These Nordic chefs have created a new alternative to chocolate, from upcycled beer waste. (Yes, really.) Can they keep alive the flavor that we love, and reduce its considerable environmental impact?
Chocolate chip cookies are one of the most popular items at 7-Eleven convenience stores. But as of this year, when you pick up a light, dark or salted caramel cookie at any of the chain’s 180 stores in Denmark, those chips are not, in fact, chocolate.
They might taste like chocolate, but they’re actually made from a brand new concoction that aims to keep the joy of chocolate alive, without the big environmental footprint.
Providing a more sustainable alternative to chocolate is a huge challenge to take on. We live in a world that loves chocolate. Americans get through 4-5kg (9-11lb) a year on average. The Swiss manage double that.
But when it comes to climate change, chocolate is both a contributor and a casualty: demand for cocoa drives deforestation, while harvests are suffering from ever hotter weather.
In 2024 extreme drought and disease crippled cocoa yields in Ivory Coast and Ghana, which together account for 60% of the global production. Prices of cocoa, historically stable at an average of $2,500 (€2,100) per metric ton, tripled in 2024 – hitting a peak in December of nearly $13,000 (€11,000) per ton.
Some products went up in price, some vanished, and profits plummeted. After three years of poor harvests, many chocolate makers are turning to lower-quality beans from Cameroon and Nigeria. Others are rethinking their ingredient list altogether.
Enter a young Danish startup called Endless Food Co, with an innovative alternative. This isn’t chocolate – it’s a new substitute called THIC, which is short for… This Isn’t Chocolate.
Made from upcycled spent grain – a byproduct from local beer brewing – this cocoa-free alternative builds on the sustainability ethos of Nordic gastronomy. The idea is to replicate the taste and texture of traditional chocolate, without its deep-rooted environmental issues.
THIC was compelling enough for 7-Eleven, and other vendors in Europe are now following suit in adopting an alternative that tastes “very much like the real thing.”
At least, that’s what co-founder Maximillian Bogenmann tells me, as we meet for coffee outside Endless Food’s kitchen headquarters – a 400 sq ft shopfront near Copenhagen’s historic Nyhavn harbor.
The zero-waste kitchen
Originally from Los Angeles, Max and his Danish business partner, Christian Bach, led R&D and operations at Amass, a groundbreaking zero-waste restaurant in the Danish capital that closed after nine years in 2022.
“In Michelin restaurants, we would slice out the brightest green sliver of an avocado and the rest would go in the bin. But at Amass, we put citrus peels and vegetable skins on the menu. Coffee grounds were not a waste product. The founder and owner Matt Orlando’s approach was a re-education in looking at ingredients.”
When Max, Christian and Matt spun Endless Food out of the Amass test kitchen, chocolate became a natural focus, says Chris.
“There’s something deeply playful about chocolate, which was magnetizing for us,” he told me over Zoom. “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. It gave us a clear reason to pursue the idea.”
The philosophy resonates – but will the flavor? “You can decide for yourself,” says Max, as he opens the door to Endless HQ. Immediately, I’m hit by the heavy, familiar scent of what – if I didn’t know better – I would say was rich dark chocolate.
Three people are working at a shared workspace – “our family dinner table,” says Max. In the kitchen, behind a wood-topped partition, someone crushes cocoa husks with a stick in a white bucket. Nearby, sacks bulge with milled and unmilled grain. In the corner is a large landscaping bag, half-full of cocoa husks.
At the heart of this operation – and filling the air with chocolatey aroma – is THIC powder, the base ingredient used across the product line.
It bakes, it melts, it functions like chocolate
Traditional chocolate is made by combining cocoa solids, sugar, and fat in various ratios. The application shapes the formulation – less fat in baking chocolate, more in bonbons. Most chocolate makers buy powder, and Endless Food produces these base solids in-house.
Crucially, it replaces cocoa with alternative upcycled ingredients: brewer’s spent grain (barley or oats sourced from nearby beer productions), oat okara (a byproduct of oat milk), and legumes (a gluten-free alternative well-suited to white and caramel applications).
They also reclaim cocoa husk – this is what Max’s colleague is pounding in the bucket. The fibrous shell makes up 25% of the cocoa bean and is usually discarded as waste or used for fertilizer. “It makes a lot of sense to circulate it back into an alternative chocolate process,” says Max.
