar. We want to reach the mainstream with something tasty, interesting, and good for the Earth – but that is not wildly expensive and does not necessarily have to tell a climate story. It would be cool to create something that everyone can relate to.

Max: We’re not biochemists, we’re not Harvard MBAs, we’re people from the hospitality indus- try, and we’re really good at creating flavour… If that can make a small step in the right direction for the food system, that would be an enormous win.

Whose stories have inspired you?

Chris: I have to mention Matt Orlando, the [former] chef-owner of Amass. Before we partnered with him on Endless Food Co., Max and I worked for him for a long time – in an industry with high employee turnover – because his proposal was different. It had purpose and was easy to get behind. Besides him, a software professional who we did sessions with early on was a big help in shaping THIC. Coming from a completely different industry, he presented a radically different approach to running a business and focusing your energy.

How would you like your story to change the world?

Max: Chocolate isn’t just about taste. Your favorite chocolate is probably very different to mine. It’s what you ate as a kid. It’s what your mom gave you. There are stories baked into it that aren’t in the ingredients list.

We are not looking down from a high throne in gastronomy or climate action, telling people to eat differently. We see a growing problem in the food system, and we want to work with existing chocolate companies to ensure the food experience we grew up with is still afforded to future generations. If we do nothing, the chocolate supply chain will become an even bigger problem. We also hope to show that waste can be an opportunity to build something new, fun and delicious.