But cocoa isn’t the only ingredient they’re replacing. Much of today’s chocolate contains palm oil – a fat linked to widespread deforestation and biodiversity loss. To evade this, some brands use vegetable oils or glycerol compounds which can be high in trans fats.
THIC uses shea butter, sourced from wild-harvested nuts in the shea belt of West Africa, and processed in Europe. The market for shea supports many cooperatives run by rural women, who are typically the ones harvesting it. “It’s not plantations; it’s low-emission, wild harvesting,” Max explains. “There are also more and more startups working on fats from upcycled sources, so we don’t need to rely on palm.”
Even the sugar is locally sourced. THIC uses Nordic beet sugar derived from a common Scandinavian crop, which requires less water and emits fewer greenhouse gases than the refined white cane sugar commonly used by Big Chocolate.
“Once you’ve added fat and sugar, that’s when it looks like chocolate,” Max says, walking me through the process by pointing to various appliances in the kitchen: refining the mixture with a stone grinder, passing it through a conch, tempering it to align the fat crystals, and finally cooling it into glossy pieces.
“We’re not biochemists, we’re not Harvard MBAs,” he adds. “We’re people from the hospitality industry, and we’re really good at creating flavor. This company offers a more sustainable product and happens to use upcycled ingredients. If that can make a small step in the right direction for the food system, that would be an enormous win.”
“Your favorite chocolate is probably very different to mine. It’s what you ate as a kid. It’s what your mom gave you”
Max Bogenmann, Endless Food
And the applications are growing. In addition to 7-Eleven’s cookies, cafés in Denmark and Lithuania are baking THIC pain au chocolat. Restaurants in Copenhagen’s high-end scene receive it in 500g (18 ounce) bricks. This summer, Endless is also supplying bonbons for the prestigious MAD Food Symposium in Copenhagen.
“I think its baking applications are amazing,” Max says, lifting the lid off a container filled with glossy, Kit Kat-shaped fingers. “Our chocolate croissants are really good.”
Nutritionally, THIC isn’t diet food – but it’s no worse than the real thing: it contains about 50% less sugar and 15g of fibre per 100g. “It bakes; it melts. It tastes, smells, and functions like chocolate.”
At this point I should disclose that my father was a chocolatier – I spent years watching him temper and mold chocolate, coating pralines, truffles, and candied peels in our home kitchen. So I consider myself a qualified critic.
“OK,” I say. “Let me try it.”
Max scoops a fine, cocoa-like powder onto a spoon. It forms a tacky paste on my tongue, with a deep, nutty flavour. There’s less bitterness than typical dark cocoa, more maltiness – but no vegetal aftertaste. It’s convincing.
Max grins. “I always love the ‘wow, it’s surprisingly good’.”
Can David work with Goliath?
Endless makes one ton of THIC powder each month. But if it wants to rectify the chocolate industry’s supply-chain bottlenecks and ethical issues, it must find a way to scale and impact the mainstream.
Most global chocolate flows through just four companies: Mondelez, Mars, Nestlé, and Hershey. Endless isn’t trying to beat them – it’s trying to work with them. “We want to coat every Mars bar,” Max and Christian like to say.
And lately, the tide may be turning. Since the 2024 cocoa crisis, Max says Big Chocolate is increasingly open to collaborating: “A year ago, there was more trepidation about what we and others in this space are doing. But in the last six months, more conversations are happening. The world’s largest chocolate companies are doing their own research, and some are aligning with startups.”
Endless recently attracted three new investors, launched a small cookie line in Sweden, and is negotiating with commercial partners in Austria, Germany, and Denmark. To meet demand, they’re finalising a lease on a 3,800 sq ft facility. “We’re aiming to make 20 tons a month,” says Max. “North of that, ideally.”
More than the sum of its ingredients
But can a local, upcycled product really sway an industry worth hundreds of billions?
Max says he doesn’t think alternatives will replace chocolate altogether. “Just like no one’s replacing beef or milk – those are their own things. But we can change how people relate to food. That’s how new and bioengineered ingredients can change the world.”
He pauses. “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.”
That emotional dimension is part of both the challenge and the opportunity. THIC isn’t aiming to erase chocolate. It’s trying to protect it – by reimagining how it’s made.
“We have the same goal as every chocolate company,” says Max. “We want to preserve chocolate for the next generation.”
Cover star Madame Gandhi on the sounds of the Antarctic, free climber Alex Honnold reveals his biggest challenge yet, actor Rainn Wilson embraces his soulful side and much much more!
THE FUTURE OF FOOD
BIG IDEAS